The 50 Habits of Highly Effective Blogging (ProBlogger Project Submissions Examined)
Posted May 30th, 2006Categories: Writing, Blogging
I spent quite a bit of time reading through all the submissions from the project that Darren over at ProBlogger.net hosted. While I was reflecting what habits I could relate to and what habits I haven’t even thought of before, I began to wonder how many times I’d seen each habit repeat itself with each submission.
Focus on the habits
As noted in the final submissions post, Darren explained to us that he wasn’t going to have us vote on a winner. I’m glad he did this, because I think his project focus was more on the actual habits than who we thought was the most effective blogger around. So I wanted to focus more on the habits by reading through each and every post noting anything that was used toward effective blogging.
An idea comes to mind
So I made up a little project of my own. As I was reading through all of the submissions I kept track of each time one of the habits I had in my list showed up again, and added any new ones to the list that weren’t already there. This took a long time to do (a few hours), but the more I did it the more anxious I was to see the results.
Now, keep in mind that I didn’t use strictly the numbered habits on each page. There were many places where the habits were overlapped, and I’ve combined a lot of them where I think they should be. Some habits got rolled into others because they were mostly the same thing, but not entirely. There’s some topics here that I don’t think even qualify as habits, but I did this as unbiased as I could by putting everything out there I could dig up from the posts.
The List
So without any further delay, here is the list in order of how many submissions mentioned them. Compare your submissions, or just your own list with what’s here and compare your list with what the most popular habits are…
50 Habits in order of # of submissions mentioning the habit
| # | Habit | # and % of Submissions (out of 80) | |
| 1 | Post often/regular schedule | 44 | 55% |
| 2 | Build a community/comment/respond/know readers | 38 | 48% |
| 3 | Read other blogs/research/newspapers/etc. | 32 | 40% |
| 4 | Be original/creative, add value | 28 | 35% |
| 5 | Relevant content/Find niche | 26 | 33% |
| 6 | Enjoy it/do what’s fun/passionate | 23 | 29% |
| 7 | Good quality communicator/writer | 21 | 26% |
| 8 | Have a purpose/goals, track milestones | 18 | 23% |
| 9 | Persistence/longevity/patience | 18 | 23% |
| 10 | Carry a Notebook/store ideas & drafts for later | 16 | 20% |
| 11 | Learn new things/adapt/change | 16 | 20% |
| 12 | Link to others/give credit/trackbacks | 16 | 20% |
| 13 | Marketing/drive traffic/link to self | 16 | 20% |
| 14 | Show personality | 16 | 20% |
| 15 | Be honest | 15 | 19% |
| 16 | Artistic/use imagery/aesthetics/various post types | 13 | 16% |
| 17 | Stay healthy/balanced, get out | 13 | 16% |
| 18 | SEO techniques/keywords/layout/domain/url | 11 | 14% |
| 19 | Experiment/take risks | 10 | 13% |
| 20 | Have energy/inspiration/good attitude | 9 | 11% |
| 21 | Have a routine/daily plan | 8 | 10% |
| 22 | Mentor others/share knowledge | 8 | 10% |
| 23 | Read ProBlogger | 8 | 10% |
| 24 | Credibility | 7 | 9% |
| 25 | Respect readers | 7 | 9% |
| 26 | Have confidence | 6 | 8% |
| 27 | Monetize/Have business plan | 6 | 8% |
| 28 | Proofread | 6 | 8% |
| 29 | Use technology well | 5 | 6% |
| 30 | Disagree with topics | 4 | 5% |
| 31 | Humility | 4 | 5% |
| 32 | Be willing to expose yourself to everyone | 3 | 4% |
| 33 | Get help/share tasks | 3 | 4% |
| 34 | Having peace with no interruptions | 3 | 4% |
| 35 | Moderate comments/avoid bad content | 3 | 4% |
| 36 | Learn from mistakes | 2 | 3% |
| 37 | Pay attention/be observant | 2 | 3% |
| 38 | Prioritize | 2 | 3% |
| 39 | Ask questions | 1 | 1% |
| 40 | Don’t do drugs | 1 | 1% |
| 41 | Drink caffeine | 1 | 1% |
| 42 | Have loyalty | 1 | 1% |
| 43 | Intuitiveness | 1 | 1% |
| 44 | Know strengths | 1 | 1% |
| 45 | Know when to stop blogging | 1 | 1% |
| 46 | Practical | 1 | 1% |
| 47 | Read 7 habits of highly effective people | 1 | 1% |
| 48 | Reward yourself | 1 | 1% |
| 49 | Take regular breaks | 1 | 1% |
| 50 | Translate to other language | 1 | 1% |
I enjoyed going through the list to see how I measured up to the most popular habits. I also noticed a few of the submissions that were dead on with habits ranking in the top 10. Thanks to everyone submitting so we can all learn from the project.
I’d like to point out that in no way are the higher ranked habits more effective than others, they’re simply more popular. Everyone has a different approach and a different style that’s more efficient for them. I encourage you all to experiment with some of the other habits mentioned and see what comes of it.
Thanks again for the project Darren!
Tags: effective blogging, blogging, blogging habits, top habits, problogger
Related Posts:
- If I Could Turn Back Time… (Problogger Group Writing Project)
- Keeping Realistic and Adaptable Blogging Goals
- Top 10 Things I’ve Learned From Problogger
- 6 Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers
- How I made $89.69 in my first month of blogging
Explore posts in the same categories: Writing, Blogging
May 30th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Great job! Thank you for compiling this list. I don’t think that I went over all 80 original posts by myself.
