Ideate

10 Tips for Boosting your Blog

by Sean Tucker on 27/11/09 at 12:30 pm
8 comments

So you’re putting loads of effort into writing posts for your new blog, and now you want to make sure that you build up a solid audience to read all your hard work. Here are 10 basic tips for boosting your readership.

1. Post regularly. Decide before hand how often you want to post (daily, weekly, monthly) and then try and commit to your schedule. If possible, make sure you even post at the same time of day. For example, I read somewhere that research shows that the best time to send out newsletters is 10am on either a Tuesday or Wednesday morning. Apparently it’s because there is often an office lull at this time, where people have a moment to read something. That suggests that it would also be a good time to publish your weekly blog post. Hopefully, if you are regular in your posting, and your posts are good enough, you will also create an expectation in your readers who will be looking for your new posts at the same time every day, week or month.

2. Look at your competition. Get a gauge on their design, layout, post frequency, length and tone. The object is not to imitate, but to make sure that you are keeping pace with your competitors, and then working out how to offer something they don’t. Learn from the mistakes others are making, and then innovate.

3. Tag your posts well.All blog platforms have some kind of metatag feature where you can add search tags to your posts. The key is to use phrases rather than individual words. When tagging, try and pick phrases from your post which you think would be searched most often. It also helps to make sure you are using phrases which actually appear in the body of your text. All this will help casual net surfers to stumble on your blog through search engines.

4. Respond to comments. Your readers are more likely to return if they feel they have been engaged with. This is very important for building a loyal reader base.

5. List your blog on a Blog Directory. These are the places people come if they’re looking for a new blog to subscribe to. Take the time to fill out the fields correctly and add a succinct description of the areas you cover in your posts. You may pick up many more readers this way, and the listing doesn’t hurt your SEO. There are many out there, but to get stared take a look at Technorati and Afrigator.

6. Post comments on other blogs.Introduce yourself to fellow bloggers and form connections with people who are writing on the same topics. Point people to other blogger’s posts which you have found interesting. You will find they will often do the same for you, and there should be some nice cross pollination of readers. Also place links to these blogs in your Blog Roll. The more connections, the more visibility.

7. Have an interesting ‘about this blog’ page. This should offer a summary of your intentions, and outline your topic. It will help keep the bounce rate down. Many first time readers will just have been sent a link to your latest post, and a well written ‘about this blog’ page will help them to get the context of the whole blog quickly. If they like what they see they may choose to visit more regularly or subscribe to your RSS feed. Don’t miss out on the opportunity.

8. Make your blog attractive. If you are using a free hosting platform like Blogger, Typepad or Wordpress make sure you pick a template which compliments your message. Then make it visually appealing by adding pictures to your posts whenever possible, and playing with font and colour styles. Add interesting widgets to your sidebar, but don’t make it too cluttered. More is not always better. Keep it simple and interesting.

9. Use your Social Media networks. It’s a great way to tell people that you have a new post up. For example, I have my Twitter updates linked to my Facebook status updates. The first thing I do when I have published a post is to put a teaser sentence and a link to the new post up on my Twitter feed. This means that all my Twitter followers and Facebook connections are instantly made aware that there is something new to read. I find this provides a nice initial boost in readers, who then hopefully pass the link on if they like what they read.

10. Keep going. I know there are weeks you just don’t feel like writing, but try and put something short down – just keep things ticking over. Blogs take time to build, and there will be days where you feel it is just a waste of time, but hang in there. Some of the best blogs out there took a long time to get off the ground. Persevere.

Happy Blogging.

View more articles by Sean Tucker.

Tags: blogging

Related Articles

• How to get traffic to your blog
• 3 Quick Social Media Marketing Tips for Entrepreneurs
• How to get traffic to your blog [in South Africa]
• Tips for using Twitter for Business
• Mashable’s 10 Small Business Social Media Marketing Tips