The 7 Traits Of Highly Successful Bloggers

What makes a blogger successful? What are the common traits of highly effective bloggers? If you’ve even remotely tried to launch your own blog, that question surely popped into your head at some point. And I bet it was rather sooner than later.

I have more than a year of blogging as a pro. And before starting to blog for a living I was an avid consumer of other blogs. I think I have in my RSS reader feeds I read for more than 5 years now. Gradually, I developed my own set of blog appreciation rules. And of course, if you’ve carefully read the title of this post, those rules are no more than 7. In today’s article I’ll write about what I think is the recipe for being a successful blogger.

1. Authority

This is what makes a blogger believable.

Authority creates trust. And trust makes you spend your precious time on that specific blog instead of doing something else. Because you know it’s worth doing it. You know you’re in for something. You’ve been there before and you weren’t disappointed. Your expectations were met again and again.

Have you ever wondered what makes you click the links of a popular blog? What makes you follow that advice or buy that product? What makes a blogger believable?  It’s not his identity, nor his persistence, although both are part of the success mix, but his authority. You believe a blogger because you trust him.

Without authority a blog will be floating. It may jump every now and then if it touches some hot topics but if it doesn’t build a significant level of authority, it will drift away, at the mercy of fashion.

I think one of the most respected blogs in the marketing niche, for instance, is Seth Godin’s blog. Seth’s authority was previously built by his books but it somehow spread over his blog. The person vouches for the blog in this case.

2. Authenticity

This is what makes a blogger accepted.

Being honest. Being human. Being able to make mistakes and accept them publicly. Blogging is such a fantastic media revolution not because it created a super hero, like cinema, but because it made the normal, average, human guy able to openly express his intentions, dreams, challenges. And made those opinions instantly available.

Authority without authenticity won’t build a successful blog. It may create a solid corporation, but not a sustainable blog. With any interaction, people are unconsciously trying to find themselves in the other guy. It’s a human need, called validation, we all need that. If, as a blogger, you don’t reach out openly, without being afraid, you’re in the wrong business.

One of the most famous examples of  authenticity is, at least for me, Steve Pavlina’s blog. If you read it just for a few minutes you couldn’t but notice that vibe of authenticity which makes Steve so popular even when he’s allegedly “deluding” in some of the not-so-mainstream explorations like polyamory or, recently, BDSM or alike.

3. Accessibility

This is what makes a blogger palatable.

Accessibility makes a blog available, ready to be consumed. It’s the way you write, the way you wrap up your message, the package by which you deliver your goods. If you want to be popular as a blogger, keep in mind that your audience is extremely diverse. It takes much more work than you think to write in an accessible way.

This quality is often overlooked in almost all bloggers rankings I saw. Usually, authority and authenticity are the main criteria, but there’s no point in being an authority if you can’t deliver a readable, straightforward message to your readers. Regardless of your expertise, a clear, accessible blog will always increase your chances to a broader audience.

The most brilliant example of an accessible blog is Brian Clark’s Copyblogger.com. It amazes me how Brian writes in such an easy to understand way about really complicated topics, like the art of persuasion. Copyblogger.com is popular because it provides easy to understand access to incredibly complicated issues, not the other way around.

4. Persistence

This is what makes a blogger wanted.

Persistence creates demand. Showing up constantly and doing what you have to do will build a sense of expectation among your readers. They will know you’re there for them. They will wait for you, call for you or ask things from you. Constantly broadcasting your message will create a certain frequency in your readers minds. They will just tune in.

Now, try to imagine a blog with only one article per month. How would this feel to you? Like a joke, I know. Or imagine a series of 5-6 fantastic articles in a week and then several months of silence. No way. Being there is fundamental, can’t be avoided or faked. They say showing up is 80% of success. I doubt it will be exactly 80% but it’s without a doubt compulsory to show up persistently in order to build a successful blog.

Few people know that several years ago, when he started Problogger.net, one of the most visited blogs on the planet, Darren Rowse only wanted an increase of 10% in traffic from month to month. That tells a lot about how far he was ready to go with it. Problogger.net may not be the most spectacular blog on this planet, but it surely is one of the most constant, reliable and respected. And the persistence of the author plays a big role in that.

