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.

How To Quit Being A Quitter

I write this at the end of a year and the beginning of another one. Each time I reach such a milestone, I usually do some evaluation. What was worth doing last year? What changed? How this change impacted me?

During some of this rather informal evaluations I spotted an intriguing thing. It started as personal story but then evolved into something bigger. In today’s post I’m going to talk about this bigger thing that emerged. Precisely, I’m going to talk about the art of not quitting.

Blogging As a Commitment

While I was browsing through my posts on this very blog, I started to spot some similarities. Some commenters appeared more often than others. Of course, many of the people who comment on this blog are quite active in the personal development field too. I even become friend with some of them. It’s quite normal for them to comment on other blogs. But beyond these constant presences there were also some sporadic appearances.

A comment every now and then. An impression and then gone. Out of curiosity, I started to visit the blogs of those intermittent commenters. The same impression emerged from their blogs: a post every now and then. A quick effort and then gone. Nothing.

What happened to those blogs? They were not abandoned, but obviously they were not fully functional either. And then it hit me: they were drifting in the suspended limbo of “what if?”. “What if” I’ll start a blog and become famous? “What if” I’ll start to make some passive income? The “what if?” realm is a realm of neglected desires. A place with a lot of high hopes but almost no action to back them up. A desert space filled with stubs and unfulfilled promises. It’s quite depressing in this realm, if you ask me. Nobody’s really there anymore. Because those people quit. They quit their blogs and their presence on other blogs. They quit their project. They quit one of their dreams.

How To Stick With It

Quitting is the fastest way to screw up your life. And yet, so many people are doing it. And they do it for a reason: because it’s easy. It’s far more easy to abandon your goals then to stick with them. It’s easier to find excuses than to do work. It’s easier to blame it on the “life got in the way” than to actually make your dreams alive.

I’ve been there too. I was one of those lazy quitters and I must tell you: I didn’t feel well at all. On the surface, it’s easiest to quit, that’s true. It’s easy to be lazy and wait for things to happen instead of pushing the world to make them happen for you. But deep down, quitting is more like a disease. A chronic type of pain which is slowly eating you up.

This is how I started to fight quitting. By realizing it’s a disease, something that will literally make me ill. Have you noticed how lazy people have headaches? That’s not by hazard, I can tell you. Being a quitter will work against your normal physiology, it will stop some natural processes, creating whirls of free, unused energy, which will most likely transform into body imbalances. Which we also call illnesses.

So, I had to come up with a treatment. A medicine for quit quitting. (It’s amazing how much you can do when you realize your physical presence is at risk.) Here is my 5 steps recipe to quit being a quitter.

1. Clearly Decide What You Want

If you really like scrubbing twitter all day just scrub it, don’t pretend you’re a blogger just to procrastinate on twitter while pretending you’re promoting your blog. If you really like watching TV, just sit on the couch for the whole day and watch TV. Don’t pretend you want to travel the world and you’re doing some research.

Deciding what you want do is the cornerstone of every successful activity. If you want to be a successful blogger, well, take note that being a successful blogger means: writing good content, answering to comments, commenting on other blogs and promoting your own blog through social media. And that’s just a basic definition.

Write down what you want to do in a visible place. Put it on the wall in front of you. I want to travel the world. Or I want to become a social media consultant. Or I want to become a successful blogger. The most important thing generated by this simple action will be your energy focus. You will be focusing your resources in only one point, dramatically increasing your chances to succeed. Like the focus of the sunshine through a magnifying loupe: it can really light a fire.

2. Small Chunks Pays Big Time

Slice it up in daily manageable chunks. Long term results are more often the cause of small, constantly repeated actions. A sea is the sum of all the small creeks, after all. The beautiful snow is made by millions of snowflakes. A rainbow is light transformed by billions of raindrops. Just do what you have to do daily, regardless of how you feel about it.

Half an hour of writing each day will be 365 halves of an hour. And that will be 182.5 hours of writing. At a rate of only 500 words per hour (but in time you can easily get to 1000 words per hour) that would be 91.250 words written in one year. Let’s make it a round 100.000 words. Can you even imagine yourself writing now 100.000 words of good content? I thought so.

But if you slice it up in daily chunks of repeated actions you will add up. You will build brick by brick. Step by step. While browsing through my blog admin interface I saw that my blog have now more than 450.000 words written. For a moment, I couldn’t even imagine that number. Yes, you will have good days and bad days. Sometimes you’ll write 100 words, sometimes 2000. What matters is to do it daily.

3. Fail Fast, Fail Often

So you can understand if it works for you. If you don’t really fail on a wrong path, you can’t really know the good one. So, in order to be sure you are on the right track, be bold. Yes, you can fail. That’s one more reason to do hell out of your best in order to avoid failure. To mobilize every inch of resources available. It means going to sleep every day with a clear heart: I did everything I could today.

One word though: I’m not in this big trend of “let’s have a big failure to be ready for success” which seems to have spread lately, but I do find failure indispensable in the learning process. Getting too intimate with failure can lead to a friendship and I don’t want that. I accept failure as necessary and I welcome it every time it occurs, but man, what I want is success. Capital letters if you didn’t get it for the first time: SUCCESS!

4. They Don’t Know Shit About You

Nobody knows what you really want. Nobody can live for you. There is only one person in the universe who can live for you and that person would be, of course, only you. So, every time you get resistance from other people, resist to it. Don’t let it bring you down. As long as you already have your dream clear in your mind, as long as you’re already doing what you have to do daily, in small chunks, as long as all your small failures made you even more confident in your path, don’t trust anybody but you.

This is especially necessary not only when you get rejected, but when you get accepted too. When you start to get praised. When people start to notice your work. When they start to accept you. Remember, nobody knows what’s in your heart. Don’t stop at the first sign of success. Don’t settle for an intermediary victory. Don’t accept the good while indeifnitely postponing the best. Nobody knows but you what success really means to you. Live it up to the fullest. If your goal was to become the best blogger in the world, don’t stop when you’re an A-lister. Even if being an A-lister means centuries of evolution for you. Go for what YOU want, because they don’t know shit about you.

5. Be Happy About It

Chose one special moment to enjoy it. The end of the year will do it for many of us. Just look at what you did and be genuinely happy for it. Appreciate yourself. Appreciate your results. Smile at them. Smile at yourself. You did it!

If you skip this step, all of the above will be useless. Appreciation is the invisible fuel of your actions. If you don’t appreciate what you’re doing, you’re not pumping enough fuel into your machine. Sooner or later it will stop.

It’s the beginning of a new year and I’m looking back at what I did in 2009. And I’m incredibly happy about it. I could explode with happiness and I’m not joking. Now I can see that every 10 minutes stolen from distractions are paying off big time. Every decision to work instead of procrastinating is transformed into real, visible value. And I’m happy for every “I can’t do this thing now” transformed into “well, let’s do it anyway”. I’m proud of what I did.

And that’s the whole secret behind how to quit becoming a quitter:  you can’t quit something you’re proud of.