The Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Blogger, and one.
- Focus and set some goals. Don’t spread your topic too thinly that readers might get confused what your blog is all about. Your blog title and description should fall true with at least 80% of your post. Realistic goals allows you to achieve milestones that you can use to measure your blog’s growth.
- Daily but surely, blog regularly. Keeps people coming back to your blog (and in some cases, several times in a single day).
- Be personal yet professional. There’s a reason why we all have that “About Me” section in our blogs. It gives our first-time visitors a glimpse of who we are, what we do or where we come from.
- Respect thy visitors. Our visitors’ comments are sometimes as valuable as your own blog’s content. Respect them by replying to them and visiting their blog or leaving some of your comments as well.
- Sharpen the blog. Content is king, design is queen. A nice clean-looking blog adds a dash of authority and professionalism. People are more likely to stay longer and read more if the layout and the color scheme is appealing to the eyes.
- Make the best out of RSS. Get to read 50 to a hundred blogs a day with your favorite rss readers. Bloglines seems to be on the top of the favorite list.
- Give away some link lovin’. Give a link where a link is due. People are more likely to link you if you link to them. Besides, linking is like grassroots blogging (read: trackbacks/pingback).
- Get some R&R. Everybody is prone to exhaustion and could ran out of things to blog. Reward yourself once in a while. A trip to the spa at least once a month, some cart racing or airsoft would be rejuvinating enough to get you back to blogging mode.
just found you now…interesting insight but I think there is more to blogging than just aiming for getting money back…bloggers are normally rich to start blogging anyway…rich with time and talents
sigh am really bad at replying at comments! and reciprocating links! sigh….
how bout the #1 habit which waste blogger’s time:
CHECKING STATS :)
IMHO, content is king, design is queen. And usability should be their offspring.
It’s not mostly about link-whoring. It’s more like giving a link where a link is due.
Link whoring sucks because they don’t always link back to you. I link to kottke — will he ever link back to me? I don’t think so. However, link whoring is essential to those who are starting out. It’s a good way to get attention specially if you are sending that person a ton of visitors (then maybe they’ll link back to you). People checks stats all the time… my favorite hobbies: statwhoring and AdSense whoring.
I agree with most. Not the link whoring part though hehehehe
hahaha that’s 8 (seven and 1)!
8 habits, Yuga? ;-)
Anyway, I like the way your post ties up with the original (begin with the end in mind, win-win, sharpen the saw, etc)
Good thing you omitted the blogger picture “requirement.” I still don’t have one.
#8: Spellcheck! Haha. I couldn’t resist.