Starting a personal blog is one of those things many people have thought of doing. And because it’s so easy to get started, most of those people have actually created one. Some have even managed to create pretty successful personal blogs out of something that started out as just a hobby. But what’s the key to running a successful and popular personal blog? What separates that rare few from the masses who begin this journey? In this post, we’ll be sharing some key principles that successful personal blogs have in common.
Let’s get into it!
1. They Are Both Personal & Niche-Orientated
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The first thing that’ll open the road towards success for a personal blog is finding the right balance between personal and niche focus. The personal side of a personal blog is important because it’s obviously one of the primary reasons why people want to stay in touch and visit your website on a regular basis. Your opinion, interpretation and point of view are central to that.
However, it’s also very hard to build a loyal audience if the content you share isn’t specific enough. By trying to please different audiences, you’ll end up having no long-term relationships with people in these audiences because none of them will feel like your blog is just for them. However, if you focus on one niche, you’ll be able to think in the long run and connect with your audience on a deeper level.
2. Many of Them Use WordPress as Their Blogging Platform
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Another thing we often see with popular personal blogs is the use of WordPress as their content management system. Not such a surprise if you account for all the advantages WordPress offers. Some of the main benefits that convince bloggers to use WordPress are:
- There are thousands of themes for this and thousands of plugins for that
- Search engine friendliness
- Fully customizable
- Cost-effectiveness
- Automated, one-click installations offered by web hosts
3. Minimalistic Design & One Main Color to Accentuate
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The next returning factor that we want to mention is the minimalistic design most personal blogs have. The reason behind this choice is the large amount of content that gets shared on a personal blog. To make sure the attention goes to the content, the design must be easy to process but definitely user-friendly as well.
Most personal blogs out there, however, try to add a personal touch to the design as well. That’s also necessary because these details make it easy for your target audience to visually remember what your website looks like. Choosing one additional notable color throughout your entire website usually does the job (along with your highly personal content).
4. Custom High-Quality Photography
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We’re in 2017, of course people are going to expect high-quality images everywhere. But when you are running a personal blog, it’s that more important to be the owner and creator of that photography. It’s the thing that makes your blog really personal. Visitors know that the content they run into on your website is unique and that they won’t find it anywhere else; just like they won’t find another you out there either.
The combination of offering your visitors high-quality images that are personal at the same time is what’ll keep them engaged in the long run. If you’re testing out products, for example, the quality of your images will have a big impact on their capability to form an opinion based on yours.
5. They Maintain a Regular Post Frequency
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The success of a personal blog quite often depends on the post frequency as well. That’s because it’s not just about posting good content once and letting it slide afterwards. That kind of popularity will get a personal blog nowhere. If anything, it’ll only make it look like its best time has passed.
The art of creating a well-functioning and popular blog is finding the right post frequency that matches both the blogger’s and the target audience’s schedule. There is no use in posting too often if the content that’s being provided doesn’t live up to the expectations visitors have. Likewise, posting too rarely will not keep your visitors engaged.
6. They Keep Everything Simple (KISS Principle)
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Personal blogs are also known to keep everything as simple as possible. However, that doesn’t mean the value of the content that’s being shared has to suffer. There needs to be a nice balance between readability, understandability and the value of a post.
This way of creating content matches the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) which believes that content should be as easy to read and follow as possible so it doesn’t take the readers all too much time and effort to understand something or do it themselves.
7. Web & Social Media are Strongly Connected
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Many popular personal bloggers are also pretty active on social media channels. These social media channels are usually the main destination to do content promotion. That’s why you’ll notice that most personal blogs also have elaborated social media channels they want to link within their website as frequently as possible.
Usually, that includes putting social sharing possibilities within each post and placing social icons within the header or menu of the website along with other places on the website.
8. They Keep Growing a Mailing List
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The last thing worth mentioning is growing a mailing list. This is one of the things most popular and successful personal blogs do. It’s just one of the easiest ways to keep a connection with your audience that comes from your side. You won’t only have to wait for your visitors to come to you, by building and growing a mailing list, you’ll be able to remind them of you and your recently posted content.
Final Thoughts
Launching a personal blog and trying to make it successful is definitely a fantastic journey. To help you with it, we’ve shared some of the things popular personal blogs have in common in this post. If you any questions or suggestions; make sure you leave a comment in the comment section below!
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