Seven Daily Habits for a Successful Blog

In today’s Blogging Workshop: Session 5:
Feature Story: Seven Daily Habits for a Successful Blog
Create It: Find Great Tips on Starting a Successful Blog
Promote It: Free RSS Icons – Help Visitors Become Regular Readers
Earn It: How to Monetize Your Blog

Seven Daily Habits for a Successful Blog

To have a successful blog you must practice every day. Regardless if you post seven days a week, or three, your daily habits can make all the difference with helping you achieve your blogging goals – whatever they happen to be.

1.) Write: Your content is the most important and profitable asset you have. Quality and relevant content to your niche is what keeps your readers engaged with your site, returning more often and subscribing to your RSS feed or opt-in newsletter.

You need to set aside time each day to research, write and edit your articles. If you want your blog to be considered an authority site, then your content must extraordinary. To do this, you must write every day.

Don’t take any shortcuts here and don’t copy and paste articles for the free article sites and don’t quickly write something in 15 minutes just to have a post for that day. OK, enough preaching, right? Your content is an extension of you. Bottom Line: If you ever want to make money blogging, the most important strategy is writing quality content. Traffic, clicks and conversions will naturally follow.

2.) Read: Seek out other bloggers in your space and read what they are writing. This will give you a good idea of what your audience might find of interest.

Read off-line material like books, newspaper and magazines related to your subject matter, too. The more knowledge you gain the better your writing will become.

3.) Network: Building an online support system of fellow bloggers is essential for long-term success. A strong network came help you garner more quality in-bound links (which is essential for search engine optimization); guest writing opportunities; and mentorship.

I have been amazed at the number of people I have met who help me every day with my blogging efforts. Here some effective ways to build and sustain your network:

- Leave Comments (see Habit #4)
- Participate in Blog Carnivals (see Habit #5)
- Join StumbleUpon or other social bookmarking sites

4.) Comment: Leave at least three comments a day. Some believe commenting is unproductive and a time waster. I disagree. In my experience, commenting has helped to build my network. Not only do I leave three comments a day, I also leave a comment on any blog whose blogger left a comment on mine.

The benefits for doing this are twofold. First, when you leave a comment on another blog you are also providing a link back to your blog. The second advantage is to meet other bloggers who may become part of your online network support system.

5.) Edit Blog Carnival Submissions: In the Getting Started post of the Blogging Workshop series, it was suggested to participate in Blog Carnivals as an effective and no-cost way to promote your blog.

Over time you will begin to receive a lot of submissions to your carnival. Rather than waiting until the scheduled publication date to begin reading and editing these submissions, develop the habit of reviewing a couple each day.

Most of the submission you receive are relevant to your carnival and are well-written, but there are some spammers out there. Therefore, it is important you take the time to review all entries before publishing. You don’t want to compromise the integrity of your site with an inappropriate or off-topic blog submission.

6.) Review Your Stats: This is a tricky one. It’s easy to get into the habit of checking your stats too much; almost to the point that it becomes a primary activity. Instead, check your stats only a few times each day.

The important pieces of data to review are the type of keywords your readers are using (this will tell you what content your audience is looking for when they do a search) and page views. Page views, like keywords, indicate content preference – look for trends here.

Also, review the average time your visitors spend on your blog. If it is less than 30 seconds, this is probably a good indication your readers are not finding your content relevant or of sufficient quality. To increase this average, look at improving your content and providing deep-linking. Deep-linking means to embed links to your other posts within your current post.

7.) Think about the Future: You are the CEO of your blog. The primary job of CEOs is to plan strategic direction and to raise money. Devote time each day contemplating where you want your blog to be three, six or 12 months from now and what you need in terms of resources (time and money) to get there.

Think about how to make your blog more unique. Research how to generate additional traffic and think about your financial goals and advertising opportunities. Consider making a business plan and then review this plan daily.

Feeling stuck? If so, I would like to help. For a limited time, you may schedule a free one-on-one 30-minute Blogging Workshop conference call with me. We can discuss your specific questions, review your current blog or start a new blog, and discuss future strategies.

