Breaking into the blogging business is tasking, like with any human endeavor, because it has many challenges, which can be quite frustrating. Sometimes, you might be doing many things by the book in terms of your blog loading fast, optimized search engine, social media share button, mobile device friendliness, and the right domain name. You might do all these things and even more, but still, your blog sucks because you are not getting the traffic that validates your hard work.
And in many cases, this might not be a structural problem, but one of content, which can be adjusted when you answer certain fundamental questions: Are you blogging for cash or for pleasure? What are the topical issues that are of interest to people?
Why do you blog?
Blogging is a venture that people get into for two reasons; to make money or to have fun while disseminating information. In a survey taken by Chris Garret in “Blogging Survey Results: Why People Blog” over fifty-one percent of bloggers indicated they blogged for the money while forty-nine blogged for pleasure.
Regardless of the motivation for blogging, we can only succeed if people become interested in our content and generate traffic on the website. Blogging for pleasure is an interesting hobby as well as intellectually fulfilling. Yet, even the most ardent blogger will get discouraged when no one pays attention to the topics we write about.
Equally, those who take blogging as a business will love to see dividends, but this cannot happen if people don’t read our content. Every entrepreneur desires dividends and in the business of blogging, these monetary returns will come when people visit your blog. The advertisers like ad sense, Google, and many others can only pay royalties to bloggers whose blogs generate traffic. This is, therefore, enough motivation for anyone to find out what they might actually be doing or not doing to keep traffic.
What is of interest to people?
Are we, as bloggers, writing for our audience? Then, if we are. it is therefore important to write about something that is of interest to them. Even if we write for pleasure, we still want others to enjoy our work, and so, it is vital to write about things that actually quips the reader’s interest. Every niche has interesting topics that anyone can dwell on. The internet has made it so easy for us to know what interest people with sites like eFor-Real, Quora, Beyond Your Blog, Copyblogger, BuzzSumo, and answerMug.
Fortunately, we do not need to ask a soothsayer about interesting topics, topical issues generate such a buzz in today’s world, all we need is to stay current with happenings in our sector of interest. It is fundamental that everyone wishing to become a career blogger be up to date with the happenings in the world, be it in politics, celebrity world or human interest news. Knowing the topical issues and opening timely conversations about them is a perfect way of generating buzz and succeeding as a blogger.
Survey of Current Issues
We have reiterated on the necessity of staying up to date on current issues as a pointer to interesting topics, but it is important to elaborate a little. Let’s take politics for instance; so much is going on in the global political landscape of the twenty-first century. People want to know what world leaders are doing since their actions impact us in one way or the other. Profiling a political leader making news that day or week is great for a blog. Find out things about them like their lifestyle, their opinions on issues like global warming, etc, that your readers will love.
Another example is in the world of celebrities, which is full of juicy stories. Find out unique insights, for example, with the ongoing FIFA soccer world cup. Speculate about that, like the likely countries to win to the championship, ask your readers to make suggestions. And so to rephrase, it is not about you, it’s about your audience. Give them what they want.
To be a successful blogger is the dream of many amateurs bloggers, but this dream always ends in futility for some because we market the wrong product. The world in which we live is quite fluid with people easily losing interest and moving on to something new. You, as a blogger, need to be a step ahead, providing new information that will keep your readers intrigued and in need of more.
Reference
Garret, Chris. “Blogging Survey Results: Why People Blog” http://www.chrisg.com/why-people-blog/
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