Good blog posts: the bare necessities
It’s highly likely that not every post on your niche blog will be a run-away winner in terms of reader reaction, community enhancement, or pulling its weight with the search engines. That said, there are still several things you can do to ensure that every post works hard, even if you ultimately find that it misses the mark for some reason.
A successful blog post:
1. Helps the reader in some way to think more clearly about an issue, solve a problem, or provide food for thought.
2. Evokes emotion, strong agreement, or even strong disagreement.
3. Communicates a central idea clearly and effectively.
4. Invites reader commentary in a direct manner.
5. Supports the overall theme of the blog and feels “relevant” to the reader.
Narrowing this down even further to a bare minimum, I would say that two of the criteria above are essential for each and every post, at least on a niche blog:
- Communicating a central idea clearly; and
- Supporting the overall theme of the blog
Posts that do at least these two things are carrying their weight, if only in terms of contributing to the overall worth of the blog in a positive way. If a post can’t do at least those two things, it probably should be scrapped.
Which two criteria from the list above strike you as being most important? Do you have other criteria I didn’t list that you think makes a successful post? Let’s talk about them in the comments!
Attracting and keeping blog readers
Q. How can I get more readers to my blog?
A. Basically, you get more readers by promoting your blog, reaching out directly to potential readers, and writing compelling posts that make them want to visit. Here are some strategies you can use:
1. Find out what search phrases people are using to get to your blog, and, assuming that those phrases are relevant to your blog’s focus, write more about those topics.
2. Comment on other peoples’ blogs, being sure to include your blog URL when filling in the comment submission form.
3. Link out to other peoples’ blogs from your posts. You’ll attract the other blogger, and your blog will probably indicate in that blogger’s comments that your blog has linked to them – attracting people who read that blogger’s comments to see what you’ve written.
4. Find a discussion forum related to one of your primary topics, and begin participating in it. Set up a “signature” on your forum profile that links out to your blog. This ensures you link to your blog in an unobtrusive way.
5. Learn what kinds of pages/posts do well on social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. and write to those audiences. (Hint: Don’t always Digg or Stumble your own pages if you can help it – find a friend to occasionally do it for you.)
Basic blog traffic and metrics, and the impact on search engine results
When I first began journal blogging in 2002, I wasn’t really thinking about an audience other than myself. Still, the first time I put up a really good piece of writing, I did have the fleeting thought that it would be nice if someone else would read it. I soon became very curious about how many people were finding my site, and that curiosity quickly became a bit of an obsession.
There are several free methods you can use to gather site metrics. Sitemeter can give you some basics; if you blog using WordPress, the WP Stats plugin is a good option. If you are far enough along that you have an account through a web hosting provider and you run WordPress in this environment, you can install Google Analytics for a thorough look at your stats. My web host has a decent traffic reporting system, so I mostly use that plus Feedburner (mentioned below). I also use a blog tracking community called MyBlogLog - it’s basic service is free, and there’s a paid enhanced version that might be worthwhile if your traffic-counting needs become serious.
Here are some key items to look at when reviewing your stats:
1. Number of visits per month (not “hits”) – if one person comes to the blog, that’s one visit no matter how many posts they read. While some folks make a distinction between “unique visitors” (uniques) and returning visitors, I don’t see where it makes much difference whether they’ve been there before. If somebody’s reading on Monday morning and they come back Monday night, to me that’s just as good as if it was two different people.
2. Number of page-views per month – If 100 people come to the site, that’s 100 visits. If they each read 5 pages while they’re there, that 500 page views. Visits, then, tell you the number of people coming to the site; page views tell you something about how much of your content they’re reading while they’re there.
3. Whether visits and page-views are going up or down each month. Even a small tick upward each month is an indication that your posts are being indexed by the search engines and that people are searching for the topics you’re writing about.
4. What search phrases people are using to reach your blog. Knowing what phrases people are using when they find your blog can be not only a boon if you want to plan ways to get more traffic around those phrases; it can also help you generate ideas for future posts. On my ”biker chick” blog, one of the phrases I see with some frequency is “sportster ape hangers,” which refers to “ape hanger” handlebars on a Sportster motorcycle. I happen to have ape hangers on my Sportster, and mentioned them in one of my posts. I could certainly write a detailed follow-up post about how and why I put those handlebars on my bike, and get some traffic from people who obviously want to know something about it.
5. What percentage of readers are “bouncing”? If your site has a high bounce rate, people are coming in but leaving right away. This wouldn’t concern you if you’re only writing for yourself, but it’s critical knowledge if you are trying to attract an audience around a particular search phrase because it suggests that although they are finding your site, they aren’t seeing what they want once they get there.
