Keys to a Successful (Movie) Blog
Now and then, we all stumble upon an attention-worthy blog with some interesting content and nice writing but lo-and-behold there isn’t any sign whatsoever that there is any kind of traffic coming to that particular blog: zero comments, no apparent visits or even the author herself wondering why the blog has no following. How sad! It might be presumptuous to assume that every blogger or website owner wants to be read by more than themselves and their mother but for the sake of discussion, let’s assume that most do want a nice community to share ideas with. Just on an aside note, I don’t pretend to know everything about the subject and only direct this post to blog owners with little to no traffic although all of those tips apply to everyone. I welcome any suggestion or tips on improving web traffic!
Appearance:
It all first starts with how the blog looks. Poor or bland design are an instantaneous way to lose readers before they even start looking at your content. Stay away from the stock templates and customize to the limit of your capacities. Not everyone has the time or abilities to design a great site from scratch but at least pick some respectable templates that you can customize. It is very important that people can distinguish your site from the thousands of blogs who have the exact same stock template. These days, there is absolutely no excuse for a blog to be using one of the stock Blogger or WordPress templates. If you have seen your blog somewhere else, that’s usually a good indication it’s time to change. Avoid odd color schemes, tiny fonts, white text on black background (notice my text is gray 
), massive blocks of text or any other aesthetic issues that may send a visitor away within the first 10 seconds.
Content:
This is only a small part of having a successful blog but a required one. Without interesting and varied content that people want to read, no one is going to come back to your blog. Think about the website that you visit regularly, you are checking for new interesting content or discussion. If this is missing, you have absolutely no reason to come back to that site. Finding one’s voice when writing posts takes a little bit of time but it is the main aspect that separates Joe’s movie blog from Matt’s movie blog. One of the main fallacy of the novice blog owner is having a blog with no particular niche. If you are going to have a movie blog, don’t write a post about your favorite comfort food or a ranking of NFL teams (at least not every day).
Another big problem that I see is the big chunk of text issue which is also an appearance problem. Personally, I am much less inclined to read a post if all I see is a massive chunk of text. It could be a great piece of writing but I will never know. My rule of thumb is to break up every one or two paragraphs of text with pictures. Try to add some pictures, graphs and spice things up a little so people are more likely to read at least a portion of your post. Other more “minor” issues are constant grammatical/spelling errors and failure to express oneself clearly which are never a good thing. Make sure to spell-check and re-read your own post.
Polls, giveaways, games, asking the readers for their opinions etc… All of these are forms of interactivity that add to the experience of visiting your blog and may be the tipping point between a visitor who never comes back and one who bookmarks your site 
Comments and Community:
I believe this is the most important area of having a successful blog and is one that most blog owners neglect. Fostering discussion is one of the easiest way to create a community and have repeat visitors who will actually read your posts. The vast majority of visits are “empty”. Dude somehow lands on your site, skims (not read!) through it quickly and leaves without leaving a comment. The chances that this person comes back are almost nil. People like to voice their opinions if you tickle them just enough and (most) blog owners enjoy having a nice community to talk to, no matter how small. Unfortunately, the vast majority of blog owners do not know how or are not committed enough to do the work (and then wonder why they get no traffic!).
Answering comments is the very least a blog owner should do. Personally, if I leave two or three comments on a blog and don’t get at least some signs that the owner is alive, I usually don’t waste my time and never come back (or at least, not for a while!). Why would I? I’m not saying that the blog owner should reply to every single comments but some level of activity should be apparent. That’s simple courtesy for the guests.
Commenting on other sites is just as crucial if you want to build a community and network with other blog owners. Posting on related forums, related blogs and more importantly, on the blogs of people who have commented on your site should be done daily. By doing this, you are guaranteed to build a small community of repeat visitors who will read your posts and leave comments. Personally, I go out of my way to at least check every single person’s blog who comment on my site and try to leave a comment. People who are regulars on my blog will get the same treatment from me and I will drop by their site regularly to reciprocate. That’s the circle of promotion and a simple courtesy that many blog owners do not practice or understand and then they wonder why no one is visiting their sites or leaving comments!
