Top 10 list for better blogging...

Great points! I have added blogs to both of my websites: www.mbcglobal.org/blog.html and www.getmaximpact.com/blog.html. Web hits have almost doubled and the blogs are generating new contacts. One important factor is that postings are things people will talk about with their friends and associates. We have followed some of your tips and will begin the others. Thanks for sharing.

Our good friends over at  MediaMeme have added a nice list of 40 blogging tips as well:

http://mediameme.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/how-to-create-a-great-blog-46-tips/

Great list Terry! I ghostblog for clients, have done some guest blogging and of course have my own blog.  I would also add that it helps to determine your blogging goals before developing content. Are you seeking to monetize or simply position yourself as an expert?  On the technical side I would also recommend using a self hosted Word Press blog. After working with all of the blogging platforms, WordPress by far offers the greatest amount of functionality. There are hundreds of tips for newbie bloggers and the blogging community is gracious and always willing to support and help.

Karen

Dear Dr. Bean,

I have two blogs, www.getmaximpact.com/blog.html and www.mbcglobal.org/blog.html. The first contains leadership tips and anecdotes that are entertaining and thought provoking. On some of the illustrations I have people click through to my website to the answer to a riddle (such as how a manager got rid of restroom mirror graffiti once and for all). THe other is cultural information that I think is controversial in many cases.

My problem is that people are not posting comments. Tracking says I am getting hits, but why won't people comment?

I feel so lonely. What advise would you have to get people engaged in a dialog?

Signed, Lonely blogger in cyberspace.

Rick-

Funny thing happened to me after I read your note.  I receive a handful of motivational/thought provoking e-mails on a daily basis.  The one from www.tarogold.com that I read right after your note said:

A wise person is never afraid to say "I don't know."

Luckily for you, I don't claim to be a wise man ;-)

Personally, I would like to see what Beverly Cornell, Leah McChesney, Charlie Wollborg, Karen Swim and Jerimiah Staes have to say on the topic. Anyone else who has a blog should not only let me know, but feel free to chime in.

Back in the early days of our yahoo group and even with other groups I moderated having people chat was always the goal.  The best advice I can give you is that doing one of two things works:

1.  Rile 'em up.  Say something that stirs up their passions and gets them fired up.  Even being contrary and getting comments is sometimes better than being lonely in cyberspace.

2. Are you Asking them questions in your blog?  Oh wait, I should have just written: ask questions in your blog. 

I know a guy who ends every post with What say you?  Seems to work.

Good luck and happy blogging.

Rick, I am not Terry but  I can offer you some advice on getting comments.

1. Engage the blogging community by commenting on other blogs. Find blogs that address complimentary topics that interest you and join their conversation. Offer genuine comments and become part of the community. Readers will click through to your site and the blog author will return the favor with comment love.


2. Leave a little bit out of your post to enable readers to join the discussion and add information.


3. Ask a question at the end of your post. Invite readers to comment and join the discussion.


4. Make your blog comment friendly. I have not yet visited your blog (but will!) but if you have complicated captcha or registration procedures, it will impact comments.

Your blog is like a community gathering place and you're the host. If you make people feel like they can pull up a chair and join the discussion they will. To see an example of an active and lively commenting community visit www.menwithpens.ca.  James and Harry have mastered this art.

Good luck!

Karen

Rick, I visited both blogs and they are nicely done! Two suggestions - kill word verification and install an RSS so that people can subscribe to your blog via email or a feed reader.  You want to build a community and to do so they need an easy way of keeping up with posts. I currently use Blogger and was able to install the RSS button on my blog, if you need help let me know.

Karen

Ahhh comments... an interesting art.

There will always be way more people who visit than comment - funnily enough, there are 800 members or so on MCC, but how many people do you really see post very often.  Some of the blog projects I've worked on can have 6,000+ visitors but maybe one or two comments.  It also depends on the sector - I find business tends not to have as many comments as say technology or politics because people feel, what's the word... restrained? because they feel it is more of a business blog

I'm going to have to also sorta debate on the word verification thing.  It sure can cut down on spam, and people are pretty used to it if you use the right one. 

But I had to get rid of 20-30 spam comments a day per blog and that's a pain (since some are featured regularly on Google news alerts, etc), and saw no visible reduction in mine or client's blogs of the number of legit comments... and I thought it would initially because of increased friction.

Also a statistical point - are you looking at hits or visits, and even better, can you track unique visitors?   That will give you a much more accurate picture of what's going on.

Another way to improve is to look at the past - what are the posts that generate the most visits and people linking to you?  Does blogger give you the ability to take a look in the back end and see which blogs are linking to you?

If there are those who don't know what or how RSS works, here's my favorite tutorial.  MCC has RSS support and it's how I interface with the site daily

Jeremiah, great points. You are right that not everyone who reads will comment. Blogger's platform does not offer much of the functionality offered by WordPress (one of the many reasons I'm moving my own blogs) but Rick, you can get a better handle on stats by using Feedburner (or another feed system). This will show you unique hits, uses, patterns, etc.  I haven't had a huge issue with spam so no longer moderate comments. When I get the occasional spam, I simply delete.  However, you should definitely provide a way for people to subscribe. You may be getting traffic but losing stickiness. One other way to drive traffic and comments, is by linking out to other blogs in your posts. Giving link love is a great way to build community. There are lots of great sites offering tips on building community, Blogging Basics 101, Copyblogger, Freelance Folder and Men With Pens.