5. Connectivity

This is what makes a blogger available.

Connectivity creates links. All kind of links, from plain HTML, PR-juice enabled links, up to human contacts. One of the fundamental characteristics of a successful blogger is his ability to be broadcast as far as possible. And here’s where connectivity plays a fundamental part. All A-listers are virals, without exception.

Have you ever wondered how many interactions a successful bloggers has in a normal day? My wild guess is that this number is at least 10 times higher than the average. Just imagine reading dozens of comments (and perhaps responding each of them), interacting on Twitter, or Facebook or Digg. You can’t really do that if you’re socially impaired.

One of the bloggers who could always be studied in schools for that is, in my opinion, Chris Brogan. I’ve been following closely his work in the last few years and his growth was literally explosive. I think he directly interacts with more than 500 persons each day. Guess what? Those persons are also the broadcasters for his message. How many persons are broadcasters for your message?

6. Creativity

This is what makes a blogger valuable.

Creativity triggers admiration. We admire a blogger not because of his authority or authenticity, but because of what he brings new and beautiful in this world. For his capacity to innovate, to re-create his environment, to embellish and refine. Many successful bloggers actually created their niche from the scratch, they built something out of nothing.

This ability to re-organize the Universe in a new form, to create value and to touch others is by far my favorite trait from all 7. Without this ability a blogger would offer no more than a Wikipedia entry, valuable advice but flat, with no human touch, no improvement, no spark.

My favorite creative blogger right now is Gary Vaynerchuk. For a guy who makes a living by drinking wine (joking, of course) he’s unbelievably creative: he re-invented  video blogging and he wrote a book not about Chardonnay, but about how to follow your passion! That’s creativity, that’s building something where there was nothing before.

7. Identity

This is what makes a blogger recognizable.

I chose the word identity because “personal branding” would have been a little bit too precious. But personal branding is what I meant by it. Identity is what makes you unique. It’s that centimeter you own in your readers’ cortex, the same way you could own some real estate. It’s the exact connection they make between a certain niche and your name as a blogger.

Did you observed how many times we actually use the name of a successful blogger to identify a niche? In blogging, the capacity to build a unique, easily recognizable identity (or brand, for what matters) is the difference between two identical copies of a newspaper. You may talk about the same things, have the same level of authority and the same creativity as other bloggers, but what makes you different is your brand. Your personal brand.

For instance, Leo Babauta identity would be tied up in my brain with the following concept: “minimalist productivity”. Whenever this concept pops out in a conversation, the first person I think about is Leo Babauta, creator of ZenHabits.net. That’s his identity. His brand. I’m sure there are a lot of other bloggers writing about minimalism, but their identity may not be as strongest as his.

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Of course, all the aforementioned bloggers are sharing all the 7 traits, I just had to chose which one was the most representative for each.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you have any examples of successful bloggers where you can identify one, two or all of these traits? Do you, as a blogger, have all of them? Would love to hear your comments.

The Productivity Map

Ever since I wrote the productivity trap article I felt there was something missing. The main point of that article was always valid, of course, but there was still a little bit of fog regarding the whole productivity concept. So, after taking some time to think it over, I came up with a productivity map, which made it clearer for me. Those of you accustomed with the urgent / important diagram will be instantly familiar with it.

Let’s take it one step at a time. Will shortly analyze the 2 axis of this map and then will move to the each of the 4 squares in which you can be at one specific moment. (more…)

Personal Mission Statement

I’m writing this post under quite a pressure. This is coming from my personal life, where apparently we reached a point when things must be changed. It was never a totally transparent personal life, there were always some closed windows, and I never wanted to look through those windows. I totally believed that those windows were closed for good. I assumed that everything was exactly as shown, no hidden windows, but apparently I was wrong. Whatever must come out of this, it should be for the better. It’s a crossroad I must solve.

I won’t go into further details about that. I don’t think that my personal life is worthy enough for public exposure, and even if I would, I won’t make it public out of shyness. Or decency, call it what you want.

