Blogging is a great way of reaching out to people and sharing your ideas, tips and photographes. I get asked alot about how I started blogging, I always explain that it takes a lot of hard work and dedication but it’s such a fun thing to do. So it’s 2015 and people are making resolutions, maybe your New Year’s resolution should be to start your own blog or if you already blog really get your blog performing the way you want it to. Here are some of my top ideas to get you started:
Getting more positive comments
Comments are a bit of double edged sword when it comes to blogs. In my experience you can get a real dialogue going with readers, and establish a relationship with the people you’re trying to reach out to. But the down side of this is that offensive or aggressive comments can discourage users from getting involved. It’s a good idea to make people feel welcome, with instructions on how to comment, and direct questions to readers in your content. But also keep on top of negative comments if they become offensive – there’s nothing wrong with deleting comments that spoil the experience for everyone.
Implement real time email verification
Email verification might sound a little technical, but I found it’s easier than it looks. You can find lots of great services out there that will set up a system that allows you to spot false email addresses straight away, and prevent people from posting incorrect emails address. This means you get a lower bounce rate on your mailing list, and more information going where it should. All in all, I’ve found it’s a great system for a blog that’s trying to grow its readership and improve efficiency.
Create good content and build relationships
Before you can share your content with people, you have to get their attention. These days it’s not about SEO tricks, but more about creating useful content across a wide field of subjects. I aim to produce regular updates with content that responds to current events and trends – you pick up more traffic that way, and give users a reason to subscribe. Remember blogging is enjoyable and its your little peice of the internet so you can write about what ever you want too.
Remind people to subscribe
It might seem strange, but a lot of people on the internet are quite happy to keep searching for a favourite blog manually until they’re prompted to subscribe. Many bloggers are hesitant about pushing this idea, as it was one of the staples of bad blogging a few years ago when it was taken to the extreme. But if someone’s taken the time to read a whole article, a friendly reminder to ‘subscribe if you’d like to read more content like this’ is perfectly reasonable.
This is a collabrotive post.