In her recent post entitled 5 Lessons Cats Teach Us About Creating Blissfully Mindless Content on Boost Blog Traffic, Marie Rotter examines the phenomenon of the massive popularity of cat videos and correlates the fundamental driving allure of watching a cat play with a feather wand with the art of creating blog content that is “blissfully mindless.” After decades of experiencing the paradigm of intellectual blog content, Rotter’s points may seem at first glance to be diametrically opposite to conventional wisdom but they represent a concept of profound value to bloggers if we purr… er… consider them.

  1. Your audience has to like you. People watch cat videos because they like them, not because they’re going to learn about 3-D printing of firearms. Before you can make an impact with your readership with your insights, viewpoints, and incisive reporting, they have to like you. Although in order to make a success of any blogging effort it is imperative that you post content which is immediately relevant, fresh, and unique, if you’re coming off as a highbrow, aloof, inaccessible snob you’re going to be pushing your audience away as fast with your personality as you can draw them in with your content. Work towards facilitating your readership in relating to you by demonstrating that you’re actually human.
  2. Dogs have owners, cats have staff. While the canine constituent of the pet world wears its heart on its sleeve and is eternally and pantingly willing to please their owners, cats graciously allow humans to provide them with shelter, food, and affection, on the cats’ terms of course. Extend that attitude towards your audience and provide them with exactly what they need. Serve your readership with extensive value based on what they want to read, not just what you want to write about. Placing yourself in a subservient position to the greater mind will make you a successful cat owner and blogger.
  3. Cats just wanna have fun. The primary benefit to the audience watching a cat video is entertainment. Cat videos are enjoyable and when visitors click on one of them they know exactly what they’re going to be getting. Unfortunately many bloggers fail at making their blogs equally entertaining and immediately graspable so they succeed only in confusing their potential audience and driving them to click to somewhere else. Unless your blog’s basic essence is as immediately understandable as “cat plays with string” you’re asking more of your readership than they’re willing or able to give you.
  4. Play to their emotions. Cat videos provoke emotional responses, whether it’s an “awwwwwwwwwwwww so cute,” fuzziness or a good belly laugh. The popularity of a cat video is almost directly correlated to the level of emotion which it evokes in its viewers as the ones which impact people the most are the ones that get shared on and on. If you’re basing your latest blog post strictly on a subject you’re going about it backwards. You first have to choose what emotion you’re trying to get the readership to feel and then craft the subject to fit. Whether you’re aiming to get your audience to feel happy, sad, or even outraged, you should always start your blog content planning with the emotional appeal first.
  5. Be a clown… sometimes. A cat is not afraid of tumbling off a sofa while jumping after a moth and you shouldn’t be so dedicated to your blog topic that you’re deathly afraid of coming off as being a bit silly once in a while. Your audience will actually appreciate obtaining an insight into your humanity and sense of humor, so share the lighter side with them. This process can be as simple as injecting some funny anecdotes into your blog content, some silly photos, or a video of you dressed up in a clown suit. As long as you use a measure of respect and restraint as well as stopping short of turning your blog into nothing but satire, your audience will reward you for it.

A successful blogger is far more an entertainer than an educator, so learn from our popular feline friends!