Your voice is a critical component of your online success. Now if you’re lucky enough to have a voice like Morgan Freeman’s or Patrick Stewart’s, you’ll even make a rip-roaring success of yourself in the real world. But the blogosphere is made up entirely of words, puns and some poor innuendos and to cut through all of the clutter you need to have not just material that is unique but a storytelling and writing that is captivating and engaging.

Finding your voice, then, should be your first concern for without it you will never have a successful blog. Some writers and even advertisers refer to it as a ‘hook’; without it any new reader will not be reeled in by your text. This is why you often find people talking about great first lines in novels, such as:

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new”

From passion, to despondency to a humor darker than a moonless night, each of these lines has something in it that compels you to read on. Capture this well enough and your readers will keep on coming back to you like they’re addicted to crack. So how do you capture your voice and distil it into your blogs? Forget voice as you normally know it; your voice might be like Mickey Mouse’s for all we know but no one can hear your voice, so you’re safe (for now). What you should focus on more is the voice readers feel they hear when they read through your work. What shines through should be distinctly you and distinct in itself. It’s a very abstract concept and hard to capture, but once done it’s the most powerful tool in a writer’s arsenal.

Forget about blogs and think about your favorite writers instead for a moment. There is always that one quality about them that is so appealing, ranging from such things as Hemingway’s simplicity or Ludlum’s picturesque thrills. It’s that inescapable beauty that you must look to capture. Here’s how you can go about doing likewise.

Be spontaneous

Your inner chi flows most freely when you pull out the plugs in the dam that holds your soul. Okay, maybe it doesn’t but it is fun to make stuff like that up from time to time. Be spontaneous and just give air to your inner writer without judgment. Give yourself a three minute timer and just write, don’t think about it. Review yourself after three minutes and you’ll be surprised how freely your mind can paint a picture when you cut loose your inhibitions. What comes across will be quirky, will be authentically you and in the process, you can discover your voice.

Write as you’d speak

This is the truest test of your writing voice; is that writing on a page really you speaking? If it isn’t, re-work it until it is truly representative of you. If that confuses you, just sit back and ponder what is essentially you, words and phrases you might use and so on. You’ll see a difference come across instantaneously.

No norms

From a young age, we are drilled in the classical styles of writing and told to write in a standard style that conforms to norms. Sometimes, however, it is better to just break free and be you. The point of writing is to communicate a message and to that extent you must follow the written code. But feel free to experiment and use literary license on other occasions. In other words, feel free to explore yourself if you feel it’ll improve the quality and clarity of your message.

Just be brave in whatever you do and be yourself, a bit of sincerity and yourself reflected in a piece of writing goes a long way in endearing yourself to a reader.

You own a blog, and you have writing for the blog since last few months or years. Some people even say they like it, but you can’t see any results. Not many people are visiting your blog, you hardly have comments on your posts, and links are very difficult to get.

You have less than 100 subscribers, 30 among them are your friends and family.

And you keep wondering what’s wrong…

Do you think you need to wait for few more months for traffic snowball to set rolling, or do you simply believe your content sucks?

There isn’t really a way to determine, as junk for you can be a treasure for another.

So what do you do? How do you determine what’s wrong with your blog? Does your content really suck? I don’t know. There aren’t any rules, but there are signs. If your blog has any of these, it’s time to improve the quality of your content.

1.    Grade Your Content

If you are asked to rate the content of your blog on the scale of 1 to 10, what would be your answer?
6? 7? or 8? may be even 9?

That’s the mistake here. You always appreciate your writing, and so does your mother. You cannot, however, practically grade your content. Either you grab their attention quickly or you make them doze off. That’s it. Nothing in between.

2.    Are Your Posts Like Journal Entries?

Previously, most people updated their blogs daily, scribbling down about their everyday’s life. Things are, however, different today. It’s more of an online magazine now. Readers want polished content. If you blog sounds like ‘Dear Diary’, you need to work on it immediately. Today, no one is interested in your life.

3.    How Many Comments Do You Receive?

One of the best ways to find real value of your content is to count your comments. If you receive many comments on each blog post, people are genuinely interested in your content. However, if you have thousands of subscribers, yet not many comment on your post, you content is simply not interesting. In short, it sucks.

4.    How Much time Do You Spend Writing Each Post?

Do you spend less than an hour preparing for and writing a blog post? Yes, it’s possible to write a great post even in 10 minutes. However, this doesn’t happen very often. It’s important to spend some time researching, writing, editing, and proof reading your post. I know few bloggers spend 7-8 hours per post. Even if they don’t, it’s important for you to spend atleast a couple of hours on each post.

5.    Have You Ever Received a Fan Mail?

If your blog is really good, readers will go out of your way and inform you how much they like your blog. No, I am not talking about sweet little tweets that you keep getting. I am talking about 3 page long emails people send to thank you for your blog.

If you are a beginner, you wouldn’t get too many of such mails, but you will get some. If you haven’t received any such mails, you content isn’t good enough.

