One of the best ways to improve your blog is to develop more passion for your niche. Being passionate about your niche will help your blog in many areas. One of those areas is the quality of your readership. If you show a lot of enthusiasm for your niche, if you show a ton of love for your niche, you will attract readers that have that same enthusiasm and love. But if you’re not that passionate about your niche, then you will attract readers of the same mold.

Benefits of a Passionate Readership

Why do you want passionate readers?

They invest a lot in the niche. They spend more money, which makes them much more profitable readers. They spend more time, which leads to higher pageviews. Also, they are more likely to become repeat visitors (RSS subscribers).

They leave more comments. And their comments are more insightful than “normal” readers. Insightful comments = free, quality content.

They are more likely to join and interact with your blog community. They’re looking to find friends in their niche. (Passion draws like minded people together.) They want to help and support the other visitors.

They tell their friends - both offline and online - about your blog. If they have websites, they link to you. If they are social media users, they submit your content to social media sites. If they have friends, they tell them about your site.

A Practical Example

Let’s pretend you start a blog about Hawaii travel. If you’re not passionate about this niche, you’ll just attract people that travel to Hawaii once in a while. The hardcore Hawaii travel addicts will come by your site and leave quickly because they can tell your lack of passion.

But if you have a travel blog that goes all out and it is really passionate about Hawaii travel, you’ll attract the Hawaii travel addicts.

What would your blog look like? It would be an excellent, bookmark worthy resource for Hawaii travel. It would cover the best cities, the best nightspots, the best restaurants, the best beaches, the best hotels, etc. It would have content that the other Hawaii travel blogs wouldn’t have. Much of your time would be spent researching Hawaii. Not only that but you would go there 5 times a year. You would take pictures and videos of your trips and post them on your blog. You would talk about the enjoyable experiences of your Hawaii trips.

If you have this kind of blog, can you see why Hawaii travel addicts would flock to your blog? They would love your site, because you cater to their addiction.

What’s more is that you’ll still get the “normal” readers. You will attract those people that don’t go to Hawaii often. And some of those people will become Hawaii travel addicts

Last week I wrote about having a consistent style in your blogging so that your readers will know what to expect from your blog. (To understand what I mean by “style”, please read that previous post. I give four examples of what I mean when I say “style”.) Having a consistent blogging style will help your readers recognize and remember you. This leads to repeat visitors and better branding. But how do you know which style is the best for you?

Experiment. Finding an effective style starts with experimentation. Unless you experiment, you may not find a blogging style that fits you well. Yes, blogging is a creative pursuit, but testing different styles helps you find the best style for you. So, try different styles and see which gets more visitors, subscribers, and positive feedback.

As you experiment with different styles, also consider what comes easy to you. If you are more comfortable writing with a conversational tone than a scholarly tone, write with a conversational tone. I used to write in a more scholarly tone because that is what I was used to reading. However, I experimented with writing in a conversational tone and I found it easier to write than a scholarly tone.

Ask yourself, which style do I enjoy using? Again, you should experiment with different styles. For example, publish 7 short posts weekly for a couple weeks. Then, for another set of weeks, try writing longer but fewer posts a week. After this experiment, ask yourself: Which was more enjoyable, writing many short posts or writing fewer long posts?

When it comes to enjoyment, I realized that I enjoy finding interesting articles online and sharing them. Because of this, I’m linking out much more than I used to. You may not be like me. You may not like to search for interesting content on the internet. In this case, your blogging style may resemble Steve Pavlina’s. He rarely links out but he is still a popular blogger.

Ease of use and enjoyment are important when choosing a blogging style because these traits help you blog for the long term. And long term blogging is really the best way to blog.

Finally, as you’re experiment with different styles, consider which style fits your personality the most. Blogging is a personal medium. Be yourself.

By being yourself, you establish trust, rapport, and set yourself apart from the other bloggers in your niche. These things, in turn, lead to increased traffic for your blog.

