This is a guest post by Onibalusi Bamidele. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
I’ve been fighting a secret battle within me for sometimes now and I’m sure so many bloggers are doing the same. That battle is the battle of my next blog post going viral.
I used to be someone who writes what comes to my mind freely as a blog post, and in reality, some of those blog posts will go viral while others won’t go viral – but at the end, they are all impacting the lives of my readers, and that is all that matters.
Beware of the Crippling Effect
It is said that those who pursue money never find it: even though I don’t believe entirely in the saying I can see clearly there is some truth to it, and the same principle applies to every other facet of life. It also means those who pursue fame will hardly get it.
The question now is, why is this?
As bloggers, the key to our success lies in our creativity and this creativity is hampered when it isn’t our sole focus. When you’re obsessed only with writing viral blog posts as a blogger you will find it difficult to focus on what really matters, which is delivering value to your audience. One thing that makes things even worse is the fact that we bloggers believe in formulas, and the reality is that nothing in blogging is certain. If a particular formula works for you, or you’ve seen a particular formula work always for other bloggers and you decided to try it, without getting results you will start feeling differently about yourself and you will be confused about what to write next.
Do these instead…
Once you’ve realized that not all your blog posts will go viral, there are a few things you can do to ensure you always get the best from your blogging efforts, and below are 4 very important things to do.
Make Use of Ideas as they Come: One thing I have observed is that there is nothing we can’t learn from as a blogger, and that every single minute, every single day, there are always new ideas flowing into our heads. Instead of trying to wait until you get the idea for the next viral post, or instead of looking for a proven formula for writing viral posts start jotting down ideas as they come and start making the best use of them. Blogging can be compared to the movie industry. When a particular company manufactures a movie that isn’t a hit, they keep on manufacturing movies until one of those movies become a hit that will in turn cover the cost of the other failed productions.
Successful bloggers didn’t emerge successful overnight, so don’t expect the same. Instead do your best to ensure you’re able to deliver great, insightful and unique content to your readers on a regular basis. It might take a year, it might take two, it might even take more, but results will come – and when the results come other people will start envying you while thinking you’re an overnight success.
Focus on Writing Pillar Content: There are various kinds of content in blogging. One of the most common types of content you can write is what Daniel calls Killer Article. Killer articles, also called linkbaits or pillar articles, is an evergreen content that people keep reading and linking to for years to come. The reality is that your pillar content might not go viral when your first write it, in fact, it might not go viral the first month, but you will continue to see traffic trickling in to it for the rest of the year – the reason is because it is ever-green, it is time independent and people still find it valuable for their present situation.
A one-off viral blog post might only lead to a traffic spike that will end up dying in a few days or weeks time, but when you write pillar content you will end up enjoying the benefit of your labor for years to come.
Take Marketing Your Blog to a New Level: Another thing you have to realize is that marketing is the backbone of any successful blog so instead of trying to write the next best content why not focus on marketing your blog on a consistent basis till it becomes big itself? This way instead of trying to write the next link-bait your consistent marketing efforts will result in a slow, but steady, growth for your blog that will end up having an impact on every one of your blog posts in the near future.
Take Advantage of SEO for Your Blog Posts: I wrote a particular blog post over a year ago, when I was just starting my blog. At the time I wrote that blog post it hardly brought in 100 visitors in a particular month. That blog post is now the most popular blog post on my blog and it brings almost 2,000 visitors to my blog every month, mostly from the search engines. When you write a viral blog post it might get a boost from Stumbleupon which will die down with time, but when you focus on optimizing your blog post for the search engines it will keep on bringing you traffic for years to come even if you don’t lift a finger.
Instead of focusing on writing the next viral blog post, start focusing on optimizing your old and new posts for the search engines so that they can keep bringing you traffic for years to come.
About the Author: Onibalusi Bamidele is a 17 year old blogger and internet marketer making over $3,000 online monthly. Learn more about how he does what he does by visiting YoungPrePro.com
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