What I would do though, it’s to continue my chosen path in regard with this blog. I established a schedule and I intend to keep it as much as I can, even under stressful events. Maybe some of you will think that this is strange, and I should focus on solving those problems first, and then work on this blog again. While I totally agree with the fact that I should solve those problems, I don’t think that I should focus only on that and let other parts of the mechanism to fall apart.

I think that we’re made of different commitments and that every commitment, being personal, social or business, must be fulfilled. If there is unbalance in one category, keeping the other categories working is a must in order to keep the machine working. Otherwise the machine will stop for good, and everything will be lost. It’s hard to do it, don’t get me wrong, the pressure I have right now is really hard to describe and I don’t wish for anybody to go through this. Anyway, to make a long story short, I might post smaller articles and not keep up with the intended pace, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep my commitments.

It’s funny how the synchronicity in our life can manifest. Today I scheduled a blog post about “Personal Mission Statement”. I wrote earlier about the necessity of a personal mission statement, and today I’ll outline mine. (more…)

Micro-blogging, tumbling and blogging

I’m sure many of you have read the post about Journaling versus Blogging, it was featured on a number of websites, including the German productivity blog imgriff. Somehow related to that post, I have to confess that recently I came across a number of similar patterns I tend to develop when it comes to blogging, and those patterns are grouping into new and interesting activities. In fact, there is much more than blogging, as the title of this post already told you. It seems that blogging as a process reached a certain level of maturity, which will naturally be followed by some sort of splitting into much more specialized activities.

Blogging in (r)evolution

Several years ago having a blog was a monolithic activity. Blogging in itself seemed like a one time / one player activity. You pick a topic, establish a posting routine, start writing and there you are, the next big thing of the blogosphere.

In the last two years this has dramatically changed. With the proliferation of social networking tools and with some very simple yet innovative services like twitter, tumblr or, in a different league, friend feed, the situation is completely different than 2 years ago. Blog networks written by armies of bloggers, solitary twitter heroes and companion tumblrs for every successful mainstream blog, all of these are just common sense nowadays.

What made this possible? And what seems to be the underlying reason for this?

Well, first of all, the expressivity of blogging in itself has reached the ceiling. There is some deep need for something different. The audience has been exposed enough time to this type of creativity. We all know now what a post is, what can you do in a comment, and how pingbacking works… It seems that the message is forced to change the medium here, trying to subtly evolve into new patterns and structures.

Second, it seems that blogging in itself has reached a certain level of formalism which made simpler for services like tumblr to streamline the blog to a thinner experience. You don’t need a truck to go from point A to point B, or, in terms of blogging, you don’t need a full blown blog to express yourself. All you need is the ability to post a picture, a quote, a sentence, or a link. You might think that this simplistic approach will not make history, but the web is just telling the other way around. (more…)

Making Money With A Purpose

Thinking of money lately, I am more and more inclined to assimilate it with a type of energy. There are so many resemblances yet so many confusion regarding this topic, and that’s because money is such an obsession in modern society. In this post I’ll use a simple analogy to explain why I think people don’t get enough money, what is happening when they get more money they could handle, and how to let into your life a wider flow of money. For a quick introduction of this concept, you can read first the article about money and you.

First and foremost, I assume that everybody knows how electricity works. It’s a type of energy man uses to enhance his environment (don’t bother for now to think how it is produced, that’s not the point). Let’s think for a minute how you use electricity. Most often, you activate a switch, and start enjoying the benefits. You make light in a dark room, or you make your environment warmer, or you listen to music, or watch movies. Behind all of this is electricity, which is a form of energy. And behind its usage, is you, with a purpose: of making light, or warmth, or interact with information.

Have you tried to use electricity directly? By literally putting your fingers into a power outlet? Unless you have serious integration problems or you’re less than 3 year old (in which case you’re not even able to read this), I bet you never wanted to do something like this. Why? Because interacting directly with a source of energy is highly dangerous for your physical body. You can have serious negative health effects if you try to manipulate electricity directly. But when you use it with a purpose – other than direct interaction – like producing light or warmth, electricity serves you well. (more…)