Guest Blogger
Blogging originally derived from web logs, which were an easy way to share your thoughts ideas and aspirations with the rest of the world. From these humble beginnings blogs are now one of the most popular types of sites on the net. Wordpress based sites now make up the majority of active sites on the net, which in itself is a testament to the popularity and success of blogging.
Though much of the web is made up of blogs, many are unloved and just left idle, most times this is because they were never able to reach their full potential. Many times this was because the owner was not able to produce the type of content that appealed to their target audience and as such they were unable to build a loyal readership that would help to sustain their blogging endeavors.
Building your readership begins the first time a new visitor hits your site, as they have never been there before your content needs to grab their attention. The content you produce should be interesting, easy to read, informative and offer that reader real value, either by answering questions they have or by providing useful and actionable information.
If you try and write for the masses there is a good chance that your content will not be able to fulfill the needs of these readers and as such your content will not be able to grab their attention and keep them coming back. If on the other hand you write for just a small target audience and base your site and the content you produce around them, there is a much better chance that you will find many returning visitors time and time again, because these readers will know that what you are producing is specific to them and they will get the most benefit from it.
As a quick example, if you decide to launch a site about pets and try to cover as many species and topics as possible, each of your readers will find that only a small section of your site is of interest to them and if you are only producing one article a month that they would like to read, then there is a chance that they will only return once a month.
However, if you decided to launch a site about tropical fish though, your potential readership will be much smaller and they will return every time you add some new content, because they know that it will be of interest to them. Think of the old saying “you can keep all of the people happy some of the time and some of the people happy all of the time” it’s the same with blogging, do you want a smaller readership of people who are interested in what you have to say or a large readership of disinterested readers who do not often return.
The content you produce for your target audience does however need to cover a number of bases. It needs to engage the readers and be written in the right tone for your audience. If you target a business audience, writing in a casual manner might be a good fit for your site. As we’ve already mentioned your content needs to grab their attention it also needs to be informative, easy to read but above all else it must provide real value to the reader.
Gauging how successful your blog is should not be based on traffic alone and in some cases it could be argued that this is an out-dated method. What should be more important is what action does the reader take after they have hit your site. Do they bounce around from page to page looking for the most relevant content for them, or leave a comment about one of your posts, or subscribe to your RSS feed, or do they just leave immediately after hitting your site.
To me these are a much better indication of how successful your blog is. The actions visitors take also give a much clearer indication of how well written and engaging your content really is. If they bounce away after 5 seconds then there is something wrong with your site or the content on it, but if they stay and dig deep into your site then you have ticked all the boxes.
About the author
We hope you have enjoyed this post, which has been provided by the eMobileScan’s head of marketing. As a company their focus is to offer their customers a tool set that will help cut production costs as well as increase overall productivity. They do this by building a solution around a range of products like the Honeywell 6000 and Zebra Zm400. Using these products to tailor a solution to each customer means maximum productivity.