The Five Essential Elements of an Influential Blog

The Five Essential Elements of an Influential Blog

Reader Comments (53)

  1. The Heath brothers actually break out “emotion” from “story,” which leaves them with 6 elements that spell “succes.”

    Too contrived and cheesy for me, so I changed it. 🙂

  2. Hi Brian. Thanks for the great advice! I am just learning to blog for our small business and we can use all the advice we can get. We will be sure to keep reading!

  3. Your list is right on target Brian. I’ve been trying to take my blog to the next level and it has been a challenge to get all the pieces right. I’ve been experimenting with many things and it has been very surprising what works and what doesn’t.

    Your blog has been very helpful in helping me see things from a little different perspective. Thanks for helping me develop my own unique story!

    John

  4. Hi Brian.

    I totally agree that unless your blog doesn’t hit a chord with your readers it cannot succeed. Traffic and all is fine, and there are many ways to get traffic even without great content but your blog is only successful people your words extend a hand towards the readers and touch them where they really need it.

  5. only successful people your words extend a hand towards the readers and touch them where they really need it.

    Well, I don’t know how I wrote that :-). It actually should have been: …your blog is only successful when your words extend a hand towards…

  6. the probem i find is focusing for any lenght of time… there i go again shifting the topic out of focus.

    if it was a top 10 list maybe FOCUS will get in there.

  7. I think a lot of blogger find item #1 and #5 in direct opposite to one another.

    After reading many personal stories posted on blogs, the last thing I would classify them as is “simple”.

    Good post!

  8. This post reminds me of one of Seth Godin’s about how to blog or something to that effect.

    Seth discussed that you have succeeded on blogging if your reader’s mind has been boggled by what you have blogged about or something like your blog post has changed the way your reader thinks.

    And I can just totally agree with that if being an influential blogger is one’s goal.

  9. Alfa, my definition of an influential blog is one that achieves the goals of its owner.

    I hope that’s everyone’s goal. 🙂

  10. This post caught my eye because I think Malcolm Gladwell is a genius. I’ve been trying to hit on the certain something that gets my blog to the tipping point, and I just haven’t found it. I value good content, which absolutely includes well-written content; but I think I might lack a defined niche or greater benefits to readers. Great post!

  11. I love it!… SUCCS!…. It’s so memorable, and easy to follow. To add to our credibility as bloggers, I have another acronym to expand on point #4 – Credibility. We all know that, in a court of law, our credibility, supported by our evidence DEFEATS doubt. Well, to help all of you savvy bloggers remember the types of evidence that you can use to support your credibility, remember:
    D= Demonstrations
    E= Examples
    F = Facts
    E = Evidence/Results
    A = Analogy
    T = Testimonials
    S = Statistics

    For example, when I tell you that 1 in 120 children today are diagnosed with autism, you are far more likely to be interested in learning about autism than if I said, “I know many people are impacted by autism.” The evidence gives us something concrete into which we can sink our teeth!

    And, our audience sees that we are no longer just spouting off our opinions. Rather, we are educating, and moving ideas forward with the support that makes people believe and want to learn more.

  12. Another excellent post which guides me in my quest for excellence. I think I have the Unexpected and Story aspects (so I’m good on “US”, I guess), but I’m not so sure I’m hitting the Simple, Concrete and Credible (so maybe I “SCC”?). Good advice, and thanks for it. – Joseph

  13. this is a very informative post. thanks for sharing the 5 essential elements of an influential blog. i am coming up with my list of such blogs and this post of yours is a helpful one. cheers!

  14. Another great post Brian. Again im very new to blogging, but your posts, along with Darrens and all the other authors posts on this site are helping me a great deal, in how i should be running my blog, and generally what blogging is all about.

    Thanks and keep up the great work.

  15. Good article. But, I don’t think any of that is unique to a blog. Same rules apply with anything you put on a website — blog or not — seems to me.

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