LOGICal eMOTIONs

5 Key Components of Blogging

// October 18th, 2007 // Blog & Tech Items, Brain Dump

Want a top ranked blog? Great! Now just score 100% in each category and you’re on your way. No seriously, rank yourself out of 10 in each part, add them up, multiply by 2 and that is your score out of 100%. Not 100%? Hrm, well, then I guess I have some explaining to do.

Probably the number one question asked in the blogging world is simply “How do I make my blog more popular?”. I was asked this by someone recently, and although I had some great answers, I got thinking about the key components to a blog and a way to score our own blogs, and others. All the answers that have been given about making a blog more popular typically pick out one or two areas and drill into them. This works great if that is a major issue, yet, what about the rest of it.

Unfortunately we don’t have a whispering voice from the corn field reassuring us that readers will arrive if we simply have a blog. Now, every single person has a different reason for starting a blog and maintaining one. There are also philosophical and social stuff that surrounds blogs and blogging too. Money? Yeah, there is even a monetary component to blogging as well. Are we going to talk about any of that? Nope. We get to go down the path of the basics with a slight twist at the end which I think you’ll find intriguing as well – but more about that later.

When setting free the dogs of my analytical brain, I came up with 5 simple components that make up a successful blog. Yes, yes, every person has a different view of blog success, so add your own vision of blog success and we’ll move forward.

So are these 5 components mandatory? No, well, one of them is critical and the other four you can decide for yourself. If you have all five, great, if you don’t it is really a personal judgement. Now, if your blog isn’t doing as well as you would like it to, the five components give you a great place to start looking to see where improvements can be made.

The 5 Components are (in case you didn’t see the picture above):

• VALUE
• DESIGN/LAYOUT
• PROMOTION
• CONVERSATION
• COMMUNITY

VALUE

We’ll start with the critical one. This particular component is really the only one that you must have before, during, and after all other components. Without it there really is no point to your blog and you might as well delete it now. Seriously, the reason for actually having a blog is to add value at some point along the way. If you are adding value to your readership, great, if you’re adding value to yourself, great. Can I add value to my clients if I’m running a business blog? You-betcha! (insert pearly-white grin, a wink, and “guns” for good measure)

If you’re not adding value somewhere, then why waste your time?

Value is the nucleus of any blog and all other components are based on this one part. It’s the centre of your blog universe. It’s your singularity in your blog black hole. It is the Yin in your blog Yang – ok, I’ll stop now. You get the point, right?

DESIGN/LAYOUT

What?! The design and layout of my blog is important? Nah, make it butt-ugly and really hard to use and I’m sure your readership will be just tickled pink to visit all the time…

In the world of CSS templates, there is absolutely no excuse for having a poor looking blog. But beyond that, it is more about the smaller things when it comes to design and layout. It’s knowing where one post ends and another begins. It’s being able to find an ‘About’ page to see who the author is. It’s not having to run the gauntlet of advertisements to seek the post you desire. It’s the small things that keep your readership from throwing up their hands and walking away.

Dare we go into plugins? Hrm.. Well, perhaps briefly… Now there are really some basic ones that in some form or another should be considered. A plugin that allows your readership to share your wonderful post would be a good idea, and a plugin that helps search engines find you and your words of wisdom would also be a good idea. Just keep in mind that the more plugins that load when viewing a post, the longer it takes. Also, plugins hosted somewhere else take longer to load than ones you have installed. The longer the load time, the less likely someone is going to wait.

Remember: SIMPLE. View your site from the readers point of view. What might they complain about if they were to actually summon up the effort? Also ask “if I changed ‘this’, would that help or hurt the design, layout, or usability of my blog?”. Few, if any, will tell us what they don’t like about our blogs from a design/layout point of view which means we must do the work ourselves.

PROMOTION

“Word of mouth” is great, however, it is a slow process in the world of +80 million blogs. If you are adding value, then why not promote it? Promotion is about getting your blog known and in the face of those who would likely enjoy and receive value from reading it.

