Passion. This is number one. Without this, you will most certainly fail to capture the audience you are looking for. Socially speaking, what creates a buzz is passion, or a strong emotional connection to something. People crave that spark and they want to jump on the bandwagon. Be passionate about what you talking about and show some life. If you are just writing a blog for the sake of writing it, like some kind of blog robot, then you are destine to have very few read your posts.
Audience. Who are they? Do you know where your fans are? Do they use Facebook Twitter or LinkedIn? Are they in chat rooms, what sites do they visit, what interests them? You have to first consider where your audience exists. The other thing is what kind of information and content they want? If your knowledge base revolves around hockey, then finding your fans in a chat room that talks about baking cookies is likely not the write place to be. Find and engage your audience in the right places and this will certainly grab the attention you need.
Knowledge. Create what you know and can effectively articulate to your audience. If you are into basket weaving, then writing a blog on Lacrosse is probably going to be as stretch for you. Information and thought leadership is golden, and your audience wants it. There is a lot of BS on the internet, we all know this and the average person can sense it as well.
Originality. On Twitter I see the same thing over and over again spinning around and being ret-tweeted and shared. You need to keep your content new and refreshing. Rehashing the same thing will not get you the audience you need. Don't plagiarize or steal someone else's work. This shows your audience that you cannot come up with your own content. You will lose trust and your following will shrink very quickly to nothing or robots following you just looking for keywords. It is tempting to use someone else's work, this especially if you are experiencing "writers block." Don't do it. Some suggestions to get those creative juices to come out would be reading magazines, books, going for a walk, taking a shower, watching some TV, anything other then sitting blankly in front of your computer screen.
Promotion. Just creating content then leaving it alone to gather reads at least to start, is not going to work for you. You want to promote and entice people to read what you have to say. Unless you have a huge blog followership of thousands, you need to promote your new blog in other ways. Using Twitter and Facebook will help. Post on your FB page, and give it to your Twitter followers to spread the post. Using content sharing sites is definitely a way to get you blog cooking. Guest Blogging is ok, but unless you have a reputation and can easily find someone who will let you, to start promoting your blog off this way will not work. There are other sites that allow people to post their own content and make it a part of their mix. If your blog follows the above mix then it will surely get picked up and spread. Post your blog to your website as well.
Consistency. You need to blog in a consistent manner. Putting out content once every 3 months is not going to gather you a solid following. I have found that you need to blog at least once a week. Monday is the best time to publish your work giving everyone the chance to read and share it. Pick your time of day as well and stick with it. Mornings are good when everyone is commuting to work. Afternoons after lunch work well also. Whatever time you pick, stay with it because your followers will start looking for your work at certain times of day.
Longevity. Don't Give up! Keep blogging and using the above ingredients to do so. I can tell you one thing, it takes a lot of time and efforts to build a following and an audience. Like everything else in life its all about hard work, dedication and commitment to make your blog a success.
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