6. Which are your most- and least-popular posts? Even from a purely personal standpoint, it’s nice to know which posts are getting the most traffic. If you’re trying to build an audience, you can get an idea for which topics people are most interested in and write more about them, thereby improving your search engine rankings for those topics.
7. How many subscribers you have to your RSS Feed or via email. Chances are, your blog automatically publishes an RSS feed. Visitors to your site can subscribe to your feed through a feed reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader, or they can subscribe to updates via email. In either case, this delivers your latest blog content directly to them without them having to return time and again to your site. (More on this in a future post.) Enhance your feed by running it through Google’s FeedBurner service, and you can tell not only how many people subscribe to your feed but you can employ a variety of ways to promote your feed. (“Subscribers” is one of those addictive measurements that many bloggers check daily – or multiple times daily, especially if they know they have a current popular post.)
Understanding your blog’s basic metrics is not only interesting (and addictive), it’s critical if you want to use the information to develop new and better content, deliver advertising messages to your audience, or understand how people are finding your site.
Write an effective About page for your blog
Q. I’m pretty sure my ‘About’ pages needs beefing up. What should I include?
A. Your instinct to craft a hard-working ‘About’ page is a good one. While your blog design and layout should provide opportunities to communicate the scope and purpose of your blog, you can also maximize the ‘About’ page opportunity for better search engine results and reader clarification.
Here are some important elements:
1. Include a statement about your blog’s key purpose. This is your chance to provide the full explanation of who your blog is for and what it will cover. This description should build on the title and tagline found elsewhere on the blog. Use appropriate keywords and search terms in a natural (not stilted) way, and search engines will pick up the page and bring readers to you.
2. Give a little background about how you got started - what was the impetus for launching the blog? Again, use keywords and search phrases common to your topic in a natural, conversational way.
3. Give a little background about yourself personally. You don’t have to give away more personal details than you’re comfortable sharing, but you can probably include your home city and any notes about your professional experience or education that are relevant to your blog topic. Resist the urge to write in third person (“Dan Smith is a writer and blogger living in…”) – write in the first person so your readers can get to know you.
4. Invite people to contact you via email. You’d be surprised how many bloggers fail to provide a way to contact them outside of the comments or an impersonal form. This is one of the reasons why I love free email addresses like those provided by Yahoo! or Hotmail - you can set one up just for your blogging and social media site registrations, separate from your regular home email account, so any spam that comes as a result doesn’t clutter your “official” in-box.
5. Include a photo of you if at all possible – it’s far more personal and lends credibility to the blog if readers can put a face with the name.
The value of the journal blog
I’m not a big fan of reading in the “war stories” genre, but the books in that category I have read that I really appreciated were not the chronologies of dates and battles, but the detailed accounts of life in the trenches – those written from the personal perspective of those who were there.
Such is the value of the journal blog. Although I’m mostly focused these days on niche blogging, I freely admit to having a soft spot in my heart for the journal blog, my first blogging love. Maybe it’s because this form gave me some of my all-time favorite personal writing. Maybe it’s just that I know I don’t always need to write for an audience to be happy.
Whatever the case, journal blogs are no less meaningful to their authors than the very best of the niche blogs. Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Journal blogs can be a “brain dump” for the author – a place to record reactions to the days’ events, think through sticky problems, or store links to websites they wish to revisit.
2. Journal blogs can be a training ground for testing blogging strategies and community-building tactics. While this suggests that perhaps the blogger is working toward something like a niche blog, that certainly doesn’t have to be the case.
3. Journal blogs help writers hone their writing style and find their personal voice. We become more proficient at a task if we practice it regularly. Journal blogging can lead to the development of a distinct, personal writing style that defines who you are and sets you apart from other writers.
4. Journal blogs communicate the “human experience” by giving you a place to plant your personal flag and tell the world, “I am here.”
Do you have a journal blog? What keeps you motivated to continue writing? What purpose does it serve in your life?
Increasing reader comments on your blog
Q. How do I get more comments on my blog?
A. Good for you! You’ve decided that comments should be welcome on your blog, to build community and encourage reader participation. That’s one of the things that makes a blog a blog, in my view. Here are some ways you can encourage readers to comment often:
1. Make sure you aren’t putting up barriers such as arduous log-in/registration requirements. While it provides a bit of commenter accountability to ask for the minimum name, email address and optional website URL, requiring readers to solve CAPTCHA riddles or even pass through moderation can be seen as significant barriers. Of course, these tools also help ensure that commenters on your site are human and not automated link-depositing “bots,” so do try them if you feel they are warranted, and see what works.
2. Comment on and link out frequently to other blogs – authors and readers there are likely to come check you out and leave their own comments.
3. Take a risk and be more controversial – or at least opinionated. Strong opinions generate responses. Even disagreement is healthy if it’s constructive, and can push your blog into the limelight.