HOW to promote your blog is an area we’re not going to get into here and the value of promotion is different to each person. For me, heavy promotion for the front half of this year has grown my readership quite nicely and I wouldn’t have done it any different. Being able to promote your blog is being able to recognize the value you add to others. If you are simply adding value to yourself through your blog, then there is no reason to promote it now is there?

Promotion comes in different forms, it ties directly to ‘Community’, and is key to the growth of your blog.

CONVERSATION

Some of the greatest blogs out there have the best conversations going. Conversations are key to a blog simply because it allows your readership to actually be a part of something.

I could have called this component “Comments”, yet it is really more than that. Don’t get me wrong, comments are great, but aren’t conversations about a post so much better? Through conversations we get to discuss ideas, explore other points of view, provide clarification, ask more questions, and really, be a part of something that extends beyond just the contents of the post.

Conversations that carry to the world outside your blog are also significant in that you suddenly become the catalyst for thought and opinion – you become the source!

One of the biggest killers of conversation, so you know, is the lack of ability to subscribe to the comments of a post. So many blogs do not have this ability where people can post a comment and then check off a box that will let them know when someone else has posted a comment. Sure, some simply rely on things like coComment, yet after some of the issues their last release caused, do you have a backup solution available to your readers? Is it easy to be a part of an ongoing conversation, or is it a challenge from the readers perspective?

Conversations within your blog will help to grow it, and it will also help to stabilize it in terms of readership fluctuations.

COMMUNITY

No one ever said you HAD to be a part of a community, but understand that you are. Even if we look at where we live – we may not want to be a part of it, or feel that we are a part of it, however, whether we like it or not, we are part of a community.

This is the big challenge of “business blogs” in that few realize that they are part of something more. A company cannot be part of a community – the people that make up the company can be, but the company itself can’t be. It’s the same with blogging on the corporate level. “But my company wants to have a blog” – great, now who is going to be writing it? The door certainly can’t write it (it’s a door…) which means that SOMEONE within the company will be writing the blog, and that person can be a part of a community.

Which community you choose to belong to is really up to you. Through conversation on your blog you are able to develop a community. People who read this blog, and the people who leave comments are actually a part of the LOGICal eMOTIONs blog community. They are a part of what goes on here regardless of what is happening elsewhere, and each person has a voice should they choose to use it. The only difference is that I started this one and other people have found it to be an interesting place to hang out in once in a while.

There are countless numbers of communities that exist outside of our blogs, and again, it is entirely our own choice to join or participate in them. The key with communities is that it helps in the promotion of your blog. It’s the blog social networking component in an online digital environment. By being a part of an external community it allows us to reach out to different markets of readers, and readers who aren’t typically reading your blog. It is also a great place to find similar blogs, or other blogs you may enjoy reading.

Without a blog-specific community we can’t have a conversation, and yet while being a part of an external community it allows us to promote our blog to a bigger readership.

***

Where the 5 components really come into play is when we’re looking to improve the state of our blog(s). One thing I didn’t mention yet was simply that if you don’t see value in one of the five components, all that means is that you’re working harder in other areas to make up for it. For example, if promotion isn’t high on the priority list for your blog, you will no doubt be high on the adding of value, or conversations to make up for the lack of promotion. Ultimately you are still promoting through word of mouth, however, it is a much tougher process and takes quite a bit of time.

I believe that a well balanced blog has all 5 components. When it comes time to improve our blogs, by simply looking at each of the 5, we can easily see where each one is succeeding or perhaps not doing as well as expected. By simply applying a simple rating out of 10 for each component, adding them up, and multiplying by 2, it gives a great percentage RELATIVE to the success you see for your own blog.

So how does your blog score?

What are the weak areas that if improved upon would significantly change your results?

Did you know that where each component touches another in the diagram, there is a direct relationship there?

Oh, and the intriguing part I mentioned at the beginning? Well, might this also apply to our personal lives, and more specifically, our professional lives?

Many thanks to Deziner Folio for the help on the graphics!

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