10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Blogging!

I guess I have written so many things on blogging, some of my friends consider my blog as Blog-O-Pedia. Still I do think there are so many things which I did not even consider writing about on Blogging. Let’s this time go with the 10 things your competitors can teach you about blogging.

You have received so many lessons about blogging, how to establish a blog, how to make it a proper blog, etc. from me, this time I would ask you to look upon your competitor and understand what things they are doing which either you are not doing, or you are missing on your blog.

Believe me it will be a real fun and you will be able to improve yourself too much as a blogger.

10 Things Your Competitors Can Teach You About Blogging! 

I am sure you must be remembering my blog post on blogging mistakes, but this post is not about them. I am presenting some of the things which I learnt from watching competitors of mine in the field of blogging. Here are those 10 things which you can also learn from your own competitors:

Credit to Other Bloggers 

This is a special quality which I found in almost all the top bloggers. They never hesitate in naming the person from whom they get an idea. If you are not referencing the person from who you took the idea, it will be simply known as stealing ideas. And this is considered bad in the world of blogging.

I guess you all have noticed that I usually refer my blogger buddies for some of the ideas, blog posts, or comments, and not only I mention their names, but also try to link back to their blog through it. I honestly feel bad that I mention a name but don’t give a link to them. Usually bloggers are doing this these days, and it is happening because of the big daddy Google.

Frankly, Google never stopped anyone to link genuine things; I have never seen Google penalizing any website or blog if it is linking to genuine things in a genuine manner. If you are getting inspiration from someone for a blog post, then you should always mention them with a link on your posts.

To be very frank, when I check some of the top bloggers of the industry, I found one things common in between them. They all use to give proper credit to the images which they use, no matters if it is a royalty free image only. As far as my blogs are concerned, I am using images developed by Canva.com these days, and I use some of the royalty free images from hubspot.com and photoxpress.com

No Copy Paste 

The best things which I ever came to know through my competitors are that never do the copy pastes work on your blog or website. See getting inspirations from other blogs is quite normal, but the stealing lines from them are not a good thing to do. I have seen some bloggers are doing the entire article copied from somewhere and then publish it on their own blog with a tiny link down at the bottom, mentioning the real source of the blog.

Do you think it sounds good or ethical?

Well, if you were planning to do the same, then why the hell you started a blog?

Blogging simply means sharing whatever you know. It is not at all “oh yes I will share whatever Alok Vats knows or publish”.

If people are coming to your blog, then they will love hearing your opinion, not of someone else that too published on some other site, without any permission.

You can take some lines from someone else, and quote it on your blog.

Stay on Topic 

Staying focused is something which I came to know through my competitors only. I have seen one thing common in almost all the top bloggers that they won’t ever deviate from whatever they are writing.

Well, consider yourself as a reader of your blog. Let’s say you are looking for how to tie a tie. You reached to your own blog on how to tie a tie and found different information’s on the types of ties available, or fabrics of ties, etc. Will you be interested to read those different stories related with what a tie is all about?

Obviously no, so if you have started a blog on how to tie a tie then you should ideally explain the process to your readers. No matters if you are explaining it with pictures, words, or videos.

Always understand don’t ever try to mislead your readers.

Be Consistent 

Consistency is the most important aspect of a blogger. I have noticed that all the top bloggers are always remain consistent with their blog. I guess I have always mentioned this in the past as well, that we should fix a schedule and stay consistent with the same.

Like I do daily posting on this blog of mine, and try to remain consistent with it. Sometimes I might miss posting, but then I realize that how important it is. It is the most important thing which can help you to increase the loyal visitors of your blog.

About Page 

Now this is a point which I myself has implemented from the day one I started blogging. Whenever you will see the legend bloggers of your field you will realize this fact that none of them will be missing an about page on their blog.

There is an interesting thing which I can say about the about us page of your blog. I guess instead of writing about the author of the blog, it will always be better to mention the purpose of your blog and how it can benefit them.

I guess, when you write blog, you are actually explaining about yourself to the world, but what about your blog? This information your readers can look into your about us page.

Don’t Discuss Private Things Publicly 

Well, being a blogger you should always know that which things are public and which are private. You need not to make some things public.

Do see the top bloggers of your field and see they won’t reveal the name of the person if they ever write something bad about them. If you have issues with some blogger, try to sort it out on private mode only.

If you want to say something good about someone, then it has no harm, but then if you want to say something bad about someone then please don’t do it through your blog.

No Self Promotion 

To be very frank, top bloggers will never always do self promotion. Honestly there are some bloggers who just use their social media profiles to promote their own content only. I have seen many bloggers whose social media profile is like full of their own blogs link shared time to time.

I guess I am doing this mistake on my Google+ account (You can see over here), but this is wrong. Social media profiles of yours are not meant to share your work. It is your personal profile page and you should interact with other people from there as you normally do in your life.

But yes, you can share your links but try to make a ration of around 1:10 between your own content and genuine interactions like I mostly follow on my twitter account.

Use Own Domain Name 

Did you ever come through the profile of any top blogger who is using either the blogspot domain name or the wordpress.com sub domains?

I doubt, I seriously doubt about it.

All the top bloggers of this world prefers writing for their own domain name only. I always suggest that using free domain names is not a good idea for blogging, if you are serious about it.

Well you might ask me why I am not mentioning self hosted blog over here. Well, I have seen a few top bloggers who are not using self hosted blogs, but yes they are using the proper domain name for their blog. If you too want to develop your blog without getting a web hosting but a domain name only, then you can mail me to know more about it in details.

Professional Looking Design 

None of the top bloggers will ever use the simple or free template for their blog. They might not be using the premium themes for their blog, but still they will use the premium looking theme for their blog.

If you are doing blogging, then you must have gone through many blogs, don’t you realized this after seeing some of the blogs which you like?

I am 100% sure that all the top bloggers, who are being liked by many people, will surely using customized themes and design for their blog.

Showing Gratitude 

The last but not the least things which you can learn from your competitor bloggers is that always remain humble towards others and show your gratitude to them. No matter how big brand name you have built with your blog, but still you need to stay connected with your readers.

No matter how busy a blogger is (ideally the big bloggers remain too much busy), you post a comment on their blog and see you will soon get the response over there. Tweet something to them, and see they will at least make it favorite or retweet it or respond to it.

In fact I have seen many small sized bloggers who won’t ever respond back to the comments posted by their readers. Honestly they don’t respond because of any issue, but they actually are not aware that they are making an innocent mistake with it. There was a time when I too was getting so many comments on my blogs, but was not responding to them as I was not aware about this basic blogging etiquette which helps you to grow your network.

My blogs suffered because of this attitude badly. And I don’t want any other newbie blogger should also face the same.

Honestly I realized one more lessons from my competitors. And it is about asking your readers about their feedbacks, opinions, and comments.

No matter how satisfying their visits to your blog are, but still inspire them to leave a comment on your blog and appreciate them for doing this.

Did you ever try to notice about your competitors? What are the things which they are using on their blog and you might not be aware of? Do share your opinion in the form of comments. I would love to know what you think about this blog post of mine, what is your opinion about it, and if there is something which you found from your competitor and I might not be aware of the same.

I would love hearing your opinion about this blog post.