May 30th, 2006 at 10:15 am
I’m glad you did it, or I would have missed #40…
May 30th, 2006 at 10:17 am
Great job, thanks for doing this!
May 30th, 2006 at 10:29 am
What’s most surprising for me on this list: The habit “Enjoy it/do what’s fun/passionate” has only 29%. I really can’t imagine blogging about a topic I’m not interested in…
May 30th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Great summary. It’s interesting to see how my list compares with others’ habits.
May 30th, 2006 at 10:58 am
WOW - this is great! Thanks for taking the time to do this. I think it’s interesting that SEO is number 18. It’s also interesting that Monetize is so low on the list (both of these btw weren’t on my list!). That might help explain Darren’s “how much are you making from your blog” poll a week ago!
May 30th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Holy cow…this must have taken some time to put together. I’m impressed and thank you for summarizing this for us. One thing I didn’t consider, in making my list, is to have goals/milestones (#8). Seems so obvious. We do it in our businesses and in real life, we should do it for our blogs as well.
May 30th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Nice work. It’s the sort of thing people wonder about, without really doing. That’s a nice list to go from.
May 30th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Great job compiling this list. It will help us all in developing good blogging habits.
May 30th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
>Translate to other language
I’m very interested to do that;)
May 30th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Thank you for taking the time to compile this list. It’s great to see a summary to the group writing project.
May 30th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Wow. I can’t believe that someone would painstakingly compile all the habits for our benefit. Thanks! The don’t do drugs and drink caffeine were a bit surprising. But I’m a coffee drinker and have mentioned drinking coffee in my post, although I don’t think I added that as a habit though.
May 30th, 2006 at 7:53 pm
Robert,
Wish I’d thought of this. I could have sworn that #6 would have been #1! Number 8 is very important and I didn’t even put in on my list. For me #10 is a hidden gem. Its something I’ll start doing.
May 30th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
[…] A summary of the contributions to Darren Rowse’s group writing project can be found here. […]
May 30th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Holy smokes! When I started to compile this list, I was really just doing it as I read them out of my own curiousity so I could prioritize which ones I wanted to try myself. I’m amazed at how much interest it generated! (Of course, Darren’s post solely about the list helped quite a bit. That was very generous and unexpected.)
Thank you all so much for stopping in and leaving compliments. I’m glad to see many people able to take something away from the list to apply toward your own blogs as I plan to do myself.
May 30th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
[…] After reading about Retrospector’s recent adventures with Problogger.com, I figured I would go see what Problogger was all about. Right away I saw something that caught my eye: Wordpress themes! As it turns out, my own blog had been sitting around with the lame, smooth, pretty default Wordpress theme, which does not suit my art style or my personality AT ALL. Anyhow, I started browsing through some of the themes when I discovered Mars Spirit by B A Kahn. It had that dark, futuristic feel to it, which is very much a part of my own artwork. In fact, it actually reminded me of the Auriga interior from Alien Resurrection. Then all of a sudden I got to thinking what some of my artwork would look like plugged into the header, and I realized I had to give my blog a facelift. This is the result. I think you can all agree (at least those of you who know me personally) that this theme suits me much better! Oh, I almost forgot! The cropped image that I used in the header is a drawing I did during Christmas vacation my Freshman year in college. It is entitled Unrest, and it is one of my personal favorites. As always, stay tuned! […]
May 31st, 2006 at 4:13 pm
It´s always good to bloggers to find out our strong points and weakness, the habbits of a effective bloggers reinforce what we
sholud do to keep our blog alive.
May 31st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
[…] Robert from retrospector.com summarized a list of effective blogging habits submitted by groups of bloggers as part of the project by Darren from problogger.net. […]
June 3rd, 2006 at 2:15 pm
[…] 1% Robert just sent me an email telling me about a post that he’s written summing up the ‘Habits of Effective Bloggers’ group writing project that we did last week. […]
June 5th, 2006 at 7:47 am
[…] Another project has surfaced at Problogger.net this week. Darren challenges everyone to come up with their blogging goals and post about them for all to see. I enjoyed participating in the last project (Habits of Effective Blogging) and look forward to the results of this project as well. […]
June 5th, 2006 at 9:40 pm
Thank you, Retro! This is genius. The sort of thing I wish I had taken the time and effort to do. I am absolutely impressed with the importance in everyone’s minds of posting frequently and I’ve redoubled my personal commitment to follow that principle.
June 11th, 2006 at 7:05 am
Great article
June 25th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
[…] Related Articles: * Habits of Highly Effective Bloggers (ProBlogger.net) ** The 50 Habits of Highly Effective Blogging (The Retrospector) My Contribution to the Highly Effective Blogger Project [link] […]
August 15th, 2006 at 12:26 am
[…] Everywhere you go, to learn about blogging you simply hear “need lots of content” and “get yourself some deep archives”. I wasn’t really sure how much content was needed until spending some time on Problogger. It wasn’t just emphasized by Darren, it was reiterated over and over by commenters on many posts. I learned from the habits of highly effective bloggers group project that content was one of the top habits shown in the definitive list I created. (Which I still get a regular stream of daily readers from after Darren posted links to it shortly afterward, thanks Darren!) I’m on my way to a decent archive size, but after just 3 months of blogging I can see how content really does help a lot. […]