Commitment:
Blogging takes dedication and persistence. Fresh material needs to be posted at least 3 or 4 times a week to keep people coming back. You absolutely cannot post everyday for a week and then take a break for a month and not expect a major drop-off in traffic if you had any in the first place. Also important is to have some variety in terms of what you post. You may notice that some type of post are not as conducive for discussion as others. For example, movie reviews of new release usually won’t get too many people to comment simply because a large portion of readers may not have seen the movie. Having reviews of older movies for example would solve that problem. Just as importantly, traffic only builds up slowly over time even despite your best effort. Be patient and do your best and traffic will gradually rise.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
I will not elaborate too much on the technical stuff because there is plenty of material out there on the internet about this. Simply put, the more sites who link to your blog, the more visible it will be for both people and search engines. This is usually done by achieving all the above points which will increase the chance that other blog owners link back to you (you can also ask nicely). Another thing you can do which encourages commenting is to remove the no-follow attribute on comments’ links which increases search engine indexing for the website of the people commenting on your blog. Other important SEO tips are accurate titles that reflect the content of your posts, site indexing, installing analytics, social bookmarking (1 post out of 20 is the rule of thumb) etc…
Any other tips to improve traffic to one’s blog that I missed? Any questions that you’d like to ask? Let it be known in the comments section below and best of luck to all who need it!
![Watch: Creepy Trailer for Slasher Pic ‘Maniac’ [NSFW]](http://www.anomalousmaterial.com/movies/wp-content/themes/yamidoo_pro/scripts/timthumb.php?src=http://www.anomalousmaterial.com/movies/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/elijah-wood-maniac-tb.jpg&w=50&h=50&zc=1)
54 Comments
Great post in explaining exactly how the blogging world goes round and works out.
Geez… I hope this wasn’t inspired by a visit to my site. I had to stop half way through and make sure I had a grey font… luckily I do!
I agree with almost everything you said on here. When I started I wanted THE LIST to be my theme and the topics to change with each post. I realized quickly you have to have a main focus and stick to it. Thank God I can talk about movies ad naseum.
As far as frequency of posting, I’m not sure I agree. Posting everyday is too much. I’ve heard successful bloggers say 2 a week should be the goal. I do one because I have a family, a job and I’m aspiring to write screenplays so I spend time on that. However, I stay current with commentors because, you’re right, how can you do this without keeping your site actively going.
Community is a great point as well. My readership has gone up times 10 since I began forming a repertrois (I should stop trying to spell words I don’t know how to spell) with other people who’s sites I enjoy. Hopefully, that is also being reciprocated.
@ Caz: Thank you Caz. Thanks for dropping by!
@ Kaiderman: I agree that there is a threshold in terms frequency that may be too much. In my experience, one post a day is the upper limit and I try to post 4 or 5 post a week. The key is consistency especially if you don’t post all that often in the first place.
As someone who just started a blog about a week and a half ago, your advice is definitely helpful and I appreciate it.
@ Dreher: Glad if it helps and good luck! I like your blog and will be a frequent visitor
A lot of those points are the true heart of having a successful blog. Mine was without traffic for years, and I couldn’t figure why, but at the time all I did was straight forward reviews and my site wasn’t all that sexy to look at. Clearly that’s changed as there is a ton of weekly features and interactive things going on and I’ve really joined the movie blogging community, that is strangely like the gamer community. A group of people you know as friends but have never actually met.
The only point I wonder about is posting. If you do a lot, it’s more difficult for others to keep up with (we post a ton, but there are THREE of us a Movie Mobsters now), but on the other hand that adds to search items in the search engines and creates a more dynamic database. I would say 2-4 posts a week should be the minimum, and weekends off aren’t hurtful to anyone. I don’t post weekends too often because I work them. Almost nothing ever on Sunday’s or Wednesdays for me.
That’s a lot of necessary rambling. Too much java on a thoughtful topic. Love this post Castor!
*unnecessary-ha
The replying to comments is a key. The whole point of allowing comments, in my opinon, is to start conversations so if your not going to reply to some of your comments then you might as well turn the comments feature off. Now I will admit a lot of the time comments don’t require a response, but not everyone going to agree with your review or may have different thoughts on a film, that opens conversation, and it also brings people back to your site.
