Blogging: The inside out of the buzz behind blogging

In a vast vast World Wide Web blogging is emerging as a new hobby for many, a proffession for many and a money making tool for many. I have been blogging for an year now, http://www.youthkiawaaz.com , and have realised a couple of facts.

• Labels/Tags/Keywords benefit: No matter what your niche is, no matter which state you are from, no matter which language you blog in, keywords help a great deal in search engine optimization. Around 3 months ago, I had not even a sengle keyword in any of my posts. Currently I have over 65 different keywords and I use the important ones in all my articles. The most important keyword for me is "youth awareness India". When I used to look up this keyword in Google around 6 months ago, I used to find my blog on the 18th page. This was certainly heart breaking as no one has the time to visit the 18th page and view my blog. But within a span of around 2 months things changed. Today, if you look up the keywords "youth awareness India", you will find my blog at the 6th number on the 1st page. Now that certainly rocks for me.
• Don't worry about niche: This might sound a bit different from what other blogging experts say about niche. When I started as a blogger, I was depressed as I wasn't able to build strong readership even after 6 to 7 months. The problem was with the niche. No one was interested in reading awareness, society or politics related articles (which were looooong). They usually just had a look and went away, thinking my site to be boring . Although I was stressed out with the fact that I was unable to build readership, I did not give up. I continued writing and din't give up at all. What benefited me was a sudden emergence of a number of incidents in India. The search for youth issues increased and I was able to bring people to read my blog. Now 1 year later, I have 10 registered members, out of which 4 are regular contributor of articles. Another friend of mine started blogging about momos(dimsums). She could not get anyone to read her blog for 3 years. Today, she has an 89% bounce rate with 152 followers. Isn't that amazing.
• Take care of the looks: My initial months in blogging went by while using the Blogger Rounder's 4 template. This certainly made it look like just another blog. Nothing too special in it. Later, I came to know about www.ourblogtemplates.com and I downloaded a proffessional looking smart template, which made my blog look attractive. This certainly made visitors spend more time on my blog. This is a personal one, so I would like to know what you think.
• Be creative: Rather than reading pages of an article and then moving on to another, people prefer reading a summary and selecting whether they would want to read it or not. People also prefer in watching and viewing rather than reading a long list. So be creative, add some cool pictures, videos, and yeah some cool html stuff as well.
• Involve others and get involved: Being friendly with the readers is a must. Invite your readers to write, request them to use their right to speech and comment, get involved with them in their comments, reply to each and every comment in the most personalised manner. This certainly helps them in returning to your blog.
• Content: This is the most important and I guess I need not say much. Be original and take care of the quality. Have good command over the language you blog in.
• Money: Do not concentrate only on making money, have patience, things happen but they take time.
• Social Networking: Be it Facebook, Orkut, Linked in, Twitter, or any other social networking platform, connecting with the audience through these mediums is certainly the best possible way to increase your readership. Keep your readers updated with your latest posts on these portals and see the difference.
  
• Be cool: Lastly, just be cool and chill. Happy blogging !!!