Do Your Blog Posts Gain Reader Attention?

Blog posts can be a little dry; excuse me, I meant, web writing can be a little dry overall. Blogs aren’t the only online medium to blame. One problem is that blogs and online articles have gotten so SEO friendly. Some bloggers are excellent at making their posts search friendly AND personable. However, if you’re just focused on SEO, it’s easy to spot, annoying, super boring to read, and won’t lead to long term readers.

Another problem is that there are so many darn blogs around. Anyone can offer information on say, coffee or computers (and tons of bloggers do) but when you’re competing for readers to stay and read your post on coffee vs.the other guy, you better inject some life into your post in order to gain reader attention and keep it.

What attracts readers can vary, but here are some good ideas (i.e. tactics that gain my attention and keep me reading your posts):

You’re funny – but not mean funny: I like smart and funny bloggers who tell it like it is without being overly mean. I can deal with a little mean, but if rude is always your means to funny, it gets old.

You write about what I’m looking for: Obviously people want to read what they’re looking for. If you write for a main stream topic blog (say cooking) and yet you ‘re always writing about obscure irrelevant topics like shoes, OR bizarre food tips, such as snails in homegrown basil, you likely won’t get too many long-term readers. If I hit a cooking blog it’s because I want tips I can use.

You write about an obscure topic: I KNOW I just said above not to do this, but in some cases writing about something new and cool or odd is a great way to gain come-back readers. Using the cooking blog example again, you could have an entire obscure cooking blog, and that’s what you’d be known for. This is using odd topics to your advantage. There’s a fine line between drawing folks in with weird topics and still giving them info they can use though, so be careful.

You are human: I hate blog posts that offer up fact after fact without ever getting personal. I don’t need to know everything about you, but some personality is nice. When I’m reading about a topic at a blog, sure, I’m interested in the topic, but what keeps me at your blog vs. the other guy’s blog is that you have an opinion about your topic.

Your posts are visually pleasing: You hit enter, add relevant well-placed images, use bold text when necessary, and keep the posts easy to scan. If I cringe when I look at a blog, I leave and look for info elsewhere. Maybe that makes me a visual snob, but I’m betting I’m not the only one.

You are passionate or can fake it: This sort of goes along with the human aspect noted above, but there’s a little more to it. Even if you inject personality, you may not keep my attention if I can tell you’re bored or uninformed about your topic. I’ve written on topics I’m not personally passionate about, but one, I always feel like people can tell (I hate trying to fake it) and two, I never last long. I get bored and quit OR worse the blog suffers. Blogs written by folks who aren’t passionate, or who can’t fake it well just seem like dead space trashing up the blogosphere.

All of the above gain my attention. What gains your attention?

Can you blog your way to a writing job?

Maybe… Forbes recently ran a piece on setting up your authority related to a given career with a blog.  However, the Forbes piece appears to be talking about careers outside of writing but on the flip side, this can work just as well if you do happen to want to be a FT writer or blogger. As noted in the piece:

“Recruiters will always try to find out more about you… They Google you. You want to stack the deck in your favor. If you’re competing with someone who has equal skills and experience, a blog can be the tie-breaker. Having that little bit extra can tip the scales in your favor.”

If you think of “recruiters” as clients, you can see how this works in your favor as a writer or blogger as well; probally even more so, because obviously, if you’re up for an online writing or blog gig, clients like to see that you know what you’re doing.

I’ve gotten gigs from my personal blogs by two different means. One, I’ve had blog clients find my blog, like it, and offer me a gig. Two, I’ve made blogging contacts with other bloggers that eventually resulted in a gig (i.e. someone recommending me for a job based on knowing me or networking with me.)

If you’re going to score any sort of a gig off your blog, you need to follow some basic rules though.