Click here to contact me to schedule your call. I can only accept the first three requests.

Blog Basics for Everyone

The following articles are written from bloggers who are finding success. These articles offer great tips and advice for building and maintaining a successful blog.

Create It

Warren Wong presents How To Start A Successful Blog posted at Personal Development for INTJs. Warren provides some great tips on how to start a successful blog and what it takes to succeed.

Edith provides 50 Habits of a Highly Effective Business Blogger posted at TuneSEO.

Carol Bentley presents Do your headlines grab your reader?s undivided attention posted at Carol Bentley.

WhatWorksForUs presents What Works For Us: 13 Good Blog Tools & Resources posted at What Works For Us.

Karen Shanley presents Author Mom with Dogs » Blog Archive » Five Ways to Set Up Your Blog To Chase Readers Away posted at Karen Shanley.

Ninja Jon presents WordPress Blogger’s Survival Guide posted at Ninja Blog Setup, Jon states, “I decided to compile the most common questions and their answers to hopefully create a valuable reference guide for WordPress users who are having a problem, or wanting to make changes to their site, but don’t know where to go for help.”

Jeremy Neal presents What to Say and How to Say It Online posted at Thoughts on Quotes. What you say online in a blog, or otherwise, matters to those who read it - choose your words carefully and consider the impact on others.

Akemi presents Blogging Tips for the Technologically Challenged posted at Gratitude Magic.

Ian Richardson presents 2. Hosted Wordpress Is FREE To Install, and YOU have complete control! posted at Make Everything EzyAs123.

Kenton Newby presents Just amazing…and another reason to have a blog posted at KentonNewby.com.

Kenton Newby presents Google Analytics Goodness…Can You Believe This is Free? posted at KentonNewby.com.

Promote It

Pearl presents Free RSS Icons - Help visitors become regular readers. Interesting Observations posted at :: Interesting Observations ::RSS Icons to help your visitors become regular readers.

Viju presents How to increase your page clickthrough on search engine results? posted at eTechBuzz.com. Google, a search engine giant and probably the highest traffic source of your blog or site, is giving very much importance to Description and keyword meta tag. See how to optimize description meta tags for more blog traffic.

Richard Lee presents How Long Will Your Business Survive posted at Richard Lee.

Your Relevant presents Social Networks = Blog Traffic? posted at Your Relevant. Social networking can equal blog traffic.

Shawn Farner presents How to be a comment tool posted at Typeblogger. There are a few mistakes bloggers make when commenting on other blogs. Here are three.

Tali presents Yaro Starak?s Blog Profit Blueprint Drags The Marketer Review to the Gutter posted at The Marketer Review, saying, “Why I violated my own rules and bought an information product?”

Allison presents Link Me Please? Catching a Fellow Bloggers’ Eye posted at The Millionaire Blogger.

Earn It

Ian Richardson presents Would you like an Ezy way to manage multiple Wordpress Blogs? posted at Make Everything EzyAs123, saying, “While a typical website can take hours to update, a site built around a blog can be updated INSTANTLY and search engines quickly take notice…”

M. Cruz presents Freelance Blogging for Newbies - Triond and Helium posted at NOIRLECROI.COM, saying, “an article on starting to create content as a freelance blogger and using Triond and Helium as a way to perfect your craft.”

Feeling stuck? If so, I would like to help. For a limited time, you may schedule a free one-on-one 30-minute Blogging Workshop conference call with me. We can discuss your specific questions, review your current blog or start a new blog, as well as discuss future strategies.

Click here to contact me to schedule your call. I can only accept the first three requests.

Read previous Blogging Workshop issues
Session 1: Getting Started
Session 2: Writing Headlines; Power of Social Bookmarking; Asking for Donations
Session 3: Mastering the Writing Process; Using Comments to Build Traffic; Monetize with AdSense
Session 4: Five Simple Ways to Improve Your Blog

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