Having a blog is
relatively easy; all you need to do is create a custom domain name and start
writing and publishing posts. The tricky part of blogging is getting people to
not only read what you’re writing, but also to respond to it. It takes a lot of
work to build your blog into a place where people feel comfortable coming and
sharing their ideas and perceptions regarding a particular topic, and then go
one step further by sharing your post with other people. So how do you create a
blog that encourages people to be social? These 10 tips will help you establish
a space where your readers want to both read
Keep a consistent writing schedule. The first step to making your blog a social place is to
write quality articles on a consistent basis. Keeping a sporadic blogging
schedule discourages people from coming back regularly to read your posts. Your
readers need to know that they can count on you to have new content up around
the same time each week.
Respond to your commenters. It takes extra time and effort to comment on a blog post
after reading it, which means that your commenters felt your post was worthy of
both reading and responding to. Show your appreciation by taking the
time to respond to these comments. Doing so helps foster a relationship with
your readers and encourages them to keep coming back.
Allow guest posting. Letting other people guest post on your site is a great way
to get people responding to the post and talking about your site. Guest posts
also offer you more exposure because the writer will link over to your site
from their own blog and they can showcase a variety of topics you might not
have otherwise blogged about. This is a great way to get people talking about
all sorts of different topics.
Guest post for others. Just like allowing guest posting on your site is beneficial
to your blog, you should also guest post for other blogs. Include a link to
your site in your guest post or your author bio so that the people who read the
blog you’re posting for can find your site easily.
Make yourself useful. E-books, tutorial posts and posts full of handy information
are all great ways to get people to read your content and share it with other
people. The more useful your posts are, the more likely it is they’ll get
passed around the blogging community.
Share your posts on social media. At this point, utilizing social media should be a
no-brainer, but some people still haven’t taken advantage of marketing through
their social media sites. Don’t be that person! Promote your posts on Twitter
and Facebook. Consider creating a Facebook page for your blog. When someone
comments or tweets about something you’ve written, respond to them. Social
media is one of the handiest tools you can have in your arsenal when it comes
to being social!
Avoid posts that are overly wordy. Don’t write posts that are just one big block of text,
because the likelihood of someone reading it all the way through is slim to
none. Instead, write posts that have bullet points or numbers so that people
can scan through what you have to say and still hit all the important points.
These types of posts are the posts that tend to get shared on other blogs and
social media sites more often because they contain useful information that is
easily readable.
Create posts that are visuallyappealing. Don’t neglect the power that
pictures and carefully placed white space have on a blog post. Make sure that
you utilize white space wisely as you write and that you insert appropriate
pictures and graphics when you can – white space gives your readers a quick
mental break from reading and the right graphics or pictures can create a lot
of buzz and help reinforce a point you’re trying to make.
Vary the types of posts you create. Don’t confine yourself to writing the same types of posts
every day – people will get bored! Instead try a list post one day and a v-log
(a video blog of you talking) the next. Switching up the type of posts you
publish keeps people interested and engaged.
Become a brand, not just a blog. Get a custom header with a logo
designed and have a blog name that is memorable. Be sure to use your logo on
your other social media sites in addition to your blog. Over time people will
begin to recognize your logo as an extension of your blog, and having a snazzy
blog name creates an impression with people. Making your blog into a brand
takes your blog up a notch and helps you seem professional.
