Traits Successful Bloggers Share
Post by Blog Manager Robbi Hess
I love books. My office has an overflowing bookcase. My living room has a china cabinet full of books and the chair where Henrietta and I recline after work has a table next to it with four books on it right now. There are two books on the table in the backroom, three books in my car and a book at the kitchen table where I eat my lunch. All of these books are littered with sticky notes to mark where I left off reading, a brilliant sentence or idea I discovered or a passage I need to re-read. These books are fiction and non fiction alike. I also have an e-reader chock full of reading
material. Whew!
Of all of the books I read, have read, or am reading one of my favorites is by Stephen Covey, “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.” It is on my keeper shelf and has made several cross country road trips with me. I refer to it often, especially when I find myself in a slump.
Am I highly effective? Most of the time, yes I believe I am. Can you be highly effective? Yes, I believe you can! After picking up my copy again over the weekend it got me to thinking whether there are traits successful bloggers share and I think there are. Here are my thoughts and I’d love to know what you think.
Are you an attentive person? I think that is a trait that bloggers or writers of any ilk need to have. Why? If you’re not attentive to the world around you, how will you fill your blog with new posts? You need to be attentive ie nosy, in order to keep the content flowing.
Do you possess organizational skills? These skills range from knowing how to organize your actual blog post to knowing how to organize your day for maximum effectiveness. This also means you should know when your more productive hours of the day are. Are you a morning lark or a night owl? Don’t try to force productivity in the morning if you truly pick up the pace after 3 pm or vice versa. As for organizing a blog post — do you know how to formulate a good headline? Craft a killer hook? Flow naturally into the body and then wrap it up with an action item? To be 
effective, you should know all of these.
Do you own your swagger? If you want to not only be effective, but make money, you need to be confident. Your confidence needs to show through in your blogging. Claim your niche. Show your expertise! Shout all about you!
How sticky is your stick-to-it-ivness? When I first decided to become a freelancer and be my own boss I had to pull on the big girl panties, send my work off into the world and learn to either not take “no” for an answer or to not let a “no” spoil my day. Writing is hard work. Writing and freelancing means there will be rejection.
What’s in it for your readers? To be successful you need to either make sales, gain readers… or whatever it is you want to claim as your own metric for being a successful blogger. But wait! You need to remember that whatever you do has to be about your readers! They are the lifeblood of all that you do. Provide information they can use and that they want to read!
How can you jump start being highly successful? Here are three tips:
- Claim your industry or niche. Know that no matter what niche it is, it is your job to make it interesting and intriguing. Even the “most boring” topic can become interesting in the right hands and with the right words.
- You don’t have to have a PhD in writing to be an effective writer. But you do need to know and understand grammar. You need to know how to craft a compelling message and sentences to share with your readers. How can you do this? By reading. By writing. By asking for assistance on those items that stump you.
- Take a chance. It’s scary to post your first blog and send it out into the world. You never know if someone will leave a crappy comment or hurt your feelings and believe me, it will happen. This is something that will test your resolve. You need to determine whether you can handle it or if you will want to give up at the first sign of trouble. Believe me, there have been blog posts in the past that garnered comments that made me cringe and want to cry, but as long as I stuck to my principles and believed in what I was saying I felt I could weather the storm, and I did.
Check your priorities. Determine whether you want to pursue this crazy blogging path then get to it! I’d love to hear what you feel are traits that highly effective bloggers possess.
(Photo Shutterstock Owl) (Photo Shutterstock Cat in chair)
