To make your blog successful it is essential that you know what is an important component of each entry. Posts should for instance have a basic struc­ture and are at least bro­ken down into paragraphs. Posts, however, are not cluttered with links to your site.

Here are 10 additional criteria a quality post must include:

10. Relevant Content

This means relevant, interesting and timely. When I visit a website and find top posts from 2007, I ignore it.

9. Informative and Educational Content

Nobody wants to read something that is purely product based and self-promotional. With so many blogs out there, your content must really be engaging and stimulating as well as unique.

8. Quality Images

This doesn’t mean posts should be littered with images, but they should have quality, relevant, supporting images that outline the point of the content. Graphs and diagrams are very helpful as well as screen shots if applicable.

7. Proper Grammar and Spelling

You don’t have to be Hemingway to have a blog, but when I am reading a blog post written in English, with poor grammar and sentence structure, I rarely continue reading…it’s just not enjoyable.

6. The article is organized well

Organize your intentions using an outline format. Start with a draft and step by step to help prevent rambling and dragging out your content. Quality blog posts are written by people who know what they want to say and that do so clearly. A good way to lay out your content can be the following:

5. Don’t Push Your Product

Going back to #9 a plug here and there is fine. An article written for the purpose of promoting a product or service should be incredibly rare. If you want to talk about your product only then consider have a separate blog for just your product and/or services, that way people can receive and follow that information by choice.

4. Strike a Balance

You don’t want your posts being too long or too short. Think about roughly 400-600 words. Some will be longer and other shorter. This is a good guideline and will help keep people’s attention longer.

3. Use Bullets and Lists

Top “trends list” or “3 things you must know” type of posts are extremely popular and common.  This isn’t a coincidence.  People like to read posts with nice, simple presentation of information, just like this one. Give it a try.

2. Provide a Take-Away

Excellent content leaves the reader with something new they didn’t have before.  That is why tutorial posts are so very popular.  People like to get something from blogs they read.

1. Have a Call to Action

Every web page should have a clear Call To Action (CTA) and the same is true of blog posts. With e-commerce web­sites that means encour­ag­ing vis­i­tors to pur­chase items, with small business sites it means encour­ag­ing them to click a link and go to a landing page. The end of your blog post is the begin­ning of your inter­ac­tion with read­ers so get them to take the next step and request more information via your offer shared (hint: this is the place you can be semi promotional…showcase the fact that you are indeed the subject matter expert).

That’s it! Just remem­ber, writ­ing con­tent that helps read­ers isn’t enough any­more. As the inter­net grows, read­ers get more and more used to copy with more than just qual­ity con­tent. Your writ­ing style is almost as impor­tant as your actual con­tent, so take these tips to heart!

Photo credit: www.taintedcanvas.com

Ever wish that you could ever so gently nudge some of visitors to comment or promote your content? There have been many instances where someone will email me or mention in passing that they really liked my blog post on “such and “such” and when I then go to check they never left a comment…hmphhhh. It’s like thanks for the feedback but a comment would be much more helpful…well guess what…there’s a tool that can help you.

At HubSpot, my place of employment, we constantly talk about the importance of “nurturing your leads”. That is absolutely an important component to ensuring that those you engage with you continue to stay engaged. In a similar manner this wordpress plugin, WP Greet Box, allows you to stay on top of with your returning visitors. Why not nudge someone who returns to your site…they are obviously interested so nurture them by keeping them engaged and in the process giving others a chance to become engaged.

Are you intrigued? So here’s the deal…”Greet Box” allows you to set customized messages to certain audiences. So if someone comes to your site via Stumble Upon you can encourage that visitor to Stumble your content. Pretty cool huh. I haven’t used it yet myself but as I find time I will let you all know how’s it going. You can see more details, screenshots etc through WordPress.

Let me know if you try this yourself, or if you are employing similar ways to engage your loyal followers and fans.

If you have a blog, whether it be your personal blog or that for your business, you have to advertise it. You want to advertise your blog not only to gain more followers/readers but also to open your potential to more inbound links. Remember that inbound links from other trusted sources are like people raising their hand saying “you should pay attention to this one, good stuff.”

I’ve put together a list of the top FREE sources (some are directories, while some are the very obvious social media networks where you can promote your blog). They are (in no particular order):

• Google’s Blog Search
• Technorati
• FriendFeed
• Blogged
• Blog Catalog
• Blogmarks
• Twitter
• My Blog Log
• Zimbio
• LinkedIn
• FaceBook Fan Page
• StumbleUpon

You will want to make sure to create an account on most of these sites and remain active. Find a specific group, niche or topic that relates to you or your business, and then track the links and traffic that comes in from those sites. No doubt most of you may already be active with a good portion of the above mentioned…but are you linking to your blog. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of these will have what is called “no follow” applied so you won’t get direct credit from them. As more and more people come across your blog and see what good stuff you have to offer, they will bookmark your site, share it, comment, link etc.