6.    How Many Hate Mails Have You Received?

If your content is good, there will be a small group of people who hate your blog. They will keep sending you emails on how bad your writing is, how rude you are, and how untrue your blog is. Don’t bother about them if you receive such blogs. They are never happy with anything. But if you don’t receive such blogs, you are probably not heading into the right direction.

7.    You Keep Waiting to Publish Your Best Ideas

Many beginners have good ideas, but they don’t want to share it with their readers. They want to save of for the future, when they convert it into a membership site or publish an e-book. You think you will publish once your blog is popular. But unless you don’t write good content and share good ideas with your readers, how do you expect it to get popular?

8.    Do You Write Everything that Comes to Your Mind?

If yes, nothing frustrates your reader more than this. You write down whatever you think about the topic. However, they are seeking for information that works, and not what you think about it. The moment you stop caring about them, they disappear. There are many others on the web that offers good content and precise information.

9.    How Can you Make a Difference?

Here is a small test for you: how would your blog help readers? A year from now, what difference would you like to see in your readers? No, you cannot answer ‘entertainment, and a sense of gratification’. It should be something like ‘they have lost 10 pounds’ or ‘they have 12,000 subscribers now’

10.    Do You Think You Deserve More?

At times, do you feel that your content is underestimated? You are providing so much information for free, yet people fail to recognize your importance? The answer is as simple as this: If you do something useful, you will get the desired attention.

I would be happy to tell you that developing great content is simple. I would love to tell you that there are many shortcuts to blogging riches. I would love to tell you that you don’t need any brain to become a successful blogger. But I would better be honest than tell you all these things.

Writing good content is hard, and you have to slog like an animal to achieve success. If you  are ready to do it, you will have it all.

Are Your Ready for a New Start? Forget about what you wrote in the past. Promise yourself to generate remarkable content every day. Only then you would become a successful blogger.

There are millions of blogs on the web today, and the count is increasing every day. However, have you ever thought, why few blogs are better than the others? Have you ever tried to figure out the essence of such top blogs? I have, and I got some great techniques to create a compelling content. Here are few of them.

1.    Eye-Catching Format

Your post shouldn’t be just a bunch of words jotted together. Don’t make your readers run away from your blog of boredom. Make your article eye-friendly by using bullet points, Sub-Headings, UPPER CASE, bold, italic, and so on. Why would someone read your long, boring article, when similar information is available elsewhere in a systematic, easy-to-read way, probably with nice pictures.

2.    Use Examples

I don’t like reading technical content after a certain limit. And I guess no one does. Examples make your article entertaining, simple-to-understand, and interesting for the readers. Give them what they want.

3.    News Updates

No, I am not asking you to start a news website, or keep giving your readers every bit of what’s happening out there. However, if possible, put the latest piece of news in-between your post, only if it’s relevant to your post. You cannot talk about Michael Schumacher’s car or Angelina Jolie’s tattoos while discussing historical monuments.

4.    Interviews

People like reading information in Q&A format, especially if it’s an interview. Now, you don’t really have to chase a celebrity for this. You can simply get a person whom your readers would like to listen to.

5.    Motivation

Motivational articles are good to read. However, by this, I don’t mean you must post an entire article on ‘You Can Do It’ or ‘You Are the One’. No. Give them tips about some thing, and motivate them to do it today. Change is probably the most difficult thing to adopt. Tell them how to do it.

Humor is something that I could have suggested to all the readers. However, I have seen several writers trying to create humor in their posts, but they end up messing it all up. Hence, use it, only if you are sure about what it means. Besides, these five tips are enough to make any article compelling.

Last month I met a blogger and we had a long chat about trends in blogsphere. Although he was quite adept in his field and had an extremely polished vocabulary, he was facing few problems with his blog.

He had started a blog just a month ago. He was, however, out of topics. He felt there was nothing more to write about. Everything he knew was written by him in just 17 posts. There was definitely a problem which he failed to notice. Hence, I promised him to check his blog and provide necessary solutions within a week.

After reading all his posts, I derived my conclusion instantly. He was a very skilled writer and had enough knowledge about the topic. His problem, however, was not end of topic. But he had taken his level of knowledge for granted. Explaining basic things in his niche didn’t make sense to him. He thought it was too obvious, and people would definitely know all these things.

I explained him the importance of starting from the basic and writing a separate post about every possible topic he had learned over years. He was not quite happy with my solution as he wanted his every post to be unique; something that was never written about before.

I faced a similar problem when I started this blog. I thought blogging tips are available all over the web, what difference I could possibly make. I wanted my every post to have some piece of information nowhere to be found on the web. I soon realized this strategy wouldn’t work if I want to have a long term blog.

Instead, I focused on the importance of simplicity. Breaking down things into many posts and explaining each point in-depth is the key. There may be many people smarter than you around the world. However, a major part of world’s population is still looking for simple information, with essential elements.

And it’s completely okay to be out of ideas. Instead of trying to hard to think about new topics, here is what you can do to post simple topics.

• Mention some experiences you had
• Write about the problem you faced recently and how did you overcome it
• Write about how you learned a significant lesson
• Think like an expert, write like a beginner

Remember, it is not necessary to write everything you know in a single post. Break it down into small topic and cover the depth of each of them.