4. Promote a controversial or opinionated post using Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Or StumbleUpon. Don’t post your masterpiece and then sit back, waiting for traffic to find it. Get out there and actively promote it using other social media sites and tools.
5. Email people who have commented on your blog in the past and invite them to comment on a particularly high-quality post. Sometimes people are shy about being the first to comment. Your proven commenters can help you get the conversation rolling.
6. End a post with a question. If someone’s going to answer, I’ve noticed they’re just as likely to answer a yes or no question as they are an open-ended one.
Michelle Rafter has more thoughts about getting more comments on her WordCount blog. Which of the above seems most do-able to you? Any other ideas to add to the mix?
The good and bad of blog comments
Many new bloggers are not entirely new to blogging – they’ve read a lot of blogs, and maybe noticed that sometimes, commenters get nasty, negative, or disagreeable. It’s important to remember: being able to become part of the conversation is what sets blogs apart from, among other things, printed newspapers and static websites.
While I make an exception here for journal blogs (where the author is blogging for their own personal satisfaction and not for the purpose of audience-building), I find that a niche blog is almost useless unless it offers readers the ability to comment, even negatively, on what the author’s presenting.
Why? Your goal with a niche blog should not just be to become the recognized expert on a given topic. It should also be to become a true resource to your readers – and that means offering them opinions other than your own.
Indeed, readers expect the opportunity to leave comments and be part of the conversation when they visit a blog (even, to a degree, journal blogs). Make it as easy as possible for people to comment, and you will help create a thriving community around your blog with high return readership.
You can always set up your blog to moderate comments if you are afraid of unchecked negativity. (Here’s one example of someone who attempted to deal with an overwhelming number of negative comments. And, here’s another example of a blog that I know personally was inundated from day one with negative comments, yet the blogger perseveres with a helpful, professional attitude to this day.) You can also look for plug-ins to fight “comment spam” on your blog.
Where do you get ideas for blog posts?
Every blogger I know has hit the occasional dry patch when searching for ideas to write about. What we all have in common is that we feel blogging’s important enough to bust through the writer’s block and work to generate ideas for posts. Here are some of the ways I generate ideas for my blogs:
1. I read other blogs and react to their most compelling posts. I use this tactic a lot, in fact, because reading someone else’s blog almost always makes me think about my own take on the topic at hand.
2. I subscribe to news releases related to my niche industry and use them as the basis for posts. If you don’t have a niche blog, you can still do more general searches that may turn up some ideas. PRnewswire as a great source for news releases; one of my searches is simply the generic “women’s interests.”
3. I look at past posts and brainstorm ideas that might branch off of them. This can be especially effective with older posts, where new developments may have occurred that justify an update.
4. I subscribe to “alerts” from Google on various keywords relevant to my niche. These alerts are delivered to my email in-box so I don’t have to go looking for them. This not only leads me to other bloggers’ posts, it also gives me a notion of whether a particular topic is “hot” that day.
5. I react to conversations I’ve overheard in real life. Being a blogger doesn’t mean disengaging from real interactions, especially if you want to stay current in your niche. Mine the conversations you have, or that you overhear, for relevant blog posts.
6. I draw on my own personal experiences and challenges. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of personal reflection to ask myself, “What am I struggling with this week that might interest my readers?”
7. I read the daily news and comment on the most controversial or interesting items related to my niche. Or, in the case of my journal blog, on whatever interests me the most.
Have you hit the Blogger’s Wall yet? What was the strategy you used to bust through it?
Blog posting frequency
Q. When starting a new blog, is it better to roll out content slowly or to load it up quickly with lots of posts for readers to discover?
A. The focus of any new blog (or any established blog, for that matter) should be on the quality of the content rather than the number of posts. Yes, you want readers to have plenty to look at when they arrive. But think of it this way: when you come upon a new blog, which would you rather have: 10 informative, well-written posts or 30 thrown-together half-baked thoughts?
For a new blog, my recommendations are:
Two well-crafted posts per week. These are posts that have one or more of these components:
1. A primary point, supported by examples
2. Clean, clear, tightly-edited prose
3. One or two quality links out to other blogs, relevant to the point or topic of the post
4. Photo or other illustration
5. Overall tone of being informative, helpful, or thought-provoking (or all three)
Two ‘quickie-posts’ per week. A quickie post is something “short and sweet” that you add to the blog not because you’re in a hurry, but because it meets your blog’s mission and is interesting or especially timely, but doesn’t require a fully crafted post to be useful to your readers. Examples might include:
1. A video or photo
2. A thought-provoking question or “stray thought” you want to throw out there (try creating a poll or short survey)
3. A great quote or snippet from another blog post (be sure to give proper credit)
4. A link to a post on another blog you found especially compelling
This formula, 2+2, creates the sense that your blog is regularly updated but shouldn’t stretch your ability to maintain it.
