Ultimately the key to creating a successful blog is content. By successful I mean a blog with plenty of readers, active commentators and healthy levels of activity. If you fill your blog with boring tripe, directionless drivel or arrogant, opinionated rants then you will struggle to attract readers. Sure, an angry political tirade may pull in some comments, but you have to ask yourself if that is the kind of attention you are after. Content is key. People will only come back for more if they like what they have read. If you’ve got nothing, don’t post. There is nothing more irritating than a "today I got nothing but blah blah blah" post.
While so much hangs on content, the literary quality of your posts is just as important. Too often a good post is ruined by bad penmanship, or if the draft had been read one more time those glaring grammatical errors would have been caught. A funny story could have been told better, a punch line approached with greater tact. When it comes to humour everything depends on delivery, on setting the scene, on starting and ending well. Unless you feel that you must post right now, waiting for a few hours to give you time to tweak, improve and edit is always worth it.
Blogging is by nature a reciprocal activity. New bloggers often don’t appreciate this, flinging themselves forward in the belief that people will simply flock to their blog, clammering to lap up their content. It doesn’t happen like this. The key to attracting readers is to browse the blogosphere, taking time to read, comment and get to know other bloggers. Build and maintain a healthy "blog roll" and you will attract readers. Respond to comments, either by email or by visiting the commentator’s own blog.
If you don’t reciprocate bloggers will stop visiting. Appreciate that a blog creates its own little community, you can see this by reading through the comment threads. Comments bounce off comments, bloggers pick up on funny or interesting comments and follow back to the originator’s blog.
Decide how regularly you want to post and stick to it. Some people say you should post at least once a day. This is nonsense. If you have the time and the material then fine, but if you post because you feel you have to then the content will suffer. Some days are better "blog days" than others. If you are after readership then weekend posts are a bad idea, the blogosphere is much quieter on the weekend. The start of the week tends to busier than the end.
Pick your posting times sensibly. If most of your readership are in a different time zone then adjust your posting times with thought. Remember that most bloggers pick up blogs on their "blog roll" via a feed reader or similar. These are ordered with the latest posts first, so if you post when most of your readers are asleep then by the time they are picking up blogs your post will have moved down the pecking order. If you are after readers then don’t just post willy-nilly, pick your posting times carefully.
