1. Your Blog Posts Are Not Relevant
If your blog posts are irrelevant to your blog's target audience, then there is little reason for your desired audience to read them. Who do you want to attract to your blog and read your blog posts? Give them the content that is relevant to them in your posts or you have little hope to develop a popular blog for your intended audience.
2. Your Blog Posts Are Not Useful
Not only does your content need to be relevant to your target audience, but it should also be useful to them in some way. For example, your blog posts could educate your audience, inform your audience about news and related topics, and so on. It's extremely challenging to motivate people to take time out of their busy days to read your blog posts if your content isn't useful to them in any way.
3. Your Blog Posts Are Not Meaningful
All of your blog posts are unlikely to be extremely useful to your audience, and that's fine. As long as your content is relevant to them, your posts could be meaningful instead of useful. A meaningful blog post taps into your readers' emotions, and makes them feel something. Emotions are powerful, so posts that elicit feelings that are relevant to your blog topic and your audience's wants and needs can be very popular.
4. Your Blog Posts Are Not Entertaining
Sometimes your blog posts aren't useful or meaningful. Instead, they're entertaining. It's perfectly acceptable to deliver entertainment through your blog posts. Just make sure the content of those posts is relevant to your blog topic and your audience's wants and needs. If there is disparity between your entertaining content and your blog's reason for existing, readers will become confused. A confused reader is one who is unlikely to return.
5. Your Blog Posts Are Not Interesting
Even if you write a blog post that you don't think is highly useful, meaningful, or entertaining, if it's interesting to your readers, it can be a good post. Go ahead and test the waters by publishing some posts that are interesting but deliver little value in terms of usefulness, meaningfulness, or entertainment. Track the performance of those posts by analyzing the number of comments and shares they get. If those posts perform well, then your audience is receptive to them, and you can feel confident publishing posts that are simply interesting in the future.
6. Your Blog Posts Are Not Trustworthy
If readers can't trust the content that you publish, then they won't want to visit your blog. Avoid publishing self-serving or self-promotional posts, or at least, make those posts just a small percentage of your published content.
7. Your Blog Posts Are Not Respectful
Avoid publishing blog posts that could be deemed offensive, hateful, or politically incorrect. Yes, your blog is your own space on the web, but extremist views will limit your blog's growth potential. Furthermore, it's never a good idea to publish content that could be considered threatening or libelous, even if your intent wasn't to harm another person. It's the results of your published content that matters in a court of law. Play nice.
8. Your Blog Posts Are Not Shareable
Your blog's growth will be extremely limited if you don't make it easy for people to share your blog posts across the social web. Be sure to include sharing icons on each of your posts, so people can share a link to your blog post on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and more with a single mouse click. The easier you make it for people to share your blog posts, the more likely they are to do so, and the more traffic your blog will get.
9. Your Blog Posts Are Not Debatable
While it's true that your blog is yours and you control the content, don't be a tyrant. If you're unwilling to discuss opposing viewpoints through the comments people submit on your blog posts, your blog's growth will be limited. Per the 3 C's of Blogging, one of the most important parts of a popular blog is its community of readers who actively comment and engage in conversations with each other and with you through those comments. Let the conversation flow for maximum blog growth, but do be sure to publish a Comment Policy to protect yourself and your audience from offensive and hateful comments.
10. Your Blog Posts Are Not High Quality
Blog posts that are written poorly, include repeated grammatical and proofreading mistakes, and look low quality won't help you develop a popular blog. If you want to compete with other popular blogs and websites for readers, then you need to publish high quality content that motivates people to share your content and to keep coming back for more.
Source: http://weblogs.about.com/
Author: Susan Gunelius
