The primary goal of anyone who owns and/or runs a blog is to have it be popular. This is especially true whether your blog is designed to be your primary or a secondary source of income. Even if the blog is just for fun or distraction, what is the point if no one is coming to read your witty musings? There are millions of blogs online, why should someone invest their limited time in reading yours? There are many ways to get initial traffic coming to your blog, but what makes traffic stay there and then bookmark you so they come back? The one trait of a blog that can encourage this type of behavior is whether the blog has a credible appearance or not.
When the average web surfer comes to a blog, the first thing they notice is whether or not the blog appears to look professional or not. If a blog appears to have an amateur look to it, then the first reaction is going to be that the content is amateurish as well. Most people have only so much time to surf the web and look for blogs to read and they are not going to want to waste their time on the most amateur looking blogs. So the first step in making your blog have credibility is by making sure its design and overall appearance are professional, crisp, and clean.
One of the key things that goes into making a blog a success is that it promotes a feeling of community. Blogs allow the authors to publish their content and then allow the readers to submit comments in reply to that content. Soon other readers can comment too and they can direct their comments to either the original author or the other commenters, forming a kind of ongoing dialog. Humans do exhibit some herding mentality at different times in their lives. When most readers come to a blog that has no comments on it, they assume the content isn’t that great otherwise other readers would’ve commented on it already before them. Blog owners can increase the amount of commenters they get, thus increasing their blog’s credibility, by encouraging comments like asking for others opinions or running blog contests where the winner must comment on a post to enter.
The final factor that impacts whether readers will do their part in making a blog successful is if the blog they are visiting has quality content that is well written. Readers will only come back to a blog time and time again if they are either learning something new or being entertained each time, and the only way they will assume the author is educated and knowledgable in what they are writing is if there are no grammatical or spelling errors. If the reader is not getting value by going to the blog they will not return. Also, if the reader thinks that the writer lacks basic writing skills, they are going to lose faith in how smart they think the writer is. Even if there is quality information posted on the blog, if it is not well written then it will not appear to be credible.
When it comes right down to it if a blog looks professional, if it contains well written quality content that people want or need, and if it looks like others are reading and commenting on the blog showing that they are finding value in what is being posted, then your blog will indeed have a truly credible look to it. Only with this credible appearance will your blog reach the heights and goals that you have for it.
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