Hello everyone,
Today, I was surfing the anime blogosphere and I noticed many post on "how to write a successfull blog" and similiar arguments floating around in the net, most of them contained many truths and many lies about this little world that is the blogosphere.
We all write a blog in order to get read, to offer a service (like I do with wallpapers) or to share your own opinion with the community, right? Yes, there is no blogger who would not want his post being read and I don't think anybody would open a free-to-read public blog without wanting it to share something with someone else.
While the target may be different depending on the type of blog (I read some blog dedicated to a group of friend or micro-community), this is a truth that nobody can escape from. We want exposure!
Now, in order to understand what makes a blog successfull, we need to understand what is that makes the other, already existing, blogs more or less popular. Is it only quality content written with a great english? I think not!
With some little search using Alexa and Compete (two website popularity services) I gave a quick look at the most popular anime blog at the moment present on the net and I noticed a pattern that can explain to us the reasons behind their popularity.
1) They're all old blogs (3+ years old)
2) They post regularly almost every day
3) They have a big quantity of old content
Can the age of a website influence its own readership regardless of the quality of the content proposed? Yes, take Random Curiosity for example, there is no Omni anymore there and the posts from the other writers, other than Divine, aren't very different from what you can see on many other episodic blogs.
Users tend to prefer what they're used to and rarely decide to stray from the predetermined path unless you give them something more compared to what they're used to. Is it easy? No, but its one of the ways to gain popularity in this world.
Big quantities of old content can also help with the popularity of a blog because its easier for a random google searcher to end up on your blog if you have 5000 quality post with great content compared to 100 of them.
Let's talk now about post frequency, the other important metric I noticed a pattern for. The readership want fresh content and want it on a regular basis, posting everyday is not a necessity (it can help though), but you should have a regular schedule on when you publish a post on your blog.
Users want to know "oh, its Thursday, let's see what's new on that bloggers website!", want to see some level of dedication from the blogger, some level of professionality.
Also, its no point to post 5-10 posts in a day all at once. The common random reader will get tired after a post or two, so you should divide these posts into multiple days if possible to keep the interest up.
Another important point in the popularity of the blog is the presentation of the content inside the blog, that is the layout/theme you're using to show your content and the very tool you're using (Blogger, Wordpress, Blogengine.net, etc...)!
Make the content easy to read because, for example, users will get turned off if they have to wait seconds for some high quality background to load before being able to read your post.
Make the content easy to browse. Use this as a rule of thumb, "if a post takes more than 3 clicks from the homepage to be reached, mark it as dead" because no one, not even search engines will give enough exposure to it.
The last and probably most important thing is "community". The anime blogosphere is a community, in which you share your own opinions and get known around the web, if you close yourself on your blog and think people will start falling from the sky to read your blog you're mistaken.
Go in other people blogs, read their content and share your opinion on the argument if they allow comments, talk with them through email, expand your knowledge and the quality of your posts using the expertise you can learn from someone who is blogging from more time than you.
Create your own circle of blogger friends, ask to exchange links with blogs you like (but wait at least to be some months old or people will be scared you'll die soon after exchanging links), live the community!
In the end, the last advice I can give you is to have fun! Don't try to force yourself in a particular style because "that's popular", but create your own style while having fun with your blog!
And you? What do you think is making a blog more or less successfull? What do you suggest to improve ourselves in this competitive world?
See you soon,
feal87