R u seying dat my speiling droves putintiol rudaers awei?!? (gah that was hard to type).
Great post Cast. I totally agree on the commenting and re-commenting. Another thankless thing lots of us do, is linking posts. I do my monday corner, you do some, mad hatter does his. A way to let those you’ve already attracted know about others, and also let others know you appreciate their work
.
Now I’m going to go and change my blog to a standard template, black background with white text and completely destroy any remaining grammar skills I possess… because I’m a rebel (or really trying to avoid job resumes…. *wink*).
@ Heather: Some hard learned lessons
In terms of design, your site has more of a “magazine” type feel which allows for more visibility of things you have posted in rapid succession so it’s a bit less problematic on your site. If we do that in a classic type blog, it pushes down everything and makes for a lot of scrolling which dramatically reduces visibility of even fairly recent post. That’s why I try to limit myself to no more than 1 post a day.
@ The Answer: I completely agree. It would not be a bad idea to turn off comments until you reach a certain amount of visitors per day actually so the blog doesn’t look puny and dead. Welcome and thanks for stopping by btw
@ Univarn: ahah it would be quite a funny experiment to turn some really high traffic website like espn.com or rottentomatoes.com into a major fireball with spelling mistakes all over the place and fluorescent color schemes that burns your eyeballs just to see how long it would take for people to stop frequenting that particular site. I have been thinking of resurrecting my blog carnival link-fest but as you said, it’s fairly thankless :/
Uh-oh… I feel I may be one of the hopeful bloggers with virtually no audience. Your tips are very well thought out, and I’m game to try them. Thanks for this post for those of us who are trying to become viable bloggers!
Welcome Luke and thanks for stopping by. Your blog has some very interesting content and does have a few people leaving some comments so you are more than halfway there. It’s all about nurturing that and expanding it to reach even more people. Best of luck!
goddamit Castor, you make me feel guilty! our blog is uh, standard WordPress template AND uh, white text on black background
lame
A good topic, Castor. One which Magnum and myself had been discussing on more than one occasion. I mean, there are some great blogs out there, with a small number of followers or none at all. And there are others I’ve seen (I won’t name them) that are, well, utter crap and have a shitload of followers and comments.
It’s one of those mysteries of life, just how a shitty band like Metallica fills entire stadiums and the best band in the world Blaze Bayley is lucky to have an audience of 200.
From what I’ve seen, it’s even not so much about the design and all, but the content – or better yet, how mainstream is the content you write about. For example, I write a review of “TDK”. Even if someone hadn’t seen the film, he surely saw one of the actors somewhere else, or saw another of Nolan’s films.
So there’s a big chance that particular someone will still leave a comment: “Hey, I haven’t seen TDK but I liked Bale in XXX. Oh, and have you seen Nolan’s YYY?” Then I’ll reply, and the conversation will start.
But when I review, let’s say, G.I. Samurai with Sonny Chiba, it’s a whole other story. Sonny WHO? G.I. WHAT?! I think you get what I mean. If the reader hadn’t actually seen this G.I. Samurai, there’s not much to talk about, isn’t it?
And films like these are the ones we review on ‘Cool Awesome Movies’. We’ve also tried polls and stuff in the past. Polls that are in line with the them of our blog – like, for example, a poll about Uwe Boll’s films named “Boll Poll”. The result? 3 votes, two of which were ours. So yeah…
But we’ve just come to accept it since it comes with the territory. We’ve mostly dedicated our blog to underrated, unappreciated and obscure cinema so it’s unrealistic to expect large readership.
@ Ross McG: Your blog doesn’t look stock though, mainly because of the nice header. It’s never too late to improve on it. The main problem with white text on black background is that the high contrast doesn’t permit extended reading for many people who are used to read black on white. It’s a quick fix
@ Ventilation Shaft: Totally agree with you, sometimes I land on a blog where nothing seems to happen but the traffic on the sitemeter is disproportionately high. Go figure… Your blog has a small very specific niche and that’s very cool and awesome
but don’t let an innately small readership prevent you from trying to reach more readers.
Hey, I really enjoyed reading your helpful, in-depth post! I’m always debating about re-doing my site layout to something less standard, but I’m usually too lazy/inexperienced (I have put some effort into my sidebar though). Maybe I’ll give it another try!