• Update frequently or at the very least on some sort of schedule.
• Build an attractive blog. I’ve worked with some clients with truly horrible looking blogs but in an ironic twist some of these clients will note, “We like the look of your blog – it’s so attractive – you’re hired.” Looks can matter in blogging.
• If you’re aiming for writing and blogging gigs in the cooking realm, don’t blog pets for pete’s sake. Set yourself up as an authority in the niche you’re interested in.
• Don’t make image and linking mistakes. Many clients want bloggers and writers who not only have writing skills, but who can also handle not only finding images, but also take care of all the image editing, image placement, linking, and other basic blog requirements. By linking mistake, I mean don’t place links that look like this: http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/10/blog-jobs-start-leadership-careers-networking.html link the actual text: Blogging Your Way Into A Job. It looks nicer and it’s more search-friendly.
• Know something about SEO and make sure your blog incorporates some SEO qualities.

Have you ever scored a writing gig (or other job) from your blog? OR are you currently using your blog to try to snag a job?

It’s not too late for blog spring cleaning

At one of my blog networks my channel editor decided that all of the bloggers in the channel should complete some blog spring cleaning. It’s a good plan. I completely cleaned up one blog, and it looks (and feels) much better, and posting runs a little smoother now.

My editor’s suggestions included items like:

• Clearing out your spam cache.
• Checking said spam for any comments that passed though and vice vs. checking comments for spam.
• Being sure to have an “About” page in place.
• Picking up your blogroll – or maybe creating one if you don’t already have one.
• Adding a new poll (at this network we do use polls often – and some are fairly old).

All good stuff to do.

There’s more you can do to spiffy up your blog and post content. Such as…

Set a blog clean-up schedule. Once a year is not usually good enough, especially if you have an intense blogroll. I add basic blog clean-up tasks to my schedule at least once every four months. Personally, I alternate blogs so that I’m not cleaning eight plus blogs at once.

Clean up your categories. Push like topics together, such as combine eco books, coloring books, and green books into one category – books. I tend to gage my categories on how difficult it is for me to find the right slug, quickly, when I need it. If I can’t find what I need fast, there’s a good chance my readers can’t either. Some people think you should have no more than 10 blog categories. I think that’s pushing it. At some of my blogs it would make no sense to have just 10 categories, it would be too vague.

Make sure you have some other pages as well, besides the “About” page. A “Contact me” page is good, and it’s also nice to make pages that highlight popular posts.

Do some back reading. Then read your “About” page or what was written into your contract regarding topic. If your current posts seem to be swaying off track from the original intent of the blog, you may need to jump back on track. One good way to do this is to make a list of keywords and phrases for you topic. You don’t have to fill your posts with keywords, but I’ve found that keeping a short list by my desk can keep me focused and help me work faster.

Do an, “Ask the readers” post or poll. Over time your readers change; their minds change, you get new readers, and it’s hard to tell what everyone is interested in. You could pull some of this info from stats, but it’s not the whole story, especially if you have some posts that have hit it big on Stumble Upon or another social media site. The best thing to do is ask your readers what they’d like to see more of from now on. I’ve asked readers what they’re interested in reading in posts, but currently I’m running a poll about this at one blog, and getting way more responses. If you go with the poll option, I’d set it up so that the poll contains some basic topics relevant to your blog and also set it up so that readers can fill in an answer.

What other spring cleaning blog tasks do you do to keep your blog in top notch shape?

It’s not too late for blog spring cleaning

At one of my blog networks my channel editor decided that all of the bloggers in the channel should complete some blog spring cleaning. It’s a good plan. I completely cleaned up one blog, and it looks (and feels) much better, and posting runs a little smoother now.

My editor’s suggestions included items like:

• Clearing out your spam cache.
• Checking said spam for any comments that passed though and vice vs. checking comments for spam.
• Being sure to have an “About” page in place.
• Picking up your blogroll – or maybe creating one if you don’t already have one.
• Adding a new poll (at this network we do use polls often – and some are fairly old).

All good stuff to do.

There’s more you can do to spiffy up your blog and post content. Such as…

Set a blog clean-up schedule. Once a year is not usually good enough, especially if you have an intense blogroll. I add basic blog clean-up tasks to my schedule at least once every four months. Personally, I alternate blogs so that I’m not cleaning eight plus blogs at once.

