What to Do When Your Blog is “Blah”

You prob­a­bly jumped on the blog band­wagon along with every other web­site, but those promises for in­creased traf­fic and SEO have yet to come to fruition.

Some­thing about your blog just isn’t work­ing, and you can’t seem to per­suade peo­ple to visit (or stick around longer than a post or two).

Chances are your blog has the po­ten­tial to be­come a great tool for your site, you just haven’t reached it yet be­cause your blog is a lit­tle, well, blah!

Here are some steps to take to give your blog the lit­tle boost it needs.

Get a Pro­fes­sional Design

While this may be the most dif­fi­cult step, it’s listed first be­cause it could be the most im­por­tant. Your blog’s ap­pear­ance is the first im­pres­sion vis­i­tors will get and could make or break their visit to your site. Af­ter ap­pear­ance comes the func­tion­al­ity of your site, and if that’s toast then your site is a lost cause. These are hard prob­lems to pin­point on your own, so em­ploy the help of pro­fes­sional de­sign­ers and engineers.

Pro­fes­sional help can also as­sist you in fix­ing mar­ket­ing weak­nesses and SEO prob­lems on your blog.

This doesn’t have to break your wal­let: check the Boost­a­bil­ity re­views to see how some small com­pa­nies were able to get a bet­ter look for an af­ford­able price this year.

Do Some Research

Shop around some other blogs that are rel­e­vant to your topic, and see what they’re of­fer­ing their au­di­ences. Then ex­pand be­yond that and look at blogs in other areas.

• What are they pro­vid­ing that peo­ple seem to re­spond to the most?
• What seems to make their blog successful?
• And most im­por­tantly, what are they miss­ing that you could of­fer instead?

Look around the in­ter­net for ideas on what an­gles and con­tent to pro­vide, and you’ll get a bet­ter idea of how to stand out.

Use Your Voice

Some of the most suc­cess­ful blogs are run by av­er­age peo­ple who tell sto­ries about their home or work lives. You wouldn’t think that this kind of con­tent would in­spire such wide au­di­ences, but the fact that it’s writ­ten by a real per­son who oth­ers can re­late to makes it appealing.

Speak in first per­son when ap­pro­pri­ate, and don’t be afraid to tie in your own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences to what­ever you’re writ­ing about. Peo­ple will be more in­ter­ested in what you have to say as a per­son, and they’ll keep com­ing back to your blog to see where you go next in life.

Take a Stand

If you have a strong opin­ion on an is­sue, state it in ar­ti­cle form. You will di­vide your au­di­ence, but this can some­times be a good thing for your site.

Those who agree with you will be more likely to share your post and those who dis­agree will ar­gue. This ar­gu­ment will be­come a help­ful dis­cus­sion on your page or around so­cial me­dia, and the ex­po­sure will bring more vis­i­tors to your site.

Plus, what’s more in­ter­est­ing than a lit­tle harm­less con­tro­versy on your site?

Of­fer Di­ver­sity in Media

If all of your con­tent makes up the ex­act same for­mat, you may be miss­ing out on some po­ten­tial au­di­ence de­mo­graph­ics that would latch onto some­thing else.

Have some vari­a­tion in the lengths of your ar­ti­cles, and pro­vide videos and in­fo­graph­ics when relevant.

Vary be­tween news ar­ti­cles, in­ter­views, opin­ion sec­tions, and how-to ar­ti­cles to cover the most ground in your audience.

This will make sure you’re giv­ing every type of reader a chance to en­joy your writ­ing; and when it comes down to blog­ging, isn’t that ex­actly what we need?

Theo Schmidt has an in­ter­est in com­puter sci­ence and en­gi­neer­ing, and he uses that in­ter­est to fuel his blog­ging. Theo also en­joys spend­ing time in the out­doors, and he is pas­sion­ate about pro­tect­ing the environment.