A couple of blogging tips
July 28th, 2006I wish I had a ton of insight into what it takes to be a successful blogger, but unfortunately, I don’t. I do, however, have a couple of suggestions for bloggers:
1. Post your email address on your blog somewhere. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to email a blogger, only to find that their email address is nowhere to be found on their site.
2. Respond to comments on your blog. One of the points of blogging is interaction. If I leave a comment on a site, and the blog owner never responds, chances are I’ll be less inclined to comment there again — and probably less inclined even to visit the site. This is especially important if you don’t get many comments. The more you interact with your readers, the more they’re going to visit and comment, which in turn leads to more visits and comments by other readers.
If I have any other brilliant insights, I’ll post them later. These are just a couple of things that I’ve come across recently, and I wanted to address them.
Tim,
Great suggestions! Just wanted to see if you would respond to this…
Thanks for visiting, Dave. Since I think this is your first time to comment here, consider this to be your welcome.
See, I just followed my own advice.
Tim, I think a key reason (pure) blog sites succeed are those that post regularly with information consistent with their stated purpose. I say pure, to differentiate blogs that are really adjuncts of other, larger efforts, ie, Google Blog.
In any case, be it every day or every two weeks, it parallels your advise to interact with your readers. Part of that interaction is meeting their expectations on when and what you’ll post. Deviate from that, and you have a disappointed reader.
Take two weeks off from posting Tim and see how your activitity dives.
Just my thoughts.
Hmm… Now that might be an interesting experiment. Stop blogging for two weeks and see how big of a hit my blog takes.
If I knew I wouldn’t permanently lose some readers, I might be willing to try it. Unfortunately, I think losing readers permanently is exactly what would happen.
After #2 be prepared for to spend the rest of the day responding to comments from the brain trust that is comprised of the regular “commenters”. One misstep and…:)
BTW…Don’t feel obligated to respond to this comment. I will continue to frequent this blog even if you do not. Just pictured you sitting at your computer, answering comments for the next six hours!
Don’t worry, Cameron — I have no intention of doing that.
Let me clarify my number 2 a bit. I didn’t mean that a blogger should respond to every comment, just that a blogger should be willing to interact in the comments section. Too many bloggers don’t do that at all.
Ooh, advice from the Blogging Master.