Aspects of blogging

[Workshopshed]

There's a few key aspects to blogging.

1. Technology / Platform
2. Style / Theme
3. Creating Content
4. Promotion

A lot of people focus on the first two, and they can take up a lot of your time but I'd say #3 and #4 are the most important.

[Jon]

Great post, agreed 100% . I should add that things like securing a domain name (with multiple possible variations), and grabbing social media accounts, also seem to take up a lot of peoples' energy. If a blog has great content, and is well-promoted, it could have a terrible domain name and clunky technology and still be extremely successful. "Content is king", but it's promotion that determines whether that content is king of a kingdom, or king of the corner of your bedroom.

A content creation schedule is important too. Decide on a certain number of postings per week, and stick to it.

Let's say you work on your site for 1 hour per day, with 15 days off per year. It can break down like this:

1. 1 hour securing domain name and social media accounts.
2. 1 hour setting up and theming blog.
3. 174 hours creating content.
4. 174 hours promoting content.

People can get lost on #4 forever. One broad strategy is: try anything, measure everything. Essentially you collect ideas (from anywhere!) on what might increase your blog traffic. Then you rate each idea on its cost (time/money), its potential impact, and how easy it would be to implement. From there, you can see which ideas are best to try first. You try them (most will fail), and you double down on the few winners.

[Workshopshed]

Yes, metrics are important so you know that you are spending time on the right things. I find that interacting with other blogs and content that is on a similar topic is the most valuable as you already know people are interested in your topic.

[DIYer]

Very interesting! I've tried starting a couple of blogs, but didn't really spend time promoting it. Now, as Jon said, they're just languishing in a corner of my digital bedroom.

[Workshopshed]

Another thing people recommend is consistency, both in timing and content.
Some people take this to the extreme and say you should always post on a particular day of the week (as determined by the metrics) but I just try to avoid leaving too big a gap between articles so space them out if I've got a couple of things to write about.
Also be consistent in what you post, if your blog is about fluffy bunnies then don't be tempted to include an article on wrestling or paintballing. Sometime you can spin the article the right way but often it's better to leave it out.

[kbalch]

Metrics are beyond critical. If you're running a blog and haven't already configured it for Google Analytics (GA), you owe it to yourself to do so. GA is one of the best tools available for helping to thoroughly categorize your traffic and, hopefully, to continually refine both your message and your marketing approach with the primary goal of increasing pageviews.

Absent accurate metrics (what's the source of your traffic, where are they clicking on your site, how long are they staying on a given page, etc. - the data available is endless and limited only by your imagination), you're throwing darts at a board. Some will hit, but you won't know why and, more importantly, you won't be able to predict those hits going forward.

GA is free and should be considered absolutely essential for anyone interested in improving the quantity and quality of their blog's traffic. After all, increasing readership is the entire point of blogging, right? Yes, we all have a message of some sort to communicate and/or something we'd like to share, but absent the effort to increase our audience, we're engaged only in a solo activity.

Start here: Google Analytics

GA is complicated and you will have questions. Post them here and we'll help you find the answers.

Ken

[Jon]

Regarding analytics, be sure to also consider event and goal-driven analytics, and funnel analysis. You can do this in Google Analytics by firing events, setting events as goals, and using virtual pageviews as event funnel steps. You can also use the free tier of Mixpanel for this.

So, for example, source A might send you twice the traffic of source B, but source B gives you three times as many newsletter signups, blog comments, or pageviews.

Also, your goal might be for people to register on your blog and comment. You may get lots of traffic, but few comments, and not know why. When you set up a funnel such as View Page=>Register=>Confirm Registration=>View Comment Form=>Submit Comment, you might notice that people are dropping off at a specific step in the funnel. Maybe they're not getting the registration confirmation email, or something like that. A properly-configured funnel will show you where the dropoff is. You can also segment that funnel, to see, for example, if maybe people using Chrome are getting through the funnel at twice the rate that people using Firefox. Maybe in that situation you have a browser display incompatibility. Or the funnel is dropping off at the registration confirmation step; maybe in that situation your registration confirmation emails aren't getting delivered. Etc.

[Workshopshed]

Spotted this today via Twitter. 4 Key Areas to Focus Your Time Upon to Grow Profitable Blogs [And How Much of Your Time to Spend On Them] - @ProBlogger

[kbalch]

Thanks, Andy - that's an excellent article. His points about building a foundation on which all else will be based and of having an appropriate development timeline for one's blog are especially well-taken.

Ken

[DIYer]

Good share, Andy. There's so much chaff nowadays that one sometimes has to rely on reliable people to get the good nuggets.