Do You Love Blogging?I researched this list to motivate myself as much as anything else. No matter how long you’ve been blogging there’s always room for improvement. To improve my own blogging skills I’ve looked to outstanding bloggers for inspiration. You’ll find a list at the bottom of this post.

  1. Successful bloggers are truthful: you can be confident that a little research won’t turn up gaping holes in their testimony.
  2. They passionately adore their subject. This is a must. Your passion must also ignite your reader’s passion. Never try and blog about something you don’t love.
  3. They are ambitious. Building a popular blog takes a lot of work and determination. Long hours spent writing and long hours spent learning the craft of blogging.
  4. Their writing is conversational and easy-to-read. While most readerships are forgiving of the odd typo, copy that is riddled with spelling mistakes and missing words is just as off-putting as writing that doesn’t speak to the reader. Spend a little time perfecting your writing style. Examine the writing style of bloggers you find most interesting to read. Your byword should be ‘proofread.’
  5. They make their blog look nice.There’s no excuse not to do this. Now you can get literally hundreds of nice-looking templates if you use a platform like WordPress. It’s easy and free, so pick one that will appeal to your target niche. Also, don’t forget to dig out an interesting picture or photo to accompany your blog posts. It’s well known that pictures make your posts a lot more attractive to a lot more people.
  6. They blog regularly. This is quite possibly the most difficult thing of all to achieve. Blogging is a long-term commitment, and when you have eager readers and sponsors (advertisers) depending on you, you can’t just take a holiday whenever it pleases you.
  7. Their posts are of more-or-less uniform quality. Research and care leave traces. There’s a huge difference to the reader between an article that has been lovingly crafted and a few paragraphs hurriedly strung together. This is another difficult habit to nail down. Sometimes you just don’t feel like blogging. I’ve found that it’s better to just leave a gap in your blogs rather than post any old junk. A good trick is to always have three or four draft posts ready to be dusted off and posted if you’re pushed for time, or just plain don’t feel like it.
  8. Bloggers are, almost without exception, nice people. Even if they thrive on controversy, they’re not mean or insulting. To take this point a little further, the most popular bloggers are the nicest ones, like Darren Rowse of Problogger, or Maki of DoshDosh.
  9. They love to learn. Blogging is a craft that needs to be learned. It takes a great deal of experimentation and reading to get to the point where you’re gaining readers on a daily basis and making your way into people’s RSS readers. To get you started in the right direction, consume this list by Problogger.
  10. Successful bloggers network. Having a circle of others who know their subject and who are prepared to give opinions and otherwise help out is an invaluable aid to the blogging process. Their favorite haunts are sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed and others.
  11. They are heavily into social media and social networking for the potential extra exposure. See list in bullet above.
  12. The more popular a blog becomes, the more you’ll notice that the blogger is frequently seen in SEO circles. There are even a number of notable bloggers whose opinions on SEO are widely respected. Search engine optimization is essential for your blogging success, and the most important part of optimizing your blog is getting inbound links. You can do this by having great content that others want to link to, and by commenting on other good blogs. Don’t forget linking between your blog posts for legitimate links too. Beyond that, here are some great tips for optimizing your blog from Search Engine Land, and another from Pronet Advertising.
  13. Successful bloggers give their readers information that is not just interesting–it has to be useful too. If you can help your readers out in their daily work or lives they’ll be back again and again.
  14. For the most part, successful blogs deal with a niche–a specific part of a subject. There are a few examples of blogs that deal with a wide range of subjects though. One I love is Lifehacker.
  15. They are prepared to spend literally hours a day to post, network and improve their blog. I would say that two-three hours a day is the minimum you’ll get by on if you want a remarkably successful blog. Just being honest here, for all those who think they can get by on twenty minutes a day!
  16. The most successful blogs are those that form a community. Good bloggers are good community leaders, and for many blogs this is key. Over to Guy Kawasaki for more on building a community.
  17. Create dialog with other top bloggers. It’s no coincidence that all the top blogs regularly refer to posts on other blogs, and even engage in conversation with other bloggers through their posts. This takes the concept of community building to a higher level and provides readerships with further resources that will be useful to them.

Bloggers I find Outstanding

(In no particular order)