This also encourages me to perhaps add one or two more interactive features (currently I just do straight reviews and the occasional top 5 list). When I started blogging, I was doing it just for myself, without any expectations of building up a readership. Though people will now actually stop by fairly frequently, I didn’t really think to change anything to make it more community-friendly.
@ Alex: Welcome and thanks for the nice comment! Love your sidebar and your header and those are usually the easiest things to customize so you already did a nice job of setting your blog apart from the “stock” template. It does seems a bit daunting to delve deeper into the inner-workings of one’s blog but those are nice skills to acquire and it’s really not all that difficult once you understand a few key concepts. Best of luck!
I think you forgot to include chance as one of those elements.
As someone with an advertising degree I’ve seen the most brilliant designs and ideas go unnoticed and succumb while a simple white and black flier becomes iconic just because it got delivered under your home door on a rainy day.
As you say it’s lazy not to care about graphics anymore when even our grandmas know Photoshop but I believe being in the right place at the right time is more “important” in the end.
All the rest is purely technique.
Hey. I’ve just started blogging about 2 weeks ago, and what I understand of it so far, is that it is all about commenting and taking part in the community like you say. At first I read about stuff like anchoring text, meta key words, key word rich content and it goes on and on. But if you break it down into things that actually make a difference, from what I understand of it, having good content and taking part in the community in a real way is the way to go.
Definitely Jim Bob. There is millions of blogs out there and having the right keywords or not is not going to bring you much traffic through search engines anyway, at least until you are well-connected and read by many. The chicken or the egg question. Focus should be on quality content and site, as well as networking with other related blog owners.
For this blog, traffic from google came much later after I already had some decent repeat traffic from a few other bloggers. The way it works is that when you search stuff on Google, the first results will be the most popular pages. You could have the best content in the world but if there is no traffic to your site, Google is not going to display your page anywhere near the top of the search results.
As for participating in the movie community, a good start would be to join LAMB and regularly visiting some of the sites on the blogroll of movie blogs you enjoy reading.
Ya I can’t wait to join LAMB. Seems like a great club to be apart of! Got 2 months to go before I can join. What do you think about creating fan pages on Facebook and Twitter? Is it worthwhile? Also what are your thoughts on Squidoo and Hubpages?
@ Jimbob: It would not be a bad idea to create a facebook fan page especially if you have a lot of friends
As for a Twitter account, it takes a little more work since you need some kind of following before it can make an impact. As far as Squidoo and Hubpages, well I would not use those simply to promote my own website but those are other tools if you are already participating there.
Quality content is definitely a must, but lijit.com also drove more traffic my way.
As Castor said joining the LAMB does wonders as well.
Hi Castor, great tips, though like Ross said, I’m definitely guilty of using the standard WordPress template [gasp!] I just haven’t got the time to tinker with the css to customize it, ironic I guess because I’m an e-designer, but like they say, the shoemaker’s children always go without shoes
I do take being active in the blogging community advice to heart though, that’s just go without saying. Also, content, content, content… I think that’s more crucial than ‘good design’ for blogs, so I strive to have at least 4 new posts per week, though that’s really challenging at times as I have a full-time job + family. I’ve learned so much in the last 8+ months since I started blogging, but I feel that I haven’t done enough to increase traffic to my blog.
One thing I still have to do pronto is joining LAMB, it’s such a cool community that I feel really left out not being a part of. Anyway, this is really a helpful post for a relative newbie like me, you rock, Mr. Troy!
I definitely am guilty of too much text…I think you stopped by (which I love, by the way, and “hi, nice to meet you!”) when I posted all pictures…but I do write a fair amount. I can’t help it…I just have so much to say!
However, because I write quite a bit per post, I try to limit my posts per week, whereas when I do shorter ones, I might do a shorter one 3 or 4 times per week. Leaves people a little less overwhelmed.
I love this blog, and as an actress I will make sure to stay up to date on following it!
It’s nice to see all the rules and advices in one place, maybe some bloggers will learn something
Beside the content and the look of the blog, I do believe that nurturing and taking care of your readers (by returning visits and comments) should be blogging PRIME DIRECTIVE
@ Dez: You are absolutely right sir!
