The Ultimate Guide to a Wildly Sticky, Successful and Outstanding Blog
A SERIES

Finding A Direction — Goals, Titles, and Taglines

Whether you blog for money, or you blog for fun, a successful blog works like a successful small business. Every post is product made for customers called readers. Quality counts. So do schedule and budget. Having a mission and goals, knowing the what and how, and using the right tools for the job make your chance of success far greater.

Surely You Have a Goal? No? Gotta Get One!

A blogging goal gives a blog a heart and a direction. It’s powerful exercise in getting your thoughts focused in on why you’re actually doing this. In essence, a blogging goal provides a measure of success that is there to work toward.

1. Should you be blogging? 23 Questions for Prospective Bloggers – Is a Blog Right for You?
2. Wondering whether a blog is for you? Do you see yourself in this list of Top 10 Reasons to Start a Blog?
3. Goals for New Bloggers is a straightforward outline of how approach setting up a blog on the path to success.
4. We all have different reasons for why we invest time and sweat equity into blogging. Darren’s Blog Goals – Group Writing Project. Check out the complete list of submissions to read the goals of experienced and new bloggers who participated in the writing project.
5. In the end, when it comes to Measuring Blog Success: It’s the Goals, Stupid! — No one else can decide the destination you’re seeking.
6. Things changed dramatically the day I wrote My Blogging Goal. Every decision that I’ve made since has been to support what wrote in my blogging goal.

A Blog Title — Who Are You?

Names are the most important words that we know. They’re the first words we learn about ourselves. They’re how we begin to sort the universe. We say them soon after “hello” when we meet a new person. A blog name says something about the blog and about the person who named it.

Most importantly, outstanding blog titles are memorable and describe what the blog is about.

1. If your goal is to write for yourself and few select friends, name your blog however you all might find meaningful. If your goal is to write for a large audience, name your blog using words THEY will understand and be drawn to find out more about. One way to draw them is to include Key Words in your blog title. Titles that Grab Readers are titles that simply say what the blog is about.
2. Dorai answers the question How Do You Choose a Blog Title?
3. For a look at the most popular keywords already being used, see How Do You Call Your Blog? Be careful on following advice in the post and comments. The information is interesting, but I don’t necessarily come to the same conclusions reading the data.
4. Nick Wilson collected seven more articles on Killer Titles.

A Tagline — What’s Your Promise?

A fabulous tagline says what’s in it for me — the reader. It makes a promise that I can resist, a promise the blog never fails to deliver successfully.

5 Blog Taglines

Do you recognize these?
You’re only a stranger once. . . . Helping Bloggers Succeed . . .
. . . Copywriting tips for online marketing success . . .
Make money online blogging . . . create your blog free

They are: Successful Blog, Performancing, Copyblogger, Problogger, and Blogger taglines. Each one tells the promise of the blog they describe.

1. Follow this step by step coaching session on to write a killer tagline.
2. For more resources, you might review the 25 additional links to posts about taglines included in this piece.

A blog on its own is not really a business, but a wildly sticky, successful and outstanding blog has plenty in common with one. The more you know about your product, your readers, and what brings them together, the easier it will be to catch the attention of those who love what you do.

How are you serving the folks who read your blog?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!