What my Top 10 blog post says about Blog reading culture

I have been blogging consistently for a little over 8 years, and I have written all kinds of post. I decided to analyse my most popular posts, and see what was unique about them.

1.TGIFridays Experience and 100th Post Giveaway

This is my highest viewed post, with a traffic of…, which is not surprising. From the day I put up this post in 2011, it has been skyrocketing in views. I knew nothing about blog traffics when I wrote about my experience at TGIFridays. I definitely was not looking for views 5 years later. But this tells us that when you write about a popular world-class brand, you are sure to keep gathering views for years and years to come

2. One more Blog Post

You would thing my second highest viewed post has nothing special in its title, but the word “blog post” is a very key word in the SEO world. Then add a good content underneath, you become king. This post is less than 2 years old, yet it made the second spot in my top 10. Lesson, SEO works

3. I want to burst some bloggers' bubbles

This post has two things going on for it when it comes to traffic. Firstly, it reeks of gossip (it is actually a blogville community gossip), and secondly, it has the keyword “blogger”. It seems anything that has the words, blog, blog post, bloggers, how to blog, etc. is always a winner every time.

4. Wordpressers speak back: Nigerian Blogger users are ignorant, backward, etc

I wrote this post during the wordpress vs blogger fracas, which honestly I caused, albeit unintentionally. It turned out to be a very friendly war between wordpressers and bloggers, when the community was still strong. This post made it for two reasons, it is a warzone post, it has the word Nigerian bloggers, and it makes use of a condemning statement about a country, which is not the goal of the post.

5. "I have decided to stop attending church!"

Anything about church condemnation, pastor criticism, how a popular televangelist molested people, sells. These kinds of gossip posts attracts traffic like mad. This post was publicised on all my platfoms, and many people saw me as church girl, also being a teen’s teacher in church. So imagine me going public with my intention to stop attending church. It’s either people wanted to know why or they just wanted to join me in stoning the church, lol.

6. The “It is well” generation.

I don’t think the title made this one popular at all. Firstly, it was publicised on all my platforms, which really doesn’t matter because many other posts were publicised on my platforms too. But this particular post had many keyword in the content itself.  When you read it, you would see controversial words like Femi Otedola,  Farouk Lawan , 170 million Nigerians, Shunemite woman, Horatio Gates Spafford, Chibok Girls, Boko Haram, Elisha, etc. I might be wrong though.  Maybe the word “It is well” is a keyword. All I can say is that it is one of my most popular posts

7. How I hustled to graduate from University
Again… gossip sells. It is of the opinions that I did really well in university, so when a post title begins to claim the reverse, people want to know (things about your personal life they shouldn’t ordinarily know). Just do a post about how you slept with 5 men in 2 months, and see what happens, lol.

8. How I see Nigerian Blogsville (2) – The two clans... not cliques

This holds the same point as number 4. Exactly the same points

9. Almighty's Formula by Atilola Moronfolu

The keyword made this post great. Almighty Formula is a very popular topic in mathematics that can solve any quadratic equation other methods can’t solve. When people google it, they are sometimes led to my post, which talks about another type of Almighty Formula

10. Close Shaves Series – part 4 : The AUR Story

At first glance, there’s nothing unique about this post. But I remember that when I was publicising it on my platforms, the caption was “how I opened my legs for a man”. Just like number 5 post, many people know I don’t believe and engage in premarital sex, and here I am, opening my legs for a man? What is happening here? Again, gossip! (people want to know what they shouldn’t ordinarily know).

So the summary of what I have learnt from my Top 10 posts when it comes reading culture, and this is something you can use if you are interested in growing your blog traffic
1. Writing about big brands attracts traffic
2. All that SEO and Keyword life, they work big time
3. People love gossip. People want to know what they shouldn’t ordinarily know, and if you can keep feeding their desires, they’ll keep coming back for more.

Lastly, let me add that I don’t write for traffic. I’m more about content. If the content is right, people will eventually come. I do not strategically position myself to increase traffic by inputing keywords, spreading gossips, etc. I just write, and I just want people to read. I implore you all to read these top 10 posts, I can assure you that you will enjoy them.

Five things to do when life begins to overwhelm you

Being a driven person who takes life more serious than she takes it easy, I have been overwhelmed by life more times than I would like to be. My recent experience with this made me take a hard look at my situation, and say some truths to myself. I realised that I was not the only one who needed to hear these truths because there are so many people going through similar things. So I have decided to share these tips to help everyone, apart from obvious things to do like 'rest' and 'pray', cos really, we are all going to be overhwelmed at some point in our lives, so we can learn from this.

1. Remind yourself that life is mostly vanity

Some of us are naturally prone to taking life too serious (I’m the number one culprit here). While we need to approach life’s assignments with determination and focus, always remember that there’s a place for balance. And in the end, we take nothing six feet below. Only our legacy and impact in the lives of others will count.

2. Learn to push back 

Say you have 30 tasks to complete in a week, and you humanly speaking, you can only finish 7, ask yourself

How to switch from Old time Blogger to Modern day Blogger

Hello everyone - oldtime bloggers, new bloggers and non-bloggers. I want to talk about something that many bloggers can relate to, and has taken the blogging world by storm

There has been a trend going on for the past three years - old bloggers struggling to keep on blogging, with some eventually giving up, new bloggers coming up, and taking over by storm.

I have been blogging CONSISTENTLY for 8 years, and some things have happened in the course of those years.

Blogging is not what it used to be. Old bloggers  ran a close knit operation. They had a community called blogsville, cos it was like a real village, only that it was online. They were passionate about one another, competing to be the first person to comment on one another's blogs. That was the era on Nigerian Blog Awards (a feat that is getting more and more difficult to pull due to the dynamism of social media). Being a blogger was as easy as ABC. As long as you had content (mostly personal), and you had internet, you were good to go. There was no need for aesthetics or world-class photography. Non bloggers were always jealous, and always stood outside, looking in, praying they could join this virtual blogsville. New joiners praised God for every new comment they got.

Then came blog enemies like twitter. It competed for the attention of bloggers, some falling off the wagon, while some others juggling between both, never for once realising that they served two totally different purposes.

During this period,

Healthy Eating: How to Eliminate Seasoning Cubes from your Diet

In my journey to healthy eating, I have had to eliminate somethings, by choice and by compulsion. You have read about how I have a long list of items my body rejected over time. Read it here again.

I like good food, and I am of the opinion that eating healthy doesn't have to be the same as eating boring, which is the misconception many people have. Instead of elimination, I always prefer replacement.

For example, I will not eliminate food like white rice, bread, cake, pasta, etc., even though they are not good for us. I have successfully replaced these foods with brown rice, brown bread, whole wheat spaghetti, whole wheat pasta, barley, whole wheat flour for pancakes, etc. The truth is that whole wheat flour doesn't taste differently from processed flour, apart from the fact that it's doesn't stick together as much.

Also, instead of eliminating food like fried plantain, fried chicken, etc, I have replaced them with plantain baked with olive oil, baked chicken, etc. The taste is exactly the same.

These things I did, and more to come, has made my food life still interesting, but are far healthier options for me.

For almost 2 years, I have been using My Fitness Pal to count my calories and sync with my Garmin app. The thing about these apps is that you begin to see data of where you are going wrong (or right) in your diet. In fact, you might think you are eating really healthy, but with more information, you will know there are harmful eating habits you need to stop.

First, we all know that the major culprit of obesity is