Clean up your categories. Push like topics together, such as combine eco books, coloring books, and green books into one category – books. I tend to gage my categories on how difficult it is for me to find the right slug, quickly, when I need it. If I can’t find what I need fast, there’s a good chance my readers can’t either. Some people think you should have no more than 10 blog categories. I think that’s pushing it. At some of my blogs it would make no sense to have just 10 categories, it would be too vague.

Make sure you have some other pages as well, besides the “About” page. A “Contact me” page is good, and it’s also nice to make pages that highlight popular posts.

Do some back reading. Then read your “About” page or what was written into your contract regarding topic. If your current posts seem to be swaying off track from the original intent of the blog, you may need to jump back on track. One good way to do this is to make a list of keywords and phrases for you topic. You don’t have to fill your posts with keywords, but I’ve found that keeping a short list by my desk can keep me focused and help me work faster.

Do an, “Ask the readers” post or poll. Over time your readers change; their minds change, you get new readers, and it’s hard to tell what everyone is interested in. You could pull some of this info from stats, but it’s not the whole story, especially if you have some posts that have hit it big on Stumble Upon or another social media site. The best thing to do is ask your readers what they’d like to see more of from now on. I’ve asked readers what they’re interested in reading in posts, but currently I’m running a poll about this at one blog, and getting way more responses. If you go with the poll option, I’d set it up so that the poll contains some basic topics relevant to your blog and also set it up so that readers can fill in an answer.

What other spring cleaning blog tasks do you do to keep your blog in top notch shape?

It’s not too late for blog spring cleaning

At one of my blog networks my channel editor decided that all of the bloggers in the channel should complete some blog spring cleaning. It’s a good plan. I completely cleaned up one blog, and it looks (and feels) much better, and posting runs a little smoother now.

My editor’s suggestions included items like:

• Clearing out your spam cache.
• Checking said spam for any comments that passed though and vice vs. checking comments for spam.
• Being sure to have an “About” page in place.
• Picking up your blogroll – or maybe creating one if you don’t already have one.
• Adding a new poll (at this network we do use polls often – and some are fairly old).

All good stuff to do.

There’s more you can do to spiffy up your blog and post content. Such as…

Set a blog clean-up schedule. Once a year is not usually good enough, especially if you have an intense blogroll. I add basic blog clean-up tasks to my schedule at least once every four months. Personally, I alternate blogs so that I’m not cleaning eight plus blogs at once.

Clean up your categories. Push like topics together, such as combine eco books, coloring books, and green books into one category – books. I tend to gage my categories on how difficult it is for me to find the right slug, quickly, when I need it. If I can’t find what I need fast, there’s a good chance my readers can’t either. Some people think you should have no more than 10 blog categories. I think that’s pushing it. At some of my blogs it would make no sense to have just 10 categories, it would be too vague.

Make sure you have some other pages as well, besides the “About” page. A “Contact me” page is good, and it’s also nice to make pages that highlight popular posts.

Do some back reading. Then read your “About” page or what was written into your contract regarding topic. If your current posts seem to be swaying off track from the original intent of the blog, you may need to jump back on track. One good way to do this is to make a list of keywords and phrases for you topic. You don’t have to fill your posts with keywords, but I’ve found that keeping a short list by my desk can keep me focused and help me work faster.

Do an, “Ask the readers” post or poll. Over time your readers change; their minds change, you get new readers, and it’s hard to tell what everyone is interested in. You could pull some of this info from stats, but it’s not the whole story, especially if you have some posts that have hit it big on Stumble Upon or another social media site. The best thing to do is ask your readers what they’d like to see more of from now on. I’ve asked readers what they’re interested in reading in posts, but currently I’m running a poll about this at one blog, and getting way more responses. If you go with the poll option, I’d set it up so that the poll contains some basic topics relevant to your blog and also set it up so that readers can fill in an answer.

What other spring cleaning blog tasks do you do to keep your blog in top notch shape?