How To: Get More Readers

Hi everyone,

So, as I blogged earlier, one of the more frequent questions I get is "How do I get more people to read my blog?"

Yes,
I know, we all blog for ourselves, not for other people. But then again
(to butcher a metaphor), if a tree blogs in a forest and no one is
there to read it, does it make a sound?

Blog Herald recently linked to Problogger.net's 11 Techniques to Increase Page Views on Your Blog.

The
11 tips are geared to professional bloggers (or folks with inclinations
that way), and a bunch of them are geared to specific features
available to advanced blogging platforms like (WordPress), but it's still an interesting read -- some takeaways for regular folks include Serializing Content, Making Things Interactive, and Highlighting Key Posts. Check it out.

Here are some of my own tips:

* Pick the Low-Hanging Fruit:
This is corporate-speak that means "Go for the easy wins first." Share
your blog's address with the people who already know you. They're the
people who are most likely to be interested in what's going on in your
life.

* Self-Promote Yourself (but only where appropriate):
Put your blog's address in your mail signature, profiles, IM away
message, message board posting signature -- anywhere that you tell
people about yourself.

* Participate in Other People's Blogs:
Blogging is all about participation. If you read someone else's blog,
leave a meaningful comment and include a link back to your blog -- if
people like your comment, they might follow the link back to your blog.
Just don't spam.

* Update Frequently (or at least consistently):
The more you update, the more there is for people to come to. And, no,
you can't cheat by posting filler -- what you post should be
interesting or useful... this creates value in the mind of the visitor.

* Be Self-Referential:
If you talk about something you posted about previously, throw in a
hyperlink to it. This exposes readers to stuff that deeper in your
archives that they might otherwise have missed.

* Give and Receive:
Don't be afraid to link out from your entries. A lot of Web sites are
reluctant to link out to other Web sites, because they're afraid that
if they send people away, they won't come back. This is wrong, on so
many levels.

For starters, if you mention something in your
blog but don't link out to it, it's considered rude (or at the very
least, it's seen as very lazy.)

Plus, one of the best ways to
get repeat visitors is to be useful, or otherwise valuable. Talking
about something you saw on the Web, but then not letting people take a
look for themselves so they can form their own opinion and find other
viewpoints, is not particularly useful.

* Don't Be Difficult:
Don't make it hard for people to read your blog. Be careful with
eye-bleeding font colors, background images and colors, and try to use
proper spelling and grammar -- I know a lot of you type in IM-speak,
but this can turn off people, just like typing iN l33t sP34K, oR tHaT
rAnDOm CaPiTAliZaTiON tHiNg wHicH I cAn'T dO vErY weLl.

At the very least, use paragraph breaks to break up big blocks of text. Big blocks of text are hard to read -- put things in easy-to-digest chunks.

* Don't Shut Out Other Browsers: This is a little more technical and I will have to a separate entry later just about this. I know a lot of you are using style tags to insert background images
in your entries, which is fine. However, please be aware that when you
do this, danger lurks: Just because it looks good in your browser
(which is probably Microsoft Internet Explorer [MSIE] -- the AOL client
browser is a  version of the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser)
doesn't mean it's going to display properly in other, non-MSIE
browsers.

MSIE is still the dominant browser out there, but Firefox is getting more popular. And when style tags go bad, they can go bad badly, to the point of illegibility.

Testing
for browser compatibility can be a pain (especially when dealing with
multiple platforms -- Mac/PC/Linux), but sometimes all you have to do
is ask a friend to take a look at your blog.

Ultimately, you
might just decide to worry about viewers using MSIE browsers, and
that's fine -- just know that browser compatibility issues lurk out there.

Finally, when it comes down to it, here's a good rule of thumb:
Think about the blogs that you like to read and that you revisit on a
regular basis -- then think about what it is about those blogs that
keeps you coming back.

If you have other tips for drawing in visitors, feel free to share in the comments.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: how to get more readers, blogging tips