How to be a rockstar blogger – part 5
Write consistently – themes, timing, timeless
The best tip I can give you about becoming a Rock Star Blogger is to write consistently both in time and subject. Writing on your blog on a daily basis is a must for those starting out if you want to have a chance of competing with others in your field. If you can’t do it daily, then you need to be thinking in terms of several times each week. Once a week is a poor third and it will take you much longer to reach any goals you have set yourself.
When I ran the Hysterectomy Association I would write on a daily basis for the first five years, remember this was the early days of the web and blogging was only just getting started so please don’t take this as any sort of a guide for how long you might be doing it today. Within a few years though I’d accumulated so much material that for almost any search that people made at least one of my pages or posts would pop up. It meant that I had a good stream of what is called ‘organic traffic’ across all the main search engines. That was when I moved to a once or twice weekly schedule.
In addition, to my own posts, news and updates, I also added what is called user-generated content in the form of personal stories from women who were using the website. When I closed the site there were around 3,000 pages and posts and thousands of comments. And the forums, at the point of closing, had almost 500,000 individual posts in the many different conversations and threads.
I write once or twice a week on this blog and have been doing so since March 2012. When I merged this site with the Hysterectomy Association and Hysteria I realised I needed to do quite a lot of housekeeping and spent around 12 months clearing out old irrelevant posts, tags, categories and comments. I left what I felt would be of most value to the people visiting. And despite my work to close the hysterectomy association, the posts and pages I imported are still a source of much organic traffic to this particular site!
Since my clutter clearing, there are today over 1300 pages of content (posts and pages) and over 5,200 comments left since I started the blog on 6th July 2006. Admittedly, that is across a range of topics as it’s only in the last three years I’ve begun honing my focus.
The best content is also timeless, in other words, it is not tied to a particular place, event or time like here today, gone tomorrow news stories. Sure, you can write about those topoics when necessary, but creating information that is timeless will be less hassle for you and will attract a wider audience.
The reason for this is simple, the questions never or rarely change. ‘How can I make more money?’ ‘How can I lose weight?’ How can I change my life?’ How do I replace a light bulb?’ ‘How do I recover from surgery?’ or even ‘How do I become a rockstar blogger?’ By answering the questions that people have relating to the topic you are passionate about you will create a steady stream of visitors who will come and go as they need to, and will even recommend you to others in their circle should the question arise over drinks in the pub.