Do You Have What it Takes to be a Top Blogger?
August 23, 2008
Success!
Bogging is a fiercely competitive business for some. Others just want to be heard and catch their own five minutes of fame, even if no one reads their blog except mom. That’s one of the unique appeals of blogging- it fills different needs for different people.
Three Blog Categories
If you’re not sure where your blog fits into the vast world of cyberspace, consider the three basic blog categories on the Web.
Corporate Business Blogs
Corporate business blogs write to draw traffic. Not just any traffic, mind you, targeted consumers looking to open their wallets for the products and services offered on the website. Increased profit margins are the Big Enchilada.
Personal Blogs
Personal blogs seek out community. People with common interests unite, converse, and exchange ideas. Personal blogs may provide information, such as a recipe for Grandma’s Sunday Chicken Dinner, the latest pictures of the kids, or how to change out the spider gears in your ’85 Chevy C-10, but they also fill the need for connecting with others on a personal level. Folks gather to ask about life and share their lives with others.
Informational Blogs
Professionals, or at least individuals who master a subject, often write informational blogs. The die-hard model train enthusiast may be an informational blogger as well as the successful business owner looking to mentor others. Websites like TreeHugger.com are insanely popular because they provide free information about a popular topic. TreeHugger also provides a community for environmentalists to gather, a safe place to get information about products related to green living, and ideas for ways to get involved in going green. It’s a one-stop-shop for the environmentalist.
Top Blogs Examined
Each of these types of blogs wants to attract readers. They want to be successful blogs, not random words lost in the jumble of search engine results pages. I recently read a post by Danny Dover over at SEOmoz that caught my attention. His post entitled, Examining The Internet’s Top Blogs: What We Can Learn From Their Success, was filled with tons of neat statistics about the Internet’s top blogs.
I like condensed facts, and this post had succinct facts galore. My mind whirled as I processed the graphs and lists of websites that had made it to the top. Then I wondered, what made these particular blogs successful?
Picking Apart the Facts
Many successful blog provide a valuable service, such as delivering news feeds or discussing the latest politics, without tons of ads and sales pitches. The majority of successful blogs listed by Mr. Dover write about technology or news, subjects of interest to people who regularly surf the Net.
Some blogs, like Endgadget, are written in a style that drives most copywriters insane, but somehow they pull it off because they are the first to play with new toys and are nice enough to tell us about it, complete with pictures that make techo-geeks (like me) drool.
Certain blogs, like Darren Rowse’s Problogger, are just simply terrific. They know their stuff, are happy to open up their brains for examination, and have a passion for their blog subject. That fire shows through in their blogging.
If you don’t have a blog bout the latest techno gadget, or work for CNN.com, don’t despair. If blogs with fire and passion like Problogger can make it to the top, so can you. Love and passion for your blog subject is more valuable than million-dollar marketing campaigns and being on top of the latest fads or breaking news.
So, do you have what it takes to be a top blogger?
