I had a reader email me today to ask about blog strategy - how to build, maintain, and grow a good site. This isn’t the first time I’ve fielded questions on this topic, so I’ve decided to turn my response into a mini-guide.

I’ve been blogging since 2003. My site(s) have gone through many different evolving forms and themes up until now. It is only recently that I feel I’ve truly hit my stride.

The reason for this is that while I am interested in many things, my audience can’t feel like I’m jerking them around. In the past, I was very tightly focused on Catholic issues in both theme and substance, and while it earned me the respect of a specific audience it failed to give me breathing room to branch out and cover other things.

By choosing this year to broaden my subject range to those mentioned in my header image while keeping my core message rooted in conservative values and my Catholic faith, I think that I’ve found something I can continue to grow in as I pursue my “moonlighting” career as a writer.

My audience is modest in comparison to some of the big blogs, but I have a consistent number of page views ranging from about 150-200 daily, and traffic is growing. Taking into account my relatively smaller size in the blogosphere, I’ll give you some tips I’ve gleaned:

1.) The number one rule of good blogging is good writing. Keep your sentences clean. Check your punctuation. Put line breaks between paragraphs. Avoid redundancies. Be prosaic. There are millions of blogs on the internet, and nobody wants to read a sloppy one.

2.) Write about what you love. If you don’t, you’ll lose your passion, your momentum, and your audience. My day job requires me to force myself to do a lot of tedius and repetitive work. My blog is something that I’m bursting at the seams to create and develop. That passion is tangible, and when you write about what you know and love, you will have credibility with your readers and they’ll keep coming back for your enthusiasm.

3.) On a similar note, avoid posting for the sake of posting. If you’re in a funk and can’t think of anything, sometimes it’s better not to post than to force it. Your audience can tell when you’re phoning it in. (No dial-up pun intended.) Make sure you don’t do this for too long, however. (See #8)

4.) Figure out what you want your blog to be. Mine has disparate themes, but keeping them tied down to a central core vision is key. In marketing speak, your blog is a brand and you have to build your brand identity. If your favorite deoderant kept changing its packaging and smell and the name of the one you like, you’d not only stop buying it, you’d probably have a hard time finding it when you went to the store. Sometimes refreshing the packaging is good, and updating your graphics can add new life to space that’s grown dull, but your audience needs to know what it’s getting when it fires up your blog. If it’s about economics one day and mortuary science the next, and they have to root around to figure out why, they won’t. Unless you have a loyal following, your readers don’t have the motivation to figure out what you’re doing that you haven’t spelled out for them. They’ll simply move on.

5.) Add an “About” page that’s easily accessible. Try to give your readers a perspective on who you are and what they’ll be getting from you. It will help them to understand why you write what you write. It will also help tie some of the things from #4 together and help readers build a relationship with you.

6.) The look of your site is important, but if you’re not good with graphics you’ll have to rely on themes that others create or find a friend who is a photoshop whiz. I do all my own headers because I enjoy graphic design as a hobby. I don’t think that’s in the comfort zone of most casual bloggers though, so I imagine that many of them outsource.

7.) Link, Link, Link. Link to others on your blog and link to yourself by commenting on other blogs of similar topic areas that allow you to include your URL. It ain’t called “social media” for nothing.

8.) I think of my blog like a garden: It takes a lot of tending, weeding, watering, pruning and planting. If I neglect it for a few days, things get hairy. Readership can drop by half if I don’t post for several days. I have to work blogging into my schedule to keep readers coming back. I have to be careful not to blog on the same thing for too many posts in a row or it gets dull. Too much monotony and too much diversity can both be killers. Humor is essential to keep things fresh. Balance is key.

9.) Break stories/blog in real time. If you get wind of a big story and you post about it as fast as you can (and google is already aware of you) you will get a crush of traffic from people looking for the lowdown. Some of that traffic inevitably stays with you from that point on.

10.) Take good care of your readers. Give them reasons to visit you every day and they will. Respond to their comments with as much respect as you can, even when you disagree. If you get trolls, banish them. If you get emails from readers, respond to them. We do this for readership, and we need to treat our readers like guests, even if we argue with them like old friends. The best way to build a blog is to get discussions going that people can partcipate in. Everyone wants to be a part of the action, even if they don’t want a blog of their own.

Some day, my blog may grow sufficiently larger and I may find that not all of these rules apply in quite the same way. My experience at the moment, however, is that following these guidelines consistently gives me favorable results.

I’m sure there are things I’ve left out, like, “Always give credit to the place you found that killer story link…” but the list will never be truly comprehensive.

So there are my thoughts, for what it’s worth.

Filed under: New Media, Social Media, Tips and Tricks