Today I thought I’d compile a definitive list of must follow rules for bloggers that all successful blogs follow:
I was going to stop at ten, but 11 has a much nicer ring to it, don’t you think? Plus point number 11 brings them all together nicely.
This post was inspired by a variety of comments, tweets, and blog posts of late that suggested I or other well-known blogging “experts” teach “rules” or “systems” of blogging.
The reality is that there are no rules. While ProBlogger obviously contains a lot of teaching about blogging, I’d never want to suggest that all blogs need to subscribe to a single philosophy of blogging. Rather, this blog is a place where I hope to share what I do, as well as sharing what has and hasn’t work for me (and similarly, to let guest bloggers share their own experiences).
The reason I take this approach is that of the numerous blogs that I’ve been involved with over the last nine years, no two blogs have been identical in terms of what has and hasn’t worked. There are some principles that have worked for me, but transfer those ideas to other blogs, and there are no guarantees of success.
There are also a few strategies that I personally avoid in blogging that I’ve had little or no success with; however, they’ve worked for others.
If anything, the only “rule” of blogging that I’d be brave enough to preach is: find your own way.
Most of the successful blogs that I’ve come across have something unique about them. It might be the personality or voice of the blogger, the topic, the design, the fact that they were first, that they’re funny, that they’re comprehensive and thoughtful, that they post 100 times a day, or that they post once a month… But each of them is unique somehow.
Successful bloggers tend to forge their own path. Many of them are aware of what works for others and learn by observing, but they also take what they learn, experiment with it for themselves, and let it evolve in a way that fits with them and their audience.
