Contrary to popular belief, there is no one perfect formula in blogging. While there are certain fundamentals that you need in place, and some of these you might not be implementing, we need to know what the best approaches there are in growing your blog community and capturing the right target audience, from developing an effective marketing campaign, all the way through to quality content. Let’s hit some of the essentials that can get your blog to soar.

The Content

There’s no shortcut when it comes to creating great content you need to subscribe to a couple of simple rules. The first rule is: write great content. And, as much of a cop out this statement seems, the second rule is to write about what you love. In writing about what you love, you will create great content.

What does the best art do to people? It makes them question something about themselves, or they feel a sense of empathy with the piece of art itself. This is why something like stand-up comedy sells out arenas because these people are communicating something that we can see in ourselves. And, in creating content based on your needs, wants, and desires, this will naturally flow into your work.

Cater For A Need

The fundamentals in search engine optimization are all about catering for a specific need — you need to answer questions for your audience. This can be a big task, but there are tools you can implement to gather interest in what your readers want. And this is why email is still a key proponent of internet marketing, at the end of every article you could ask for a subscription, and emphasize email as opposed to an RSS feed. Or you could go via the Posirank approach and integrate automation in your promotional materials.

Offer Something For Nothing

While you may consider an insightful blog to be informative enough, people now require a benefit or reason to click on to your blog or website. A very common approach now is a free eBook. If you want people to subscribe to your content, you need to offer them something of value. You then follow this up with consistently great content. This means creating content that’s in line with your core values. And lots of bloggers make the mistake of diversifying the content so much that the quality becomes diluted.

In the age of billions (upon billions) of blog pages, it’s even harder to stand out, this means you need a combination of marketing and great content, but also salesmanship.

Getting your blog to pop is harder now than ever, and it will only become more difficult. This means that in addition to these three fundamentals, you need to be on top of the latest trends. It’s not just marketing and great content; it’s having that foresight to stay ahead of the curve.