Social Media

If you ask anyone what makes a blog popular, they’ll say content. No matter how many clever headlines tell you otherwise, content is still king. If your content does not offer value in one way or another, people will simply not visit your site. The two steps to building a successful and popular blog are simply: writing great content and having people talk about it.

Blog’s don’t grow on their own; they grow through people sharing them. By having people “talk about” your content, I simply mean people sharing your content. This could be via word of mouth, Twitter, Facebook, or even a link from their own blog. The latter example, surprisingly (or not) is what I’m going to look at today.

If you don’t know by now, the “cloud” is a way that myself and thousands of other people are now referencing the internet and the servers that power it. Cloud jacking is simply taking over the market in your niche and gaining mindshare. It doesn’t have to be as dirty as it might sound though. I completely believe in honest engagement and quality content to help you rise about the competition.

I like to think I have Cloud-jacked quite a few niches over the last four years. For example, I’ve managed to build a top 10 personal development blog in 12 months and I was voted the top social media marketer under 21. It all took a lot of work, but it also followed the same process. And this process, guys, is what I’m going to share with you today.

Without scrolling further down to check the answer, I want you to think about something. What could be my number one point be in the answer to “how do I become more likeable?” What do you think is the most important factor to becoming likeable online?

Before I get into that, you might be wondering whether being likeable really matters. After all, you could be anyone behind a computer screen. Let’s put it this way: I’m far more likely to link to my best friend in a blog post than a random blogger and I’m far more likely to send my favourite cousin a copy of my new product for free than someone I don’t know.

In terms of traffic, I feel like Twitter is becoming a sort of hybrid between Digg of a few years ago and StumbleUpon. By Digg I mean that thousands of blogs are now including “Tweet this” buttons (just like they were with “Digg It” buttons) and like StumbleUpon, Twitter has the ability to send thousands of visitors in a short period of time.

My friend Gyutae managed to leverage over 35,000 hits in two weeks and I know blogs like TheNextWeb have reported over 250,000 visitors per month from the service in their stats. That’s a lot of traffic.