Making Your Blog Work for You

Most blogs sit there and get little to no traffic, no one reads or comments on them and eventually the writer stops writing. Blogs are about interaction and sharing. It’s boring to only have yourself to talk to. Any good thought requires an audience to be appreciated!

You want people to stay on your blog and ready what you have to say but a blog is not about you! Oddly enough to have a blog work you need to interact with others who are bloggers and add links to their blog articles in your posts.

There are a large number of sites where you can search current blog posts by topic i.e. Digg technorati . When you find a post on a topic you are interested in you view it on the bloggers site, if you have comments you can add to what they said you write them on your blog with a link referring back to the original post, a trackback.

WordPress has a great explanation of how a trackback works

• Person A writes something on their blog.
• Person B wants to comment on Person A's blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
• Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A's blog
• Person A's blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B's post

What’s so great about that? The blog software on the bloggers site adds a link back to you with a summary of your post.

The 3 skills required to blog are reading, writing and commenting. They all contribute to a bloggers success and need equal attention and time.

Sign up for Google reader and search for blogs you like subscribing to them using this service.

Dedicate no more than ½ hr each day to read your favorite blogs and see if there are any articles that you could add value to by sharing an example, adding a point or another perspective, disagreeing with something that was said and giving your view. Use a name that is a keyword or one that will add value to your site because that name will probably end up being the link back to your site.

Titles for blog posts should be either:
Funny
Thought provoking
Entertaining
Quick Tips for ___ or Expert Tips on___
SEO Title – Use good keywords

Posting Frequency

If you want to develop a steady readership you need to post at least once or twice a week.

Your post does not always have to be something you wrote. It could be a list of links to interesting articles that you saw on the web.

• People love lists so it could be a group of postings on a theme 5 Tips to, 5 Trends in, 5 Thoughts on
• You can share a recent experience
• Answer questions you receive by email on your blog and tell them the answer to their question will be there.
• Turn a Press Release into a blog article.
• Trade guest articles with another blogger who has a different perspective and experience but does essentially the same thing you do.
• Respond to someone else.s topic referring back to their post with a link in the article (as noted above)

Need help setting up your blog? We would be happy to design and set up your blog. See our services and contact us for a quote.