How To Make your Blog more less Appealing to your Readers, Part III: Summary
Posted on October 22, 2008, under Blogging.
How To Make your Blog more less Appealing to your Readers is a 3-part series on making your blog more appealing to your readers. Part I details how to reinforce trust with your readers. Part II covers usability principles for your blog and why you should worry about them. Part III is a summary of the series with final thoughts and responses to your comments and questions.
Previously, we discussed on the importance of mantaining your readership’s trust and the need of making your blog user-friendly.
Is this all it takes to make your blog popular? It surely isn’t, there are other aspect that need to be taken into account to succeed as a blogger - such as selecting the right niche -you can’t blog about something you don’t like / know / care-, targeting the right audience, and marketing / promoting your site to others.
Trust and Usability are, certainly, essential. It doesn’t matter how much you promote your site or how well written your posts are. If people can’t rely on you, then why would they support you? Also, if they can’t understand how your site works, will they stay and try to figure it out? I don’t think so.
What do you think?
Credits: Skydiving picture by amab7
Yet Another Brick in The Wall
Can’t help this feeling. I bet you have felt it, too. Whenever I visit any blog -be it new or known to me- I feel that creativity and genuine blogging are losing grounds to procrastination and dishonesty. All I see are rehashed blog posts everywhere - there are barely any new topics to discuss over with other fellow bloggers and readers out there. Originality is losing ground to laziness.
There are literally millions of blogs in the blogosphere but only a small portion of them can deliver quality, valuable contents to their readership while the rest remain to be just empty shells that look good on the outside but on the inside contain nothing but emptiness. No real discussions going on - just some passive interactions between readers and bloggers. That’s not what blogosphere is meant to be.
I know only a few bloggers who I can really click with. Reading their blogs makes me feel inspired and motivates me to continue writing and sharing everything I know - you guys know who you are 
Because of this, I’ve got a question for all of you: are you another brick in the wall?
Clicking With People
What makes a blog unique? Is it its layout? It helps but it’s not an important factor here. Is it its contents? Definitely important, but that’s just half of the story. What really spices your blog and makes it stand out from the crowd is not your theme, or what widgets are displayed on your sidebar. It’s you. You are the secret ingredient that makes the meal exquisite. (more…)
Why You Should Write Your Headings First
Picture this: Inspiration strikes you like a tsunami, turning you into a beacon of light and wisdom. Then, you sit down and write all these great ideas you’re so eagerly wanting to see published on your site. You just can’t wait to see your readers’ reaction. By the time you’re done with the writing, you realize that you can’t find an engaging headline for your blog post. Now you have this feeling that your creative juices have dried up.
Ever since I’ve been blogging -about a year now-, I have faced this issue several times. And I’m not the only one, I know I’m not.
Why start by writing your headline first
I’ve been analyzing this problem for some time now and I’ve come to think that when it comes to writing, headlines should be dealt with first. (more…)
How To Have Kick-Ass Ideas For Your Next Blog Posts
Writer’s block. We’ve all been there. I know I have - and surely you have, too. Our creative juices gets all bittered up and traffic stops flowing to our sites.
Days ago, I was having this nice chat over MSN about blogging with my friend Wong KW from The Number 39. One of the questions he asked was about posting rates. “How can some people keep a daily blogging schedule?” -he said- “Sometimes I have hard times finding ideas to blog about”. “Me too” -I replied- ”All of us bloggers get the writer’s block every now and then. It can’t be helped”. (more…)
Your Comment is Awaiting Moderation
Your comment is awaiting moderation. I’m sure you have seen this message hundreds of times on most blogs you have visited. Several bloggers -even some famous ones- have implemented comment moderation on their blogs to fight back spammers and leave room for real commenters.
Spam has become such a threat to bloggers that most have decided to moderate every single comment before it can go public. While the reason behind this act is reasonable -we don’t want our blogs spammed- this undoubtedly goes against the true nature of blogging: talk and interact with your readers.
I gotta be honest with you. I also used to think that having all comments go to the moderation queue was the right thing to do, now I believe that it’s more important to let things flow naturally. You see, many questions can be answered and topics can be discussed without a “moderator”. If you insist on moderating comments before publishing them, you’re only killing all possibilities of having your visitors interact between them. Therefore, you won’t be able to build a community with whom you’d interact with.
You may be wondering “how do you keep those spammy comments that Akismet (or any other Spam management plugin) lets through from polluting your blog?“. I have my comments email notifications go to my main email address - which I’m permanentely checking due to the nature of my job. I usually scan through the emails and see what are spam and what are real comments. If I happen to pick up any spam comment that got posted up I can always delete them quickly & painless. That’s what I do to keep things in order on my blog.
The way I see it, you only have two choices: either you believe in the majority of commenters whom integrate your community (and moderate / delete the spam that gets by) or you can control your blog in a way that nothing gets in (spam or not).
So, what’s it gonna be?
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