How to Run a Popular Blog

01/29/2010 - Business There are several components to keeping a popular blog. The blog must attract readers and keep them coming in as well as encouraging them to tell others about the blog. This requires a lot of attention and effort to make the blog into a place that people enjoy visiting.

Blog Marketing

To make a blog popular, it must become known. That means creating plenty of links to the blog to let others know about it. This can be done by writing or buying marketing articles that link back to the blog. It can also include leaving a link to it in blog comments that are left on other people's blogs.

Joining blog networks is another way to engage in blog marketing. These networks bring bloggers together in groups and often result in more readers. They also provide links that can raise page rank. Start subscribing to a few blogs that are in your category within the blog network and you will find that some of them will start to subscribe to your blog in return.

Frequent Blog Posting

A blog that is rarely updated is not likely to build a large readership. There are thousands, perhaps millions, or abandoned blogs in the blogosphere, and a blog that hasn't been updated in awhile may be mistaken for one of those.

Posting every day may be difficult to schedule, but many blog hosts allow bloggers to schedule their posts ahead of time, writing them whenever they want and then scheduling them to post once per day. One day of writing may supply you with two weeks of blog posts, if they are scheduled to post once a day.

Building a Community

One of the most important parts of creating a popular blog is to create an atmosphere of community. Encouraging reader participation and sharing personal tidbits can often foster a sense of familiarity that brings readers back again to read more. Readers often get to know each other through their comments and come back to interact with the other readers as much as they do to read the latest blog posts.

To keep a community thriving, consider commenting on comments, responding to questions and answering e-mail from readers. Staying in communication with your readership can cement the feeling of community within your blog. This is the very definition of a popular blog, and it's what gets readers to tell their friends about your blog and the interesting posts and comments there.