How to Establish Your Blogger Reputation

So you’ve decided to start your own blog—congratulations! That’s an awesome decision because blogging is fun. It gives you a terrific outlet to vent your writing frustrations and it’s also a simple avenue to read the work of others.

But the blogosphere is not all glitz and glamour. It takes hard work, patience, and several cups of black coffee to pull off what other bloggers have achieved—fame!

To guide your path in this journey, I would like to share some reminders.

1. First Impressions DO Count

Let’s not skirt around the fact that we DO judge a book by its cover, whether its presentable and creative or just downright tacky and unappealing. The same goes for websites. Once you land on a page, you immediately judge its worth through the background, layout, graphics, widgets, and images. If you don’t like the appearance, you immediately leave and move on to the next candidate, right?

This is what you don’t want to happen to you.

ALWAYS leave a lasting first impression with your audience through creative but simple blog pages. Avoid pop-up windows and excessive ads or banners. Opt for design templates that are organised and easy to manage. Whatever blogging platform you’re using, maybe WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, you should at least learn how to make your own template. This will help you personalise your blog and make it more dynamic in terms of visual appeal.

In fact, it’d be great if you can ask other reputable bloggers for advice. They’ll give good tips based on their own experiences and you can even ask them to recommend your blog to their fanbase. Of course, you should recommend theirs as well—it’s a win-win situation!

2. Interaction is Key

This is one of the prevailing rules of blogging. If you want audiences to notice your posts, you have to notice them as well.

How?

Just reply to comments! Although it sounds trivial, it goes a long way towards establishing your reputation as a blogger, one who’s receptive to feedback and suggestions. It doesn’t matter how long your replies are, as long as they are genuine, polite, and engaging, the users will appreciate these.

In fact, it’s better if you pro-actively encourage comments through your blog posts. Then, end your article with “Let me know what you think and hit the comments section” or “Don’t forget to leave a comment”. It’s a very simple move, which will propel your online credibility to better heights.

3. Stick to Your Angle

As a blogger, you know full well that it’s easy to get carried away with topic trends. But you should be fully committed to your own niche. Essentially, focus on what your blog is all about.

To give you an idea, here are mainstream niches used by bloggers:

The Author – about books, rereading of volumes and anthologies, analysis of deeper meanings in Literary works, or writing tips.

The Journalist – news updates, trends, latest controversies, celebrity news, newest technology and gadgets, or latest film releases.

The Reviewer - reviews about various releases, wherein the most common include movies, albums, books, products, gadgets, and clothing and designer lines.

The Guru – tips, writing style secrets, guides on what NOT to do, or how-to’s.

Once you choose a niche that you’re good at, commit yourself to it. Avoid getting distracted by “the most trendy” topics, as that will only prevent you from writing thought-provoking, informative, and entertaining blog posts.

THE BOTTOMLINE

You don’t need to be tech savvy or have the writing prowess of J.R.R. Tolkien to pull off a successful blog. All you need is patience, confidence in your work, and a dedication to your readers—the world!

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