How to Make Your Blog Famous | Big Think

How to Make Your Blog Famous

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Blogger Anil Dash shares his wisdom on boosting blog traffic and income.

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Anil Dash:

Anil Dash (born 1975) is a blogger, entrepreneur and technologist. He is currently the Director of Public Technology Incubator Expert Labs and a partner at ACTIVATE, a media & technology consulting firm.

Previously an independent technology consultant, and a new media developer for the Village Voice, Dash was the first employee of Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, TypePad and Vox, and served as its Vice President and Chief Evangelist until moving on to Expert Labs. In 2003, Dash was one of four bloggers featured on the PBS series Media Matters. He is also in demand as a speaker at such events as Northern Voice and the Web 2.0 Conference.

Dash's current role is directing Expert Labs, a non-profit, independent group with a mandate to help policy makers in the U.S. Federal Government utilize the expertise of their fellow citizens.

Dash was born and grew up near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A long-time resident and vocal fan of New York City, he lived in San Francisco for a time but has now returned to New York City.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: What’s the key to successful blogging?

Anil Dash:The key to successful blogging is some good friends. I remember reading a fellow, John Gruber, who is a friend of mine on Daring Fireball. They were thinking obsessions and passion were two necessary items, and I think a lot of my favorite blogs have those things. Somebody loves something irrationally beyond the point of all sanity, and just wants to own that topic. When somebody has that kind of passion for what they love, it can be interesting to you even if you otherwise wouldn’t have been interested in the topic.

I think that is really fascinating, so some of the single subject blogs that I’ve seen are amazing. I saw one the other day—it was just about album covers from back in the old vinal days. They took record covers, they cover one at a time, and they talked about who the photographer was, who the art director was, what the impact of that album cover was. It can be about a record that I’ve never heard, and maybe even a group I’ve never even heard of, and they can tell a story about this album cover and what it meant to them and why it’s important. That’s mesmerizing to me. I think those are the great, truly great blogs—somebody has a passion beyond all rationality, and is so excited about it that you can’t help but be excited too.

It’s a little bit of a bittersweet thing that the blogs people discover first are essentially news or pop culture or sports which are things that we’ve had in media for years. Those are good, they are fine. I read them and I think they are important, but it’s always that personal blog that is somebody is telling you about their passion, their hobby, their area of expertise, the thing that they know better than anybody else in the world. Those people are the best bloggers in the world to me.

Question: What specific steps can a blogger take to boost his or her traffic?

Anil Dash:A lot of times people think getting your company or your individual ideas visible on the web involves a lot of tricks. There’s a whole industry called search engine optimization or SEO a lot of it is legitimate. People were doing consulting on trying to get information discoverable in the web, and a lot of it is snake oil.

People feel like Google is this angry volcano monster, and maybe if we throw a goat in there it will help. They just have no idea whether what they’re doing has any science behind it at all. And as it turns out, the fundamental principles are really, really easy. If you want to get a message out on the web effectively, frequently update your content—a blog is great for this. I’m biased because I love blogging, but like any kind of system that lets you frequently update your content, it is going to make sure your information is current, that it’s up to date and it’s also going to let people know that you’re committed to communicating with them over time.

Frequently updating content, and is has to be well-written, well-designed, well-presented. Those sound like little things, but the way information looks and how readable and discoverable it is makes a big difference as to whether people want to share it, and all of the search engines or audio systems people use to discover content are built around links.

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