A couple days ago, I wrote about the importance of being a passionate blogger. Passionate bloggers have advantages over non-passionate bloggers including attracting a higher quality and more supportive readership.

So, how do you become a more passionate blogger?

First of all, enjoy your niche. Blog about something you love. If you don’t like to travel, don’t start a travel blog. If you don’t like video games, don’t start a video game blog. If you don’t like American football, don’t start an NFL blog. Simple, right?

The key to being passionate is to figure out what excites you. Consider the niches you gravitate towards. What do you spend your money on? What occupies much of your time? What do you like to think about?

If you go to a rock concert every two weeks, you’re probably a good candidate to start a rock music blog. If you are subscribed to five car magazines and you read them cover to cover, you should start a car blog. If you’re a scientist and follow science blogs and do experiments for fun, you guessed it, you should start a science blog.

This begs the question. What if you’re in a niche you don’t really love? Should you stop blogging about it? Can you develop a passion for that niche? I think you can, but it’s risky. The most important thing you can do is research your niche more. Subscribe to quality blogs in the niche and read them regularly. Read magazines. Read books. Go to forums. Immerse yourself in the niche and you’ll find out quickly if you like your niche or not.

Let’s say you do have the passion and excitement. Here are two practical things you can do to show others your passion.

Increase your word count. Write posts that deliver a lot of value. Of course, it’s not just about having more words. But if you’re passionate about your niche, you should have many things to say. Also, don’t be afraid to publish less posts. What’s more important is the quality of the posts. I increased my traffic by posting less often and writing longer, more insightful posts.

Do things no one else is doing. By being unique, you demonstrate that you want to add value to your niche. Too many bloggers are copycats. They look like and sound like other blogs. You can be unique in many ways. Here are some of those ways:

• Write about an important topic that’s not being covered well
• Use pictures
• Have a unique blog design
• Use non-text media like video and sketchcasts
• Do a series of 5 or more blog posts that relate to one theme
• Write a comprehensive FAQ
• Give away free stuff
• Guest post a lot
• Network like crazy
• Submit a consistent stream of great content to a social media site like StumbleUpon

Further Reading

From Copyblogger:
Go Big or Go Home: Why Being Bold is Critical to Getting Noticed

From Blog Herald:
If You Want to Start Blogging, You Have to Get Up and Dance

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

With the popularity of The 4-Hour Workweek and its recommendation of outsourcing, more bloggers are looking to outsourcing to improve their blog.

But is outsourcing worth it? I think if you give clear instructions and find the right people, outsourcing can definitely help your blog. Good outsourcing can free up a lot of time. Also, outsourcing allows you to focus on your strengths while delegating the blogging activities you’re weak at (or you don’t want to do) to other people.

Now obviously, you’ll need some money to outsource. You can spend some of your blog earnings or save up some cash.

Here are some things you can outsource.

Transcription - Many people find it much easier to “speak” their posts rather than write them down. If this describes you, check out Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. In my research, this site has the lowest rate for transcription services. Simply set up an account, add funds, record yourself in mp3 format, upload it to the web, and then link to the mp3 in your request. Someone will take your request and transcribe your mp3. I’ve been paying around six dollars for a transcription of a 30 minute mp3. By the way, 30 minutes of audio can run about 3000 words.

Posts - If you have more cash, you can hire someone to blog with you. An increase in post frequency is usually a good thing. Also, you can post less and focus on other things (like marketing, monetization, starting a new blog, etc.).

Blog commenting - Many people think outsourcing blog commenting is dumb and cheesy, but if you find someone passionate about your niche, it could work out well. Make sure they are on the same page as you and know what your blog is all about. Also, to integrate things even more, you can have the blog commenter post occasionally on your blog.

Forum marketing - This is something I’m thinking of trying. Basically, you have forum members create forum posts while linking to your blog on their signature. Because their signature shows up on each of their posts, all their posts will link back to your blog. The principles to forum marketing are similar to blog commenting. The forum marketers should a lot about your niche and your blog.

Link exchanges - Blogroll exchanges drive targeted traffic. However, getting them can be tedious. Hire someone to email relevant bloggers to see if they’re interested in link trades.

Research assistant - If you write long, in-depth posts, it might make sense to hire a research assistant. A research assistant can do the time consuming preliminary research needed to write a resourceful post.

Blog design - Not too much to say about this. A clean, good looking blog design does a lot for branding your blog. If you can’t design or don’t have the time, hire a designer to create a unique design for your blog. For more information, check out this post about blog design. It includes a podcast and relevant links. Also, check out the web design blogs on Eaton Web. Some of them are written by bloggers that also offer blog design services.

Linkbaiting - Whether it’s getting enough votes on Digg, building a viral web application, or just creating a top 100 list, there are people that are good at linkbaiting. Watch out though. Linkbaiters can cost a lot. In the long term, a good linkbaiter is worth it because of the quality links you will get.

SEO - Want more search traffic but don’t want to deal with building links and researching keywords? Then, find a search marketer. Again, like linkbaiters, search marketers can cost an arm and a leg, but the long term rewards are great.

What other things can bloggers outsource?

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?