Thursday, December 07, 2006

What's the secret of succesful blogs?

This is a question I bet each and every one of us, active members of the blogosphere, would like to have an answer to. Here's what Tyler Cowen (from Marginal Revolution), one of the most succesful bloggers indeed and one of my favourite econbloggers (that very intriguing new species that I also talked about in a previous post), gives as answer. To repeat and emphasize it once more, it's all about three crucial ingredients:
  1. Expertise.
  2. Regularity (Cowen suggests at least 5 times a week).
  3. Recurring characters, like a TV show

I could not agree more. Both in terms of the items and in terms of their ranking. Anybody who disagrees (and is succesful :-))?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to follow them but right now it seems that few people are interested.... i would suggest also use social portal like technorati, digg, etc... take a look to my blog and if you have suggestions for me please tell me...

Gabriel M said...

I think it's something true of all sites, not just blogs.

1) Have people in the target group visit at least once.

2) Always give them a reason to return.

I.e. the main page should include a "hook". But I fail by my own standard with both my site/blog and with Liberalism.ro

Sebi Buhai said...

Hey guys. Tnx for the interesting comments.

For damned owl: true, you should somehow market yourself, add some tags, try to be active (in a blogosphere community for instance) etc. and based on reciprocity and perhaps de facto recognition you might get further. It is complementary to the 3 criteria mentioned, but in a way it is just an extension of your "activity" as a blogger (which might include posting with a high enough frequency, but also looking for marketing devices). Nice blog, by the way!


For gabriel mihalache: I don't quite see how 1) is endogeneous and not exogenous to your choice, as I also don't see what is a "target group" since this might be itself an evolving label (you might want to target others or more groups, in time etc). But I may miss the whole point here. 2) I agree, but I think it is contained in Cowen's 3 criteria (expertise + recurrent topics). I don't see how you'd give it a different toss.