@ rtm: Now you made me curious Ruth… I want to see your design skills in action! Thank you for the kind comment Mrs. Ruth
@ Phoenix: Welcome Phoenix! Very kind of you to drop by. As far as I can tell, you are doing just fine in terms of writing amount. What I was originally thinking of was much lengthier so no worries there. You have a lovely blog. Keep ‘em post coming
Great post, Castor, and definitely some good tips that I’ll keep in mind. When someone makes the leap to comment, I really should start creating some sort of conversation. I gotta get on that one. I would absolutely LOVE to redesign the site and make it look spiffy, and add some images (which is problematic and annoying with dial-up…grr), but I’m pretty sure I would somehow end up destroying a third world country by my pressing random buttons…
Thanks for stopin’ by at my blog, and your blog is absolutely fantastic. Love your reviews.
Cheers,
Andy
Excellent article and one that will help loads of bloggers. I do try to update as much as possible but due to time constraints I aim for quality over quantity as I simply can’t manage the 3 – 4 times a week updates. You’re right community though. It’s so important to offer interactivity, and to support fellow bloggers and site owners. Sites like The Lamb really help movie bloggers by creating a community and a kind of one-stop shop.
@ AP Simon: Welcome A.P. and thanks for dropping by!
@ Dan: Thank you sir!
Do you have to review to be in Lamb… As you know, I have a movie based site but no reviews.
No you don’t! Just fill this form here: http://largeassmovieblogs.blogspot.com/2009/12/welcome-to-lamb.html
It might be a few weeks before you are actually a LAMB, pretty busy time right now.
Are there member fees? I can’t join for 2 weeks. I’m still a new blogger.
Also, would love someone to explain tags a little more. I’m still fuzzy on what they do. I read they don’t help with search engines so what’s the point of them?
No, no member fees lol. Tags are only a nice way to help navigation. You can see an example of tag cloud on my right sidebar. Click on a tag and all post with that tag will be displayed.
I think this post is very useful and well written. I really like your site as well. I’m new to the game, so I appreciate tips and advice like you’ve addressed here. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Carrie and welcome!
I’m an odd guy. I kinda like just putting my stuff up there so I can have a kinda measuring stick I can look back on in years to come and use to slap myself in the face – in an “I actually thought that at the time?” sort of way.
I won’t pretend that looking at my stats doesn’t feel good when I somehow flukily post a popular page – CSI: Miami is the most popular item on the blog, it seems, with people actually following the links from it daily – but I like to post my own geeky sort of interesting stuff for my own satisfaction. But it is nice to see some people do read it from time to time (if only because I can follow their links back to their sites and get a wide sampling of opinions).
I like to demonstrate that I am reading it, but I feel awkward just kinda echoing what has already been said in a more astute way? Though sometimes it’s fun to “call out” a blogger (as it were) when they post a particularly controversial film opinion (Dan DeVito was a great Penguin! George Lazenby was a terrible Bond! and so).
Anyway, to avoid getting too meta, great site and thanks for taking the time to pop over to mine.
Hi Darren, thanks for dropping by! I totally agree that sometimes, there is just isn’t much of anything to be said, and in that case, there is no reason to force a discussion. Nevertheless, as a blog author, it’s always nice to see that someone left a comment, and as a commenter, it’s nice to see that you are valued. Personally I don’t really mind either way
I’m pretty positive I’ve already read this post, Castor, but I can’t believe I didn’t comment previously. Awesome job and an excellent service you’ve done for novice movie bloggers. I’m just jealous I hadn’t thought of doing it first! The closest I’ve come is the Blogger Bitching segments I’ve done on BC where I complain about certain things that bloggers (in general, but 99% of the blogs I visit are movie blogs) do that bug me. It’s constructive, but snarky.
Thank you Fletch! It’s just a downer to see so many decent blogs with almost no traffic coming their way. A more lively blogosphere makes it more fun for everyone!
Castor, you need to give my co-host a very strong talking to about responding to comments. I tend to do the lions share of the writing on the site, and I’ve come to accept that, but I find that my efforts are hindered by comments on other posts that I didn’t write not being responded to.
It’s hard enough to take the time out to cruise around and read other blogs and spread comments around without having to worry about comments on my own blog being read and responded to.
