The Secret of Blogging Successfully

You may say you are blogging just because it is your hobby, or you may just want to be popular, want to sell your own products online, or earn advertising income through adsense, affiliate programs and advertising for others. In all cases, the final real target of your blogging is people who can visit and read posts in your blog.

Therefore the secret of  blogging successfully is to meet the needs of those people who visit your blog  which in turn will bring what you intend whether it be customers for your products, advertising service, or just to make yourself popular.

You should differentiate between:

Readers who just read posts in your blog for their final use AND Readers who visit your blog to evaluate your capability (  these can be people from organizations you target that they advertise on your blog, potential partners, or just people who may want to buy your expertise)

Let me break this down clearly :

1. Readers who just read posts in your blog for their final use : Their primary intention is to use the information on your blog for their specific intention – for example a reader may be interested to know how a certain new plug in works- by reading your blog, he expects to obtain elaborated explanation that will help him to use the specific plug in. For this reader to be satisfied he must get this expected explanation. Other additions, like limitations of the plug in, outline of similar other plug ins, how to install the plug in and how to download will assure the reader is satisfied.

2. The organizations you target that they advertise on your blog :  Some of criteria that may be used by organizations to decide to advertise on your blog are:

Image : reputable organizations would not want to associate itself with a failure blog, incompetent blog because this will affect their image to the public.

Quality : The organizations may learn from your posts and your general layout of your blog the quality you provide to your main customers – the first group I explained above. It may be clear to them that if you provide poor quality to your readers, you may as well provide poor service to them, plus the fact that poor quality you deliver to your readers may give an indication to the potential advertisers that their ads will not reach their target audience.

Your Target readers : The advertisers would want to know if your target readers are also the target audience for their advertisements. Having a blog where you don’t have specific target readers, or your target readers are not clearly identified as you keep on mixing posts of different target audience, will not do good for you with advertisers.

3. Potential associate/ partner :  You may need to associate with one or someone to undertake a certain project. Your ability to explain professionally the topics you cover in your posts and the way you attend to the needs of your customers (readers) may indicate the level of professionalism you have. You should also consider other criteria used to judge your professionalism such as the way you credit other people for the work you use, don’t just use another website’s picture, or article as yours – we call this stealing. You know that no one would like to associate with a thief.

4.  Those who may buy your expertise:  These kinds of people or organizations would evaluate your ability and general professionalism before they can decide to make a deal with you. A case in study is the recent purchase of instagram by facebook, though instagram was not a blog, I want to use this as an example of how organizations would look at one’s site to evaluate any potential involvement they can have with the site.

As you know you have to make sure you get highest number of visitors possible but your efforts to attract visitors should not be at the expense of ignoring the needs of your primary stakeholders.  You must be able to balance your competition strategies and your Customer care strategies. In short customer focus should be number one in everything you do; you should know your customers, know what they want and how they want it.

While you may be winning page rank, and get popularity ask yourself are you really achieving your primary goals and do you see yourself survive and grow in the long run. Your blog/site may have the highest rank in the world and good looking theme and gadgets, but if you cannot meet the needs of your primary stakeholders, you can’t say you have succeeded because the fundamental purpose of the blog/site is to reach and serve the needs of the visitors.

John Gabriel Myungire is freelance management strategist. He is the founder of Johnie blog, a blog about inspiring articles and opportunities for those who are in search for personal freedom.