I know, I know – this question is terribly open-ended. There are obviously any number of factors that can contribute to the success of any given blog.

Some blogs may be horribly written and contain largely useless information, but if authored by some celebrity, it will likely become popular regardless.

Also, something as simple as the blog design, is surely going to impact its popularity; we like to look at things that are appealing to the eye. Thus, I predict, all else being equal, the blog with a more visually-appealing interface is going to be more successful.

Blog interactivity – in terms of the degree of discussion that is encouraged, and how easy it might be to share the information on a given blog might also influence popularity.

While I could go on forever making semi-plausible assertions of factors that influence blog success, the reason I am writing this post is because I recently came across (thanks to random Googling) a Master’s thesis published online looking at this very issue.

“The Study of Blog Success Factors and Their Effects on Web Business” is a thesis written by Kuan-ting Lin and defended just under a year ago.

Unfortunately, as the thesis is written in Chinese, I can only discuss what information I gleaned from the English thesis abstract.

According to the abstract, a literature review and sampling surveys were used to summarize six blog success factors: “Ease of use”, ”Interactivity”, ”Presentation”, “Connectivity”, “Professionalism”, “Security” and study their causal relationships with various aspects of commercial blog ‘success’ including the sale of products from the given blog or affiliated business.

In terms of the sampling surveys, questionnaires were randomly distributed to visitors of the top one hundred most visited blogs. I am assuming these would be Chinese blogs.

Based on this research, the top 3 factors that determined the success of a blog were: Interactivity, and Connectivity, Professionalism.

Since all I have at my disposal is the abstract, it is difficult to say how exactly interactivity, connectivity, and professionalism are defined.

Nevertheless, I think most bloggers would agree that creating a positive environment to cultivate discussion between the author and readers, as well as among readers themselves is absolutely key to having a popular blog.

In terms of connectivity, I presume this notion deals with how well the blog is connected to other sites on similar topics – that is, the degree to which the blog is part of a larger online conversation on the topic. The more insulated a blog is, the less likely interested readers will come across it.

As far as professionalism goes, this would largely depend on the goal of a blog, and of course whether the anticipated outcome was a sale of a product versus simply a comment on a recent post. There is certainly no shortage of blogs that are far from professional (many science blogs included) that are some of the most highly trafficked sites.

Anyone else come across any actual research on what makes blogs successful? If not, how about personal experience? what have you done that has resulted in a spike in your traffic?

Peter