Are there any that I missed that you think are definitely worth setting up an account and linking to your blog?

Image source: (www.blogtrepreneur.com)

My most recent wordpress project was one that required a move from Blogger’s Blogspot to WordPress. Check it out www.rungranolarun.com

Many bloggers often start out with Blogspot.com and then wish they were using WordPress instead. The move is actually not too difficult.

Depending on the hosting solution that you use for your WordPress, you may or may not be able to upload the Blogger’s blog directly. I use Bluehost (found it’s limitation) and had to use a workaround. WordPress.com actually did the trick.

Here are the steps you want to follow:

1. Log in to or create a WordPress.com account. Once logged in you want to find the “Tools” tabAfter selecting the tools tab click on “Import.” Within the import section you then select “Blogger”, then authorize. This section will take you to your Google Account for which the log in is the same as your Blogspot.com log in. If you are already logged in then this won’t be prompted. Google will then ask you again to authorize the connection so click “grant access”.

Once you have finished this connecting process. Your Import > Blogger access will now show you all Blogspot.com blogs that you have with that respective account. Select the one that you want to transfer to WordPress.

Click “Import” and the process will proceed automatically. This however is where (if your WordPress setup won’t allow it) you could get stuck. What happened to me was that I’d select import and each time only one post would import and then the process would stop. The workaround is to use WordPress.com as I mentioned.

After the import is complete and you verify that indeed all of your posts and comments are uploaded you can then do the reverse (unless you are not self hosting, in which case you’d be done now). For those who are self hosting follow the steps under “Tools” > “Export” now. It simply exports WordPress to a file that can then in turn be uploaded to your hosted wordpress account.

2. Before you proceed with the final import make sure that you have installed the WordPress Plugin Blogger Redirector and that your permalinks are set to /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%.html which is the same format that Blogger uses. This way when you set the final redirect from Blogger all of your posts will redirect as well.

3. Test, test, test

4. Log in to Blogspot.com under “Settings” > “Publishing” > “Advanced Settings” and enter your new WordPress domain address. Then save those settings.

Your final product just may look something like this

Hope this helps. I’d love to know what your experience with blog migrations has been.

There are several key features that every blog should posses. I am going to outline some key elements that every blog must have:

Strong Engaging Posts

1. Quality on page SEO – Optimized Titles, URLs, Headers and Content.
2. A theme – your content and overall look and feel of your blog should all be around a similar topic. If you want to talk about your cat or how you helped an old lady cross the street, while that is very sweet of you, …um I don’t think anyone cares to follow that except a few of your close friends and family or unless you are a celebrity in which case you can even write about your bowel movement and people will still follow you.
3. Write posts that draw in your audience and will get them to share your content. Writing information that is helpful will do that for you. “How To” posts are a great place to start.
4. Post at least weekly and if possible twice a week.
5. Pose questions at the end of your posts to encourage engagement and feedback.
6. If you have a successful post follow it up immediately by posting another strong article.

Easy Sign up/Call to Action

1. Give people the optionto sign up via RSS. You want to have that sign up above the fold
2. Also give people the option to sign up via email. It’s old school but people still use it.
3. Show people where else they can find you. While that may mean that they read your content elsewhere my school of thought is that they are at least still following what you write and will still share your content.

An Information “About” Section

1. Make available a snippet of information through a sidebar or at least on your home page that gives your readers a glimpse as to the human side of your blog.
2. Also have a full blown about page. This page can be developed over time and should be a kick ass glimpse at what makes you, you, and what your blog is all about.

Feature this…

1. Highlight you best blog posts. Trying to find ways to keep people on your site? Give them easy access to your most popular posts.
2. Find some cool wordpress plugins that sensible and work for what you offer. Here are some wordpress plugins that I think are key.
3. Write up a post about someone else.
4. Look for new ways to attract people to your site that will hopefully also serve as link bait.

Set Goals

1. Whether your are setting goals for your social media strategy or your overall blog…have them be concrete and realistic.
2. If you are trying to promote your services or you are selling something then track your leads.
3. Consider getting comments as a possible goal/conversion measure.

A strong blog doesn’t happen overnight. You know the saying Rome wasn’t built…neither will your blog. For a lot of people it takes some time to find their voice. Once you do…keep at it.

What are some key elements that you employ on your blog? Anything you think that this list definitely should have?