Skellie has excellent advice on being a more influential blogger. She writes:

Develop a consistent style. Leo Babauta is renowned for his lists, Seth Godin — to pluck an example from above — is known for pithy, thought-provoking posts, while Jason Kottke is famous for interesting links and insightful commentary. What kinds of posts do you do best? Developing a consistent approach, voice, and formatting style will help to develop a style of blogging with your trademark on it. When readers see a similar style, they will think of you. They’ll start to recognize your posts wherever they appear.

Just like a flashy signature, site design, or logo can catch people’s attention, a consistent writing style will help people recognize and remember you.

You should find a style that works for you and fits your personality. While it’s a good idea to change things up a bit and not be too predicatable, your blog should have a sense of style that’s consistent.

My favorite blogs are the ones where I know what to expect. I like visiting this health blog because I know I’ll get short, informative posts about basic health principles. I like reading this copywriting blog because the authors have interesting pictures and great copywriting tips. I visit this NBA basketball blog daily because I know it will have interesting commentary and links about the latest NBA news.

What is Style?

So, what do I mean by style? Here are a couple things to think about.

Post length and frequency - If one week, you post five 1000 word posts and then the next week, you post three 300 word posts, your style is not consistent. Try to keep things consistent so that your readership knows what to expect.

This doesn’t mean every post has to be the same length, but you should have a weekly pattern. For example, you could write a longer post (800 words) on Monday and then 300 word posts daily for the rest of the weekdays. And then a 200 word “link post” on the weekend.

Think of your blog as a magazine. Would you like it if your favorite magazine randomly varied their page counts? One month you get a 75 page issue, another month you get an issue with 150 pages, and then the next month you get an issue with only 25 pages. That would be annoying. By being consistent with your post length and frequency, you blog will be professional and your readers will begin to anticipate your posts.

Tone - Having a consistent tone is especially important in blogging. Blogging is a personal medium. Whether you have a more conversational tone or scholarly tone, be consistent. Also, be yourself. People are attracted to someone who’s comfortable in their own skin.

Formatting - Be consistent with your formatting. If you’re inserting pictures in your posts, continue doing so. But don’t have a month where you have pictures on every post and then the next month all your posts are picture-less. The same goes with subheadings, bullet points, bolded text, and italics. If you’re gonna use them, use them often or use them very sparingly. What confuses readers is using them for every other post. Also, some bloggers like Lyndoman do well without using much formatting.

Linking out - Some popular bloggers like Steve Pavlina don’t link out very often. Others like Michael Arrington link out all the time. Be consistent with your linking out. Your readers will appreciate it because they’ll know what to expect when they visit your blog.

What other factors do you think affect a blogger’s style?

If you want to have long-term success in the blogging game, you need to have attention. I just found this very relevant post. It’s entitled Links or Content? Nope, the Issue is Attention. In this post, Aaron Wall tackles the question that webmasters often debate: Which is more important, links or content? However, he argues that attention trumps both of those things. Here’s what he says:

The debate is flawed. Links or content alone are just one type of asset. You might be able to profit from either for a while, but ultimately the real measure of relevancy and staying power is attention.

I think he’s right. The internet is getting more crowded. More people are trying to make money online. More bloggers are learning internet marketing skills. Here is a list of over 100 make money online bloggers. I think most of these blogs were started less than a year ago. Information is easy to produce. Big offline publishers with massive amounts of quality content are starting to publish their content online. Therefore, attention is the most valuable resource right now.

You can have the best content but if no one knows about it, how will you make money or gain readership? You can be a marketing genius, but if your content doesn’t capture people’s attention, your marketing will be inefficient and ineffective. You can be the best link builder, but a blogger who has more attention than you will steal your rankings in the long-term because their attention will get them links faster than you can build them.

So, think of ways to get noticed. Write content that causes people to pay attention to you. Promote your blog in such a way that people don’t forget you. Don’t stop building links but also get attention because that is the best link building strategy.

Also, here are two principles that can help.

• Be bold.
• Focus. Don’t multi-task so much. Instead, “single task”. Much of the content and marketing that gets attention is well-planned and took much concentration and focused effort.