Good to Great, Why some Blogs Succeed and Others Don’t
by Collis
Filed under Blogging, Freelance Advice
Have you ever wondered why some blogs engender the success that they do? Why Techcrunch has 1/2 of a million subscribers and charges $10,000 a month for a 125x125px ad? Or why more than 20,000 blogs have chosen to link to BoingBoing and 1,500 people have listed it as a Technorati favourite? Why the DailyKos received more than half a million visits a day and every post receives comments number with three digits? What sets these giants of their fields apart from the rest and why have they become some of the most well known blogs in the world? And how many questions can I ask in one paragraph?
What follows are my observations on what sets these blogs apart…
The Givens
First there are the requisites for a good blog that any how-to-blog site will tell you about – that you must blog consistently, be on-topic, produce well written posts and that you need a clear focus to the blog. We will take these as givens as they are all factors in making a blog good. Certainly by themselves these are not a formula for success however, after all there are many, many blogs that do this that never make it to greatness. So clearly there are other factors that separate a good blog from a great one.
First among Equals
Rand from SEOMoz writes a very insightful article about how to choose what not to blog about. He does this by explaining that any area has space for only a given number of great blogs, a larger but still limited number of good blogs and still larger number of also-rans. When looking at the great blogs you quickly see that they each dominate one area, usually with a not quite as popular and successful #2 and #3.There is only a certain amount of mindshare available for any specific sector and this forces a blog to sit somewhere in a pyramidal structure. At the very top of the pyramid there is only space for a couple of people to sit and these are the A-list blogs.
Of course this doesn’t exactly explain what put those blogs at the top of their pyramids, but it does highlight one significant point, all things being equal those blogs have already filled those top spots and unless you can find a way to make a bit more space a new blog won’t fit up there. In that sense they are firsts in their fields. They are innovators that may not have been the absolute first blog on that topic, but are likely to have been the first really good blog on it.
Breaking News
Another characteristic of blogs that rise to the top is that they break news first. That is they tend to be sources of information you either cannot get elsewhere or would not know where to find. By providing the hottest news items the great blogs make it imperative that you subscribe or visit them first. In that sense they become indispensable.
Opinionated
Hand in hand with news is opinion – some would say the mainstay of the blogosphere. Great blogs have an opinion and aren’t afraid to share it. Moreover its an opinion that you can only get from one place. Whether its an educated opinion such as TechCrunch‘s, a funny opinion such as theSuperficial‘s, an innovative opinion such as 37Signals‘ or a methodical opinion such as ProBloggers‘, it is always an opinion that is highly rated.
Everyone has an opinion, but some people’s are just more worthwhile than others. Great blogs have opinions that matter.
Established since …
A great blog is like a fine wine, it takes time to reach its pinnacle. With time comes momentum and as in many areas of life success breeds further success. As great blogs hit their critical mass they acquire more readers and thus more links and standing and thus more readers and so on. An important difference here is that a great blog capitalizes effectively on its position to push itself forward.
In the Mainstream
Finally a great blog is almost always in a mainstream field – celebrity gossip, gadgets, politics, business, blogging, tech companies. Moreover they tend to reside in reasonably tech savvy fields as well. That is to say areas where a lot of people are online, know what a blog is and maybe even know what RSS is. That being said, this area is only growing and currently only a small percent of the population is online so more and more niche areas will open up into larger arenas.
So there you have it, my analysis of what sets blogs apart. Certainly its not definitive and I’d be interested to hear what other people think.
AN excellent analysis.Now thats what i love…I am bookmarking it so i can give a better comment tonight.Lol Looks like another one for my spawners.
Nice post Collis
You’re off to a good start
In my opinion something that characterizes many successful blogs – especially in the advice fields such as Problogger or Copyblogger – is the usefulness of their posts. No blog can bat .1000 but the top blogs are the ones that come closest for putting up consistently useful posts.
Thats very true actually, utility does make a big difference in terms of going back again and again.
In my opinion timing plays a very important role in many of the successful blogs.
Not sure if a Problogger 2 can become as popular as Problogger – after all the first mover always has an advantage
@Raghu:
Talking about Problogger, a lot of blogging blogs have sprung up since it’s launch, but none of them have replicated Darren’s success or even come close to giving away as much usefull information as him. Good blogs for bloggers have been launched, but focusing on specific areas that interest bloggers as well as other groups, such as the Copyblogger blog. (Un)fortunately, Darren is devoting a lot of time and though into Problogger and since he does also run a whole blog network the opportunities for inspiration are surely outstanding.
@Collis: So I open NNW and there are two new posts from NxE… Mind you, not short articles, but full blown quality content. This is good for building up your article base with pillar as well as evergreen content, but I hope you do consider tweaking your posting schedule as we discussed. Don’t want to see you burn out.
So this month i’ll be posting about “Business Ideas” for half the month, these I can then group together in a nice category and eventually the order of those categories will become the chapters of the book I am writing. So for example Chapter 2 is “Business Models” which will be April’s writings.
At least thats what the plan is
Who knows what will happen!
Collis, you are too kind. Thanks for the mention, I appreciate that! Truth is, I actually visit your excellent site every day. I’ve had a lot of great feedback on my blog so that is definitely a motivating factor to keep going–I wouldn’t want to let my readers down!
My analysis of what sets this blog post apart? The crazy dog. Well played.
Yay, I knew someone would love that crazy dog, he’s just so… crazy
Good linkbait.
Interesting opinion.
Collis, I think you’re point about people not knowing about blogs or RSS is very important. There have been many times where I’ve talked to other people who work specifically in information services, and where they’ve said they didn’t really understand what either of those concepts were. And if the supposedly tech-savvy folks don’t get it, the average person is certainly going to be a bit lost.
This is one of the reasons I’ve tried to go with a bit more magazineish layout on my site — to try to make it a bit more approachable for the ‘non-blog’ folks.
yeah its funny if you hang around in certain circles you start thinking that RSS and blogs are mainstream, but they really are not. I would say the majority of people still do not know what they are. Actually scratch that I think lots of people know what a blog is, but certainly not many know what RSS is or how to use it. I only started using an RSS reader 9 months ago – though I did know of their existence – and i would say I am a reasonably advanced internet user.
Still it is just a matter of time I think!
The crazy dog is the same thing as the purple cow: you must be remarkable in order to catch attention in today’s world.
I’ve also observed that successful niche blogs add their own personality and personal touch to the blog. A friend of mine with 2 blogs says his personal blog gets read 50X more than his business one. If you are developing a “fan” base, these people like reading blogs because it gives them a sense of an inside connection to someone that they would not be able to sit down and have a cup of tea with personally. I try to throw in tid bits about me and my life and my readers seem to enjoy feeling like they know me – isn’t that what social media is all about?
Great advice. Something to strive for. BTW I’ve stumbled this.
Is having a photo of a crazy dog a requirement? I;m on all my blog posts and pages and trying to get people to care about me. Well, more people than my already really cool fan base… be nice to get that $10,000/month for an ad….
Three years have passed and RSS is still not mainstream. When I tell my readers to subscribe in Google Reader to the RSS feed they still glaze over.