Failing Blog
If you have been doing blogging for any period of time you probably are beginning to understand there is a definite difference between a successful blog and a failing one. This doesn’t always have to be judged strictly on income either.
Regardless of the niche, with a little bit of research, you can find all kinds of blogs that have been abandoned, or are just not very active. You can also find blogs that are doing extremely well and these usually are the ones that rank at the top of Google for organic searches.
What I want to do in this article is talk about fixing a failing blog and if it applies to you great. Hopefully this can help!
There’s No I In Blog
I remember reading a quote by Michael Jordan one time where it was pointed out to him that there is no I in the Word team. His response was yes but there is in the word win.
One problem that I see with failing blogs is the blogger puts too much of the focus of their blog back on themselves and not on their audience.
As bloggers we certainly do want to show that we have a personal side in the articles we write, but if you spend too much time talking about your personal life you are just going to drive people away. If all you talk about is your own problems, or problems that your products and company have this just going to turn people off.
When someone comes to your blog they are not interested in how you are solving your problems. However, they are interested in how they can solve their own problems.
Successful blogs are built on providing useful and helpful information that solve problems. This is why you see so many successful niche blogs because they’re very focused in what they’re trying to accomplish.
For Sale
When somebody comes your blog do they feel like they’re at a retail store or garage sale? Granted we want to make money on our blogs, but if your whole focus is on trying to sell your visitors products that is going to drive them away.
Your goal should be to find a nice balance between advertising and information. The more successful blogs limit the amount of banners they have on them, and they do include text links back to products or programs are promoting.
Almost all successful blogs offer free information in exchange for an email address and a name. This is known as list building and is actually a better way to sell products via email marketing that it is directly to your blog readers while they’re on your blog.
Lively Content
There really is nothing more boring than a blog that’s filled with nothing but words. Granted, blogging is about expressing opinions and offering information, and much of that’s going to be in the form of text.
However, successful blogs Incorporate videos, graphics, audio, statistics, and anything that will liven their blog post up. Lively content is much more interesting, and is likely to keep the reader on your blog longer than articles that contain nothing but text.
If you analytics installed look at how long people are staying on your blog. You will find the lively content is holding a reader’s interest longer then long boring text is.
Add Videos
An easy way to add videos to your blog if you’re not already doing that is to just go to YouTube and find relevant videos there. YouTube is owned by Google and it’s a shared video site.
You have permission to take the embed code of the video and post it on your own blog. This is as simple as copying and pasting the embed code on a new blog post and hitting publish. Once you’ve done that you now have a video on your blog.
Keep these relevant to the blog post that you’re making. YouTube is the third most visited website in the world so there’s generally going to be a relevant video on any topic you’re searching for.
Another thing you can do is create your own videos using Animoto. This is a great program where you can easily add text and graphics without any technical ability. You can also pick music that’s instantly added to the background.
You then publish the video on YouTube, copy the embed code, post it on your blog, and you have created your own video. If you prefer not to publish it on YouTube you can just copy the embed code on Animoto and post is as well.
Engage Your Readers
Solicit comments from your blog readers. Specifically asked them to post a comment at the end of the blog post once they’re done reading it.
Use your email list to drive traffic to your blog and encourage those people to engage in conversation as well. Failing blogs are dead and don’t have any reader engagement, where successful blogs have interaction between their readers and you as the administrator of your blog.
This takes a little bit of time on your part to keep up with. However, nothing is a bigger turnoff to your audience then leaving comments and not seeing you or anyone else responding to them.
Invite Them Back
The easiest way invite somebody back your blog is to provide content that is so good they naturally will come back on their own. If you create viral content they might even go so far as to refer other people directly to a blog post you made.
Again use your email list and invite people to come visit your blog. One way to do that is to provide a snippet of a new blog post and hyperlink the words “read more” directly to the new post URL. This is an easy way to get them back to your blog and get them in the habit of coming back to see what you’re up to.
A failing blog is usually one that is not interesting or being kept up to date by the blogger. Follow these tips to make sure you do not fall into that category.