10 Tips for Successful Blogging

10 Tips for Successful Blogging

By Paige Tepping

RISMEDIA, May 14, 2010--Most successful bloggers can offer some tips for successful blogging. While some people develop methods based on experience, others simply offer what they've been told-like post often, link often, and be yourself. Andy MacDonald from bloggingtips.com offers the following tips for achieving a popular and successful blog within the real estate industry.

BE REAL

Knowing yourself and your audience are extremely important aspects of successful blogging. Identify who you are as a blogger, what you'll be blogging about, and who your audience will be.

BE PASSIONATE

Passion breeds passion. If you aren't enjoying what you're blogging about, it's difficult to be passionate, so blog about things you truly enjoy. Find a voice that you enjoy writing in and stick with it.

WRITE OFTEN

Writing often isn't just good for the blog, it's an absolute requirement for success. Updating your blog is often rooted in two major facets of blogging: search engine "juice" and the fact that readers love new and fresh content. Search engines love fresh content and will revisit your site more often the more it's updated.

LINK LOTS

Links are called the "currency of the blogosphere." Most bloggers link for one of two reasons: either they are interested in the subject matter or they respect the blogger to whom they are linking. Links carry an inherent value, so providing links shows your readers and users what interests you..

LEAVE LINKS ON OTHER BLOGS

Creating a community of interest is key to blogging successfully at the business or personal level. For most businesses, the community will be a mixture of existing bloggers, news sources, and influential people in the industry, combined with employees, partners, suppliers, and customers.

HAVE FUN

Blogging is meant to be fun. Yes, it's serious business that will radically change the way your business is presented online while also changing the way your clients view and relate to you, but it's also about having fun.

PUSH THE ENVELOPE

One of the challenges with blogging is that it's relatively new. Any new communications tool that remains stagnant ultimately dies, so don't be afraid to make changes and ask questions. Entirely new types of cutting-edge communication, such as podcasting and video blogging, were created when someone asked, "Why does blogging have to be just text?" Ask your own "why" questions and see if you can come up with exciting ways to use blogs.

PING

Pinging is something your blog software does to tell several services that you've posted something new. This quick note, or ping, is used to produce lists of the most recently updated blogs to let Technorati and PubSub know to come by and see what you've posted and generally to make sure the blogosphere stays connected.

USE FEEDS

Whether you choose to use full-text feeds or provide some of the text, make sure you are providing feeds. Feeds make it easy for people to read your content on their own schedules-while traveling on an airplane, via audio as they're driving home, or generally however and whenever they want to hear what you have to say.

CREATE MEANINGFUL TITLES

Titles are absolutely essential to blogging successfully: good titles mean search engines find you and send you more traffic; attractive and useful titles entice readers to read your stuff, and this translates into more links. Every blog post title should give readers a reason to want to read the entire post.