Top 10 Attributes of a Successful Blogger Who Have Successful Blogs

Have you ever thought about what it actually takes to become a successful blogger? Well, there are certainly a lot of successes out there and we can all learn from the best of the best. So I got to thinking about what it actually takes to run a successful blog and here is a list that I came up with.

1. Loves to write

You must admit that in order to blog successfully then loving to write must be #1. You really shouldn’t be blogging if writing to you is a chore. Your own writing style is what endears you to your readers.

2. Knows his grammar

Maybe you didn’t expect to see this one on the list but it is very difficult for me to read anyone’s blog who isn’t very particular about proper grammar. A case in point is Daniel Scocco, the owner of this extremely successful blog. If you didn’t know, he also runs a blog called DailyWritingTips. It is my guess that Daniel also feels that writing properly is very important to a successful blogger.

3. Hard Worker

If you’ve run a blog for a while, as I have, you certainly know that you must work hard. If you don’t, then it will show in your writing and your blog will not be well read. You can’t fool people and put your blog on auto-pilot. If you do then you will lose readership.

4. Entrepreneurial

After a while you will want to make some money from the online presence and brand that you have established with your blog. A lot of people get into blogging for this sole reason. Whatever your situation entails, chances are you want to supplement your income. I plead guilty to this as well. It’s hard to be in the blogging world and hear about how others are making money online and not want to have a piece of the pie.

5. Creative

You can make a blog anything you want it to be. You have the choice of a myriad of themes and plugins that you can tweak to make your blog site unique. This is what makes the world of blogging great. No blog is the same and it’s simply up to the creativity of the blogger to make it that way.

6. Life Lover

This is one of the most positive aspects of the blogging world. Have you run across a blogger who doesn’t love life? This is why I added this attribute to my list. And since I started my blog I have come across the most engaging, pleasant, and helpful people I have ever met.

7. Personal Developer

Personal Development is a huge niche when it comes to the blogging world. Well, I’m here to say that all bloggers want to develop personally. We all have this in common. Without this trait would we really be doing what we are doing? I don’t think so. I try to learn and grow as a person every day but I don’t think I’m unique.

8. Communicator

This one is no big surprise is it? A blog is basically a means by which we can communicate with our readers. Communication is not only good for the blogger but also hopefully for the reader. A successful blogger wants to connect the audience. Replying to comments is very important and that is why I respond to every comment on my blog.

9. Helps Others

This was one attribute that blew me away. When I started blogging I emailed some fairly high profile blog owners and they actually responded to my email. I wanted an opinion on the design of my blog and I also asked to interview them for my blog. They helped me out and it got me off on a very positive note when it came to blogging. It showed me how compassionate and helpful even high profile bloggers can be.

10. Efficient

We all have a certain amount of time in our lives. And unless you are blogging full-time, you are trying to squeeze in the time to create new blog posts or to guest post on other blogs. Successful bloggers are very efficient with their time because they know that their time is limited. A successful blogger will work in high quality guest posts at certain times which allow them to maintain content but not at the expense of publishing subpar posts.

What about the steps needed for a successful blog?

Below you’ll find the five basic steps you need to make your blog a successful one.

1. Think about who your audience will be

It’s always better to target your blog for a particular audience. You can then focus to write something which could help your audience immensely. For example, if you are well-versed into internet marketing, you should target people who are just new to the world of internet marketing and eager to learn from scratch. But try to choose a niche which is expandable so that you can find more and more topics to write on. Don’t shy away from sharing all your secrets. Write every bit of useful information, you can think of, to make your blog stand out. It’s an old saying that “Knowledge grows, the more you give away”. So give away everything like a good teacher and you will get much more in return in the form of ever growing audience.

2. Engage your readers

Write your content so that it perfectly makes sense to reflect the title of your post. In other words, you should not go off topic while writing, otherwise, users may leave your blog. Also, think of what other topics you can write and link internally from the existing post so that it is highly likely that the user will click on that internal link. This is important to do to engage your reader for a longer period of time on the site. You can also use external links (links given to third party websites) on some texts which need more detailed explanation. This way users can click on the external links to find the required information related to those texts. Whether the users click on external or internal links, both are signs of user engagement and so good for SEO (search engine optimization).

3. Take care of your content

You should be honest in your approach while writing. Simply publishing the duplicate or re-written content is not going to help, as search engines like Google already have the technology to filter out the duplicate content pages from their search results, and so the duplicate content won’t give you any organic traffic . Another important thing is to provide an evidence of whatever you are writing, by referring to the original source in the form of an external link. This is specifically important if your content is based on some research work and requires authenticity. Content based on your imaginations and personal experiences, however, will not need any authenticity. Also, make sure you know about emotional intelligence while writing, else you may face the criticism in the online community.

4. Participate in online communities

So what are online communities? There are numerous other blogs, forums, discussion boards, FAQ sites, like Stack Overflow, where users can interact with each other to discuss their problems and also share their knowledge and experiences. All such platforms are a part of online communities. Just keep flooding your website with content is not going to help much to generate traffic. Just like you link to third party websites from your own blog, other websites should also link to your blog pages so that your blog can rank better in search engines like Google. This is how Google’s technology works to rank different websites in their search results but user experience (as already mentioned in step 2) is more important for Google than getting links.

You should put all the great efforts so that more and more websites or blogs link to your own blog pages. It doesn’t matter which blog page they link. This is only possible when you participate in online communities to popularize your content and then someone could link your content as a good resource for their website or may be out of sympathy if you requested a link to them. Someone may even ask for money to link your website but then paying for links is against Google webmaster guidelines and so that should be avoided.

5. Take care of the technical aspects

Professionalism is very important to impress anyone you want to. Most of the bloggers make use of readymade templates to create their blog using WordPress. This results in a similar kind of design (like other WordPress blogs over the internet) which doesn’t look professional. If you have money to spend, you should not use these open source website creation tools like WordPress.com or Blogger.com and get the blog done from scratch with your desired design from some individual web designer and programmer or some web developer company who does this. You can hire a lot of such web developers on sites like freelance.com and upwork.com.

It’s also possible to create a blog without CMS or publishing tools. Many blogs have done that. For every post, they have used a unique graphic or image which is not copied from anywhere. It’s easier to get links for your blog with a professional design and content.

Also, make sure to get your blog done with responsive design so that it is compatible with all the latest devices and browsers. Also, make sure to ask the developer to make the site load faster by eliminating all the errors (if any) as mentioned by PageSpeed Insights tool by Google. Hope that helps.

I think that this is a pretty comprehensive list of the top attributes of a successful blogger. Please feel free to share any more traits or characteristics that you think I left out.