Karen

Thanks Karen and Jeremiah, great tips. I already took off the word verification and will be checking into the other ideas. Your input is greatly appreciated.

One question about RSS - Blogger uses Atom which I thought, in my untechnical mind, was the same as RSS. It is at the bottom of the pages. Should I move it up or should I replace it with RSS?

PS: Karen, thanks for adding the comments.

I'm not sure if this is the right post for this question but here goes.  Is the art and science of blogging taking over and making obsolete traditional newsletters? (snail mail or email variety).  I would thing that you can deliver the same content but the blog would give a reader a better feel for who you are. 

The reason I'm asking is that I do blog (albeit inconsistently) and have wanted to get a newsletter out for the past year and a half, but I'm too overwhelmed in getting the list figured out for a constant contact.

Brian

Hi Rick,

I am always happy to help.  Atom and RSS are both syndication feeds. Atom has some features that RSS does not.  Without giving you the technical detail, using atom is fine but you need to either move it to the top of of the site or add a "Like this post," subscribe type message at the bottom of each post. My guess is that in its present location, no one sees it.

There's lot of help available here and I'm sure your questions are helping others too. Keep up the great work Rick!

Karen

Hi Brian,

Newsletter are not obsolete.  There was a good discussion of this on MarketingPilgrim.com last month. Many of my clients use newsletters (traditional and email) as a way of maintaining visibility with their clients. Not everyone reads blogs so a newsletter has the ability to reach an audience that you may never visit your blog. Offering a newsletter on your website remains a great way to generate leads and build a database.  You don't have to generate brand new content for your blog and newsletter.  I repurpose content all the time. An article gets repurposed as a blog post, blog posts are repurposed as newsletter articles. The key is to deliver content of interest to your target audience.  You don't have to post to your blog daily, you can have a twice weekly schedule. Nick Cernis posts one long post monthly. There are many different approaches to content development and marketing, you simply have to find the best fit for your organization.

Karen

What a great thread - and what a dramatic impact blogging has had on our culture. In his book, "The New Rules of Marketing and PR," David Meerman Scott states that these days, media is more likely to search blogs for great stories than they are to read through hundreds of puffery-filled press releases.  And I agree with Karen -

Engage the blogging community by commenting on other blogs. Find blogs
that address complimentary topics that interest you and join their
conversation. Offer genuine comments and become part of the community.
Readers will click through to your site and the blog author will return
the favor with comment love.

To find blogs of interest on any topic, go to http://www.technorati.com

Linda

1. Use strong opinions that provoke conversations. Blogs are social and the best way to start a discourse is through contentious dialogue. Like politics.
2. Concoct unbeatable lists- 101's, how tos. People are always learning. Help them.
3. Use keywords in titles. Search engines love keywords, especially topical and popular ones.
4. Don't promote yourself, promote your community.
5. Use image, audio and video.
6. Tag every post using social bookmarking tools like Del.icio.us and Ma.gnolia.
7. Link to each post using Twitter.
8. Digg it.
9. Use eye candy that is relevant to your post. For example, you could insert photos of Dr McDreamy (aka Patrick Dempsey) or even Johnny Depp.

But they need to make sense in the context of what you are writing about. Otherwise it looks like you are pandering to search engines :)
10. Use polls.
11. Use descriptive titles.
12. Ping other sites.
13. If you use snippets, rss feeders...leave readers with cliff hangers in your opening line so they are compelled to open the link.
14. Have a unique logo.
15. Challenge people to respond.
16. Encourage people to link back to you on their blog. Not in the rather militant way that Seth Godin does, pretty much proving he doesn't converse as much as lecture
17. Encourage people to link back to you on their blog.
19. Write what people need to know about right now, but be timeless.
20. Start at the beginning, educate people in a series that perhaps takes weeks or months...
21. Don't be too repetitive.
22. Have a contest.
23. Break news
24. Do interviews with people that will land you reciprocal links.
25. Tag, tag, tag!
26. Post often! But not at the expense of quality content.
27. Give freebies.
28. Get a life. So you have something worthwhile to write about.
29. Tweak design template often.
30. Encourage sharing.
31. Share mistakes - be human and be transparent.
32. Don't try to be chris brogan.
33. Share questions that readers ask and answer them.
34. Blog what you are passionate about, like...money, politics, kids, money, working from home, money, did I mention money?
35. Use phrases that will become popular in the future. If you hear something new and interesting, blog about it.
36. Write headlines with the intent of spreading them.
37. Call out specific people, esp bloggers and preferably with humor.
38. Announce launches.
39. Edit, edit, edit!
40. Offer the opportunity for other bloggers to guest write on your blog
Did I miss any?