What Makes a Blog Popular? 3 Key Factors

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What Makes a Blog Popular? 3 Key Factors
How do some blogs end up with hundreds of thousands of readers, and others disappear without a trace?

It can seem like pure chance. You might feel that you’re just as good of a writer (or perhaps even better!) compared to lots of top bloggers in your niche… yet their posts get widely shared, and yours don’t.

So, what key factors might be at play? Aside from making sure you’re choosing one of the right types of blogs for your skills & interests, consider these three key factors. And be sure to check out my extensive compilation of blog examples for even more.

1. Writing Blog Posts Readers Want to Read
Whatever your niche, you need to write blog posts that people actually want to read. That usually means your content should do at least one of the following:

Solve a problem: This could be something very straightforward (like “how to change the font size in WordPress”) or something much bigger and more complex (like “how to raise happy children”). Whatever niche you’re in, readers will have problems, struggles, and questions — your task is to figure out what those are and offer solid solutions.
Provide information: This must be information readers actually want, not just information you think is interesting. Often, this will overlap with solving a problem, but not always. On news-focused blogs, providing information may mean covering breaking news.
Inspire your readers: Some of the pieces you write won’t necessarily offer readers anything they don’t already know — but they might inspire them to action. That could be through a powerful story (perhaps from your own experience), through encouraging words, or through making readers open their eyes to the costs of inaction.
Entertain your readers: Some content is read mainly (or even solely) for its entertainment value. Perhaps you have a lighthearted blog about the ups and downs of your daily life. It doesn’t provide readers with any useful information, but they might come back again and again if your writing style is sufficiently engaging.
So what can you do if you just don’t know what your readers want to read?

One great solution is to figure out what questions they’re asking or their struggles. You could do that by seeing what comes up in your blog comments (or in the comments of more popular types of blogs in your industry), on social media responses, or in emails from your readers. Another option is to run a survey, directly asking your readers what they’re finding difficult and what they’d like you to write about.

2. Publishing Fresh Content Regularly
Some popular blogs don’t publish all that regularly—but the latest blogging austria phone number library suggest that’s somewhat rare nowadays. Most popular types of blogs stick to a regular publishing schedule so that readers know how often to expect fresh content.

So what does “regularly” mean here? In most cases, popular blogs will:

Publish on a schedule: Normally, they’ll use an editorial calendar behind the scenes to stay on track with this. Readers will know to expect new posts on, say, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Publish fresh content fairly frequently: That won’t necessarily mean posting every day, but it will usually mean posting at least once every week or two. If you only publish once or twice a month from the beginning, though, it’s going to take a long time to create enough content to give your blog a solid foundation.
Publishing regularly can be a real challenge when you’re just starting out. Don’t try to write too much—it’s better to publish one high-quality blog post every week, or even one every two weeks, rather than rushing to put out lots of posts just for the sake of publishing something.

3. Writing Longer-Form Content
In the early years of the history of blogging, blog posts tended to be fairly short: 500-800 words were common, and anything over 1,000 words was considered long.

These days, “long-form” content has become increasingly popular with marketers, as they’ve seen this type of content rewarded in search engines. Most popular blogs will have posts that are 1,000 words minimum—and often, you can expect posts to run between 1,500-4,000 words (like you’ll find here on my blog).

These long, in-depth blog posts work well because:

They make it possible to target several different keywords within one piece of content due to the length.