Blogging – it’s not dead, but it feels that way. A lot of bloggers make the mistake of thinking that they can just set up a blog, create great content, and sit back and watch people flock to their site. It just doesn’t work that way. Sure, great content is the foundation for building a massive following, but you need a lot more than content. You also may have to redefine your concept of “great content.” Follow these basic rules, and you’ll attract followers like flies.
Create Useful Content
“Unique” content isn’t enough. You have to create useful content. More than that, you need to create epic, useful, content. Epic content is content that is interesting, unique, useful, and touches on a subject that hasn’t been discussed yet. At the very least, it should tackle a popular topic in an entirely new way. Ideally, you would blog about something that no one else is blogging about – 100 percent unique content.
That’s incredibly hard to do, and that’s the point. The easy wins aren’t going to yield a lot of visitors. If you want to score a big win, you’re going to probably have to source material offline, hit up research sites like PubMed or the SSRN or some research-based website that is tied to your industry, and write about some aspect of an interesting study. If you can put a personal spin on it, all the better.
For example, let’s say you have a blog about health and fitness. What are the popular topics in your niche? Fat loss? Some new miracle vitamin? There’s no shortage of blogs out there with basically useless and generic information on acacia berries and weight loss pills, so writing “just another post” on weight loss isn’t going to work.
Dig deep. Here’s how to do that – think about small, untouched, areas in the health and nutrition space. Take vitamin K2-MK4 as an example. How many blog posts are there about that? Now, how many blogs out there are telling a personal story about K2? Not very many. K2 is a vitamin instrumental in pulling calcium out of soft tissues and depositing it into bones where it belongs. In fact, it’s often prescribed in Japan as a treatment option for osteoporosis, but it’s not very popular in other parts of the world.
How could you make a Story Out of This?
Here’s one idea: search PubMed for articles on K2-MK4 and plaque. Plaque is made up of calcium deposits on your teeth. There are some interesting studies that suggest that plaque can be removed by increasing vitamin K2. Do a little self-experiment. Photograph your teeth (yeah, it might be gross). Then, start supplementing with vitamin K2 – a liquid suspension of the MK4 version of K2. Expose it to your teeth.
Track your progress. If you notice improved oral health, get “after” photos of your teeth and show how the plaque was stripped off of them. Now you have two things: a cool scientific study to blog about and a personal story to back it up.
Yes, it’s a lot of work – a lot. In fact, it’s so much work that most people won’t go through the trouble of doing it – and that’s your advantage and the “secret” to getting massive traffic.
Network
After you’ve composed your epic blog post, it’s time to network. Reach out to other bloggers in your niche and tell them about your post. Tell them your personal story. Guess what? Most bloggers, especially big-name bloggers, love personal stories with epic and useful information.
It won’t be very difficult to grab their attention with your content.
Reply To Comments
When you start getting comments on posts, respond to them. The worst thing you can do is ignore people who take the time to read your posts and comment on them. You’re trying to build a community, and that requires that you establish a “two-way street” – a dialog. When readers comment, but you don’t respond, you don’t have a dialog. You have a lecture. Lectures are a great way to drive people away.
Invite Real Friends To Read Your Blog
Yet another great way to get the ball rolling is to invite your personal friends to read your blog – your real life friends. Invite them to check it out, tweet, “like,” and share your posts. This works incredibly well if you make the effort to get 10 to 12 friends to simultaneously share and tweet everything you put out. If you can coordinate the retweeting and sharing, you’ll discover something amazing – suddenly, you’re “everywhere.” People who are “everywhere” get noticed.
Larry Stevenson is a retired tv repairman. He now enjoys reading and blogging on the web. To learn more about Internet access, go to http://www.clearinternet.org/internet-plans-devices.html.