Show your passion and talk about what you know

Blogging isn't for the unprepared or those lacking imagination. The article below, found on LinkedIn does a very nice job of setting the ground rules for a successful blog. Talk about what you know, have passion for the subject and develop a plan. Sounds easy, doesn't it.

9 Deadly Secrets to Successful Blogging
by Sean Smith on February 9, 2010


What’s that you say?! There are secrets to successful blogging! Well, heck… I thought I had this whole thing figured out.
Not to worry my friend, some of these you may have already heard, yet others you may not have. Either way, it’s best to get yourself in the know now isn’t it?
New blogs are popping up everyday… Many of which are created by people with the intent on making it big on the internet but have now idea where or how to start to achieve their goals of online success. Sure you can set up your blog and simply start sharing your passion in the hopes that someone will listen but if you truly want to make money you may not know how to go about do so.
Here are 9 blogging secrets you must know before you can achieve the ultimate goal of blogging success.

Have a Plan
If you intend to generate any type of income online, let alone a significant one, you must plan for success. Treat your blog like a business and run it as one. As with any business, you need to have a business plan in place to help you meet your goals and achieve the success you desire. What are your short-term, mid-term and long-term goals and how are you going to go about accomplishing them. Spend a significant amount of time on developing your plan in an effort to provide yourself with clarity as well as a complete road map to success.

Share Your Passion
It is one thing to simply write content and post it on your blog. However, it is a completely different thing all together to share something you are passionate about with others. Passion attracts others and can help to bring your personality out in your blog posts making it easier for others to connect with you. If you aren’t passionate about your topic of discussion, your blog posts will seem mundane and boring to those who read them. Being passionate will also ensure you provide more detail and higher quality content your readership will greatly appreciate, and when they appreciate you, they will send others your way!

Be Committed
To truly succeed at blogging, online or any business venture for that matter, you must be truly committed toward achieving the success you desire. This means your commitment must transcend to each and every task necessary to achieving your goals. Stick to a regular posting schedule and commit time daily to write your blog posts, interact on social media sites, comment on other blogs, write guest posts for other blogs and all the other things a problogger does to run their business and achieve their goals of successful blogging. A strong commitment is an absolute must if you hope to succeed online.

Know Your Audience
As you probably know, you need an audience who is truly interested in what you have to say and listens to you by reading your blog posts, listing to your audio or viewing your videos. However, simply having an audience is not enough to allow you to achieve success with blogging. You must know your audience completely. Learn their desires and wants, learn how they are communicating and what they are saying. Read every comment on your blog posts and interact with your audience daily. Ask for their input into certain topics and share your appreciation for their continued participation with them. Getting to know your blog audience will go a long way in helping you craft appropriate products for you to sell to them.

Communicate Effectively
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen bloggers and internet entrepreneurs go to the trouble of establishing their internet presence then alienate their audience through ineffective communication. Study copywriting to learn how to write compelling headlines for your blog posts and learn how to effectively communicate with your audience through the various outlets available to you, such as your blog, social media and email communications. Never talk at your audience, but rather talk to them and with them. Successful internet marketing isn’t a matter of whether or not you can push as many of your products onto your audience as you can, but rather it is how well you can effectively communicate with your audience, build relationships and establish customer loyalty.

Interact with Others in Your Industry
As with effective communication, it is important that you dedicate quality time to hanging out where your audience plays on the internet and interacting with them. You must visit other bloggers within your industry and comment on their content, providing value to their readership. The more you comment and share quality the more likely you’ll build up a following and establish solid relationships with not only other bloggers but with their audience as well… Communicate and interact with others on Facebook and Twitter as well as other social networking sites. Always remember, interacting with others through social media is very much like a networking event or party. You wouldn’t go to either and start instantly selling your products. The most successful internet marketers are those who understand this and simply live their life, sharing value, quality and interacting with others. Those who are successful at this will be the most successful ones at the party

Have an Email List
If you aren’t actively building an email list on your blog and you have hopes of achieving internet fortune and fame, you mine as well quit right now! Any business needs a sales list. It is your life blood, your working capital if you will. Without an email list, your online business is practically crippled. Conduct a survey of the most successful bloggers in your industry and you will find that every single one of them has an email list. In the blogging community, Aweber is the preferred email list building and communication system. If you don’t have an account, I suggest you set one up now!

Sell Your Own Products
Many bloggers do well by marketing other people’s products through affiliate programs, but the truly successful ones sell their own products. Why, cuz you can keep all the money! Ask yourself what is one thing in your industry that people tend to come to you about in which they seek an answer or solution to a particular need and then turn the answer to that question into a product. Dave Navarrow over at TheLaunchCoach.com has a great blog post that is down right quick and dirty on how to create a product over the weekend. I suggest you read it and follow Dave as he has some great advice on his blog around creating and launching products.

Give Without Want Before You Can Receive
I can’t stress this enough! The whole point of blogging is to share your passion. Write a minimum of 10 blog post which contain your best content. These are known as your “Foundation Posts” and will serve as the pillar to your online success. Your foundation posts immediately provide your audience with value thus encouraging them to want to share your content with others inevitably driving traffic to your blog and increasing your audience. Blogging success is 90% give and 10% asking for something in return. Continue to provide your audience with valuable content and they will keep coming back for more. Here’s a little secret for you, as an example, many of my blog posts tell you what you need to do or what you should be doing, while many of the products I sell show you exactly how to do it. Can you see the value in that? I spend 90% of my time providing you with the knowledge and techniques of internet marketing you should be doing and the other 10% showing you how to do it. And believe me, that 10% can make you a whole lot of money. Find the balance in your blogging and give without want before you can receive. Doing so will increase your blogs readership, your email list and your bank account.
Maybe the above isn’t so secret, but if you found value in it and were enlightened, then I’ve accomplished my task
Please retweet and share this post if you found it informative and valuable, thank you!
To Your Success!
Sean Smith