Amiability: Make your readers feel welcome to your blog. Don't spook your visitor with cluttered text ads, banner ads, affiliate links, popups etc. This leaves limited space for the actual posts.
Unique décor: Choose a unique style for your website. This will leave a lasting impression on the visitors. It gives out a professional look. Imagine a white page with black letters or a web page which looks like a cluttered html lab. There are thousands of themes available, pick the right one that suits your niche, customize it to serve your purpose.
Easy To Navigate: Blogs are known for their bad navigation. Limited place or tabs are available to fit the vast amount of information you amass on the blog. You have to provide links to readers so they can easily browse around your space. You will want to include an about page, contact details, archives among other links.
Revive Latent Posts: Despite the number of advantages of blogs, there is one disadvantage I detest. Blog posts are filed in chronological order and slowly get buried in the archives. Your most important latent articles would need some revival.
Transparency: Don't make false promises. One of the key objectives of any brand is to build consumer trust in its values. So rather than a humbug sales copy that exaggerates or spins the truth, why not just tell the truth in the first place?
Offer something free: Many people just love the word FREE. Your visitors have so much of choice. If you want to keep them, you need to show them how good your products are. This will attract people to your site. Offer them a small free gift for signing up to your email. This is not just to attract people but also as a courtesy for the newsletter sign up.
Don't spam: Keep strict privacy policy and adhere to it. My vocab falls short to stress enough on this point.
Choose the things you offer to people: You need to pay close attention to what you are offering your visitors. Don't just offer because it gets you more commission. Try it out yourself if possible, or browse around for reviews. Mention to people what reviews you went through and how you support them or controvert them.
Genuine: Be yourself. Don't sell yourself as someone else or boast that you are something which you are not. False pretensions don't help build credibility.
Attention to detail: Don't rush. Take time on each thing and draw attention to detail. This will bring out the best in you. As a child I always wanted to finish my work as quickly as possible and end up messing things. I learned to slowed down a little and now I feel things are under my control.
Stay in touch: Once you build a subscriber/ customer email database, you'll need to use that list to stay in touch with them at pre-mentioned intervals (week, fortnight, month or once in a quarter) by sending e-newsletters, special offer emails, special discounts, free products etc. This will help them remember you among your competitors. Over doing this by flooding subscriber inbox will not only lead to higher unsubscriber rate.
ROI (Return On Investment): Don't expect to become rich overnight. Trying to monetize your blog too early can hamper its growth.
Taste: If you have what they are looking for, and instead of just reading about it, if they can savor a little, they are obvious to come for more.
Specialize: specialize in a micro-niche in your area. If you are running a blog on pets, find a micro-niche you are passionate about. Centralize on a that smaller topic. Ex: Pets > Dogs > Great Danes. Master that area.
Frequency of posts: Writing posts at regular intervals will keep your readers informed about your posting habits. If you can't post for some reason, let your readers know about it.
Be Pragmatic: When you are writing a post, think about its practical utility to the readers. The more your posts are written with a mindset to help, the more readers will be attracted to your blog.
Fast: Quicken your speed than competition. You should be able to finish a project in a week which your competition would take to finish in a fortnight.
Conversing Tone in Writing: Blogs should not sound like website. They should have the personal touch and blog posts should be written in conversational tone.
Interact With Readers: You should also take the advantage of comment facility with blogs to interact with your readers.
Hand pick your affiliate programs: Before recommending products to your readers, a blogger must have tried and reviewed the product. If that is not possible, you should have a strong reason why & how your readers are going to benefit from the product.
Reflect Your Personality: Quote: "Imitation is suicide". Come to think of it, Imitating another blogger won't serve any purpose. Your blog's uniquity comes with you and your writing. It should reflect your personality.
Primary Goal Of Your Blog: A focused blog is well admired by readers especially those who subscribve for rss feed. They will know what to expect from your blog. Choose a micro-niche and post continuously about it. Pretty soon, your blog will gain prominence.
Balancing quality & quantity of posts: I see that many bloggers set a goal about number of posts per month. It is great to set such goal, IF you have enough content. Your content should be relevant to your blogs niche and should be of quality.
Organic Posts: Try to write posts about topics that haven't been covered before. Or at least try to add more value to the topics already covered. There is no point in writing the same points which have been covered by hundreds of other blogs.
Catchy Phrases: This point has been stressed upon by every professional blogger. The title should be catchy to attract readers. You could also include an interesting piece of your post to display as excerpt. You will find this under advanced options, if you are running your blog on wordpress.
Keep your blog fresh: Provide fresh interesting content to your readers at regular (stipulated, if possible) intervals.
You need to provide a reason why your visitors should visit your blog among millions of blogs. Do you have a strong reason?
Shri is an online business consultant for small & medium businesses since 2004. Shri blogs about amiable cross-blog networking to help boost bloggers at SmartAdvise.info and created a community for Budding Bloggers at Budding Bloggers Network. |
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