Believe it or not being a rock star and having a successful blog are quite similar and I will point out some of those similarities here.

First off both successful blogs and rock stars have a lot of people that come to see them and are anxiously awaiting the next song or post to be released to the public.

They also have people that spend money to purchase their merchandise as well as pay them to endorse their product. 

With rock stars these are usually things like t-shirts, songs and possibly endorsements on TV commercials. 

With successful rock star blogs these are things like your own products, t-shirts (yes, there are a lot of blogs that sell t-shirts) and the endorsements are usually affiliate products.

What does it take to create a rock star blog?

Basically it take same things to become a rock star blogger as it does to be a rock star but there are many more opening for rock star bloggers than there are for true rock stars.

But here are the basics for how to create a rock star blog.

Sing your own songs in your own voice – This is obvious for the true rock stars for bloggers it means that you need to provide original content on your blog.

This doesn’t mean that you have to write all your own content, there are a lot of rock stars that hire people to write their songs BUT they always review and rehearse these songs and change what they don’t like before they release them to the public.

If you are purchasing content (and I don’t care where) you need to review it, check to make sure it fits with your blog and change what you don’t like or what doesn’t sound like you.  This way all the songs (posts) will sound like they came from the same band no matter who wrote them.

Prepare your stage – every big rock star has a stage that is part of the show.  Your blog is your stage and it should present an image that you are proud of and reflects you and your content.

This doesn’t mean that you have to have explosions and flashing lights everywhere you look but you should have it look professional.  It doesn’t have to be flashy to be professional but it does need to be clean easy to read and navigate.

Make sure your roadies know their job – Most rock stars are their own roadies when they first start out. The carry their own equipment, set up the instruments and test them all by themselves.  As they grow in popularity they hire roadies to take care of this.

For rock star blogger you already have at least one roadie and this is your hosting service.  The amount of help you get from this roadie depends on the service.  If you just want the basics you can use sites like Blogger.com or WordPress.com and just get the basics.  If you want to have the roadies take care of some of the technical aspects of your blog like SEO and plugins you can go with a service like Blafeo.com.  If you are a unique show (special features and plugins) you will need to find a hosting service that is reliable and either you need to know the specifics (plugins, SEO, product creation) or you need to hire a roadie to handle them for you.

Train your stagehands – Rock stars usually have stage hands that are responsible for specific items such as lighting, sound and special effects.

If you are running your own blog with special features then you can look at plugins as your stage hands, they will take care of much of the process in the background and you can tell them what they need to do and just forget about it.  You will have to check up on them every now and then to see if they are still doing their job, in other words you need to check to see if the plugin needs updated.

Sing on key – This goes for your back up singers too. For a rock star this is an obvious point, for a rock star blog this means you need to stay on topic in your niche.  And you need to make sure your backup singers are on topic too.  Who are your backup singers?  They are guest bloggers, affiliate programs and anything else that will be visible to your fans on your rock star blog. 

How do affiliate programs become your backup singers?  Here is an exaggerated example; let’s say you have a blog on saving the whales and an affiliate program that sell harpoons, this affiliate program would definitely be a sour note on your performance.

Everything should stay in your niche or be something that supports your niche, this is how you stay on topic through out your blog.

The more gigs you schedule the better – every time a rock star plays a gig he can add fans and followers to his product and the more fans and followers he has the more tickets, CD’s and merchandise he can sell.

For a rock star blog every post is a gig and you have the chance of getting new fans with every post.  The more posts you have that are on topic (in your niche) the more chances you have of building your fan base and selling your merchandise. 

One of the major keys here is to stay on topic in your niche. You won’t find many rock stars singing opera to gain fans they might stray into country a little to steal a few fans because there is some overlap in those niches, but their main following will always be rock and roll.

Promote your gigs – before rock stars are rock stars they usually do all their own promotion, usually by word or mouth or putting up posters in high traffic areas.

A rock star blog will do the same thing. Except their word of mouth is usually an RSS feed, a tweet, search engine optimization or an email and their posters don’t go on telephone poles they go on social bookmarking sites like Stumpleupon, Digg and countless others.  Of course, just like with the rock star the more promotion you get the more people there will be that show up at your gigs.

As you can see there are a number of ways being a rock star is comparable to creating a successful blog.  There are more ways that they are the same such as learning your chords instead of lip syncing but I covered that in another post.

I bet some of you are still wondering what all this has to do with “How to create a rock star blog”.  The answer is that all the steps listed above are needed to create a rock star blog all you need to do it follow them and you will find fans of your blog showing up at your gigs.

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If you are blogging you need to know have a few blogging instructions to make sure you are starting out on the right foot.

If you are going to start a blog there are some things that you need to consider before you take the plunge. These items will help keep your readers coming back and build a loyal following of readers.

1.) Make sure your blog is set up on the right hosting service. By this I mean, should you be using a free blogging services like WordPress.com and Blogger.com or should you be setting up a blog on your own domain.

The simple rule of thumb that I use is if your blog is for your business or for profit have it set up on its own domain name. If it isn’t for either of these purposes then you should be fine on a free blogging service.

The main advantage of having the blog on your own site is that you can add plugins and optimize the blog much easier than you can with a free blogging service. This brings you traffic and traffic brings you customers and sales.

2.) Make sure you use the right blogging software – software like Joomla, TypePad and Concrete will all make blogs but I recommend that you use WordPress. I recommend WordPress because it is the most highly supported when it comes to plugins, themes and even support. There are a number of sites that will help you with your WordPress blog besides the support that you will find at WordPress.org. Besides it is easy to learn and to use.

3.) Keep your blog in one niche – I do a lot of blog research and I constantly find blogs that have numerous niches covered. They will cover items such as custom cigars and acne on the same blog. Most of these are using some type of auto-posting system and throwing in Adsense and other advertising programs. These are the type of sites that make the search engines and PPC advertising systems change their rules and end up hurting everybody.

If you keep your blog in one niche the likelihood of getting readers to come back time and time again is greatly improved. This also brands you as an expert in your niche and builds loyalty with your prospective customers which in turn will increase the sales of your product and/or affiliate products you recommend.

Speaking of niches, your niche should be something that you have an affinity for. You don’t have to be the expert but you need to like the niche enough that you are willing to put in the work and it helps if you do know enough to know if the post you are entering is good information or bad information.

4.) Do some keyword research – Keywords are the heart and soul of your blog. If you are relying on the search engines to get traffic to your site you need make sure you are using keywords that are being searched and are targeted to your niche.

There are a lot of free keyword research tools out there but Google’s Adword Keyword tool is by far the best free tool you can use to do some quick research of your keywords and it will suggest keywords that you might not of thought of.

5.) Make your blog reflect you – this simply means that your blog should be something that reflects your personality or the personality of your business. This can be the tone of voice you use in your posts or it can be something as simple as putting your name and picture on the blog. Let people know who is doing the talking, let them see you, let them put a face to the voice and you will find that you will get a better following than trying to be the anonymous expert.

These steps will get you started with blogging, review them before you start your blog or if you already have a blog going see if they apply to your blog. They are the backbone of almost all successful blogs and if followed will give you a foundation of trust that your readers will appreciate.

At Blogging Beginners you are provided with all the blogging instructions you will need to build your blog, find your niche, do your keyword research, create posts and drive traffic to your site.

Tags: Blogging Instructions