I’ve passed along an excerpt of this post to him, hopefully it snaps some sense into him.
Ahah, yes it seems like a foregone conclusion that the more dedicated a blogger you are, the more thankless it gets. I hope he turns it around
Thanks for this great post! I used to have a movie blog, but it suffered from a lot of the problems you’ve mentioned, low membership being the main one. I also posted fairly infrequently toward the end, mainly because I underestimated the time and effort it would take to update consistently when I started out. (Actually, I still have the blog…I just haven’t posted on it in a long time!)
A few weeks ago, I started a new blog, this time for reviews of graphic novels. I’ve put a lot more thought into how I’m doing things for this new blog, including writing several reviews before I actually got started (to hopefully prevent the infrequent updates problem). I’ve also been doing a lot more blog networking, and even though I’ve only posted two reviews so far, I can already see the results.
Reading your suggestions has given me a lot of other ideas for having a successful blog this time around. I’m hoping to find the time soon to customize the look to some extent as well, and I think having a blogroll listed on the side will help too. Here’s hoping it all works out!
Marc, I’m very happy to hear that you found this post helpful. If you didn’t already stumble upon it, I recently wrote the second part named “Tips for a Successful (Movie) Blog II” which addresses more specific issues many bloggers encounter as they try to sustain their blog.
Thanks for dropping by!
PS: You have a very promising blog! Good luck
Just got time to read this. My blog is black and white with bits of colour here and there? if anyone has time to take a look and reply to this comment telling me if the colour scheme is so bad that i need to change it please do
. Also, by listing related blogs, I always get lots of visitors within seconds however they seem to just leave and not comment. I guess a community will come with time eh?
shiva, the main problem with your blog is that it is unfocused. I am not sure what your blog is about. If it’s a blog to review consumer products, it needs an encyclopedic-like amount of information and a blog is not a good format for this. Until your blog has a particular niche and some substantial content, you will have a hard time attracting any number of repeat viewers.
I posted quite a long time ago but haven’t seen it go up for sum reason? I’ll say it again. So i mainly review electronic gadgets so should I change that to be my niche? Thanks for the help Castor.
Shiv
Sure, whatever you want to talk about. You might also consider changing your blog’s name (and URL) to make it more apparent what the blog is about then. You should also see if you can display every post in full instead of just the title (below the first post) or at least have some kind of excerpt and thumbnail for those.
hmmm, im not sure about the URL and name for now because my uncle chose it for me because he’s a website test manager (looks for easy ways to hack into websites) and he said that the sites name will help it to get hits because its a popular search apprently. However I will definetly try and find a way for the topics to be all displayed. No need to reply to my email, everything has been answered.
This post comes pretty close to the bone for me. I am fiercely competitive, it’s one of the qualities I’m less proud of. I often get put off doing something if I think I won’t be able to do it better than everyone else. That crippled me for a while in the process of taking the blog live. I also confess to not investing more time and effort in cummincating with other bloggers and getting frustrated that I don’t get more traffic.
The consistency thing is something I am stuggling with at the moment. I started out ok but I have tailed off a bit recently. My intentions are good but I look at some other blogs and I just think ‘where do they find the time?’. I’m happy with how my site looks but as for having a niche I’m sure exactly what I want to achieve with it yet. The aim at the minute is to enjoy it more and stress less. I’m working through my dvd colection, review-wise, slowly.
Thanks Castor for a great post and for the encouragement.
In terms of SEO, yes adding comments can help generate some link juice for your website. However, I recommend not to just post comments simply for the SEO benefit. As you explained, comments are designed to benefit the community at large. Leaving great comments on several different blogs should increase your blog/brand’s reputation and should then increase traffic and SEO position.
As of today my blog Cinemafunk hit page one for the term “film criticism”. Wasn’t links from just blog comments though.
I see it! Congratulations
You are absolutely right that the first priority should be to add insightful and substantial comments. One-liners and one-sentence comments almost never bring anything whatsoever to the conversation.
Realy great article, Castor. Tracked this article down after my email exchange with you. Some insightful points here that I’ll certainly take on board in the growth of my own blog.
Thanks Matt! Hope it’s a little bit useful
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