Blog For The Masses: How To Make It Work
Blogging can be one way to make money, or it can be a personal journal of yours. Regardless of your reasons for starting a blog, you must understand the ins and outs of blogging before you dive in. This article provides the key tips so your blog can be successful.
Use the correct spam filter for comments. If you require registration to comment, a CAPTCHA on the registration page is usually sufficient to keep spammers away. If you allow anonymous comments, an “advanced CAPTCHA,” that is, one that asks the user for “the number of hours in a day” or something similar is usually enough. Avoid services like Akismet, as these produce lots of false positives.
Try writing from your own experiences. Write openly about items you know about and write your feelings about them without fearing being wrong. It tends to be a big mistake to copy from experts than to learn from your own errors. Your personal experience is the most precious blogging asset that you have.
Utilize Twitterfeed in order to increase the interest of your most current posts in Twitter. Having said that, you should ensure that you don’t simply use Twitterfeed. Being an actual person on Twitter is the first thing that you should do above all else. Otherwise, Twitterfeed will not help you.
Make sure posts are brief and concise. While you still have to provide enough detail to inform your readers, overly long and wordy posts will bore your readers and drive them away. The average blog reader isn’t looking for Shakespearean type descriptions or laureate material. Readers want to get essential information from blogs; they are not concerned with fancy extras like long words or poetic descriptions.
When blogging, you should make sure that you make your RSS feed as obvious as possible. You can not expect other readers to find it if it blends in with all the text in your blog. This is why you should put it in a prominent position on your blog, and try to make use of the orange RSS icon if possible.
Simplify your blog by avoiding inordinate amounts of multi-media. While pictures and the occasional video are definitely a nice touch, your words are more important than your ability to place obnoxious GIFs or pictures on your blog posts. Your readers will appreciate having balance in your posts and enjoying both written word and visual elements.
To help you get more traffic to your blog and keep up with the latest trends, you should focus some of your attention on submitting your post and blog links to social bookmarking sites. Sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, are all great places where you can submit your blog links.
Keep your stress level down to a minimum. If you are too stressed, you will not be able to write very well. Ideas will not come easily, as your mind will be on what you are stressed about. Take some time out of your day to participate in some relaxation activities.
Having active commentary on your blog is an effective way to maintain traffic. This is because comments are content just like blog articles. Readers will revisit your blog not only to read new articles, but also to see if anyone has left new comments. You can encourage commenting by asking questions and inquiring about your readers’ perspectives in your blog articles. Responding to comments also encourages commenting.
If you are writing an article, and it is under 500 words, it is best not to use it. People are reading your blog to gain knowledge or information, and you want to make sure that you are meeting this need properly. Articles that are too short will not give your readers everything they are looking for.
There’s an old rule that says, in order to make money, you have to spend money and that’s true, even when it comes to blogging. If you take some money and put it aside for purchasing advertising, such as Google adwords or Yahoo ads, then your website will receive that much more traffic and exposure.
Keep in mind that attracting your first 100 readers is one of the hardest things to do. Once you accomplish this, you will find that you will have a much easier time. Be patient, because this will not happen overnight. Keep working hard and you will get there in time.
Make money from your blog! Most of the top bloggers aren’t just pecking away at their keyboards because they enjoy the tapping sounds. They are carefully manipulating an income stream. There is a potential to make real money with blogging. You just have to learn to pull the right people to your page!
Try to give your posts a more positive not, rather than dwelling on negative aspects in your posts. This will ensure that you get the most readership. People do not naturally want to come to a site to read about the negative things. They want to read about positive aspects instead.
Ask open-ended questions in your blog. This will invite people to comment often, and will encourage more back and forth conversations with your visitors. Just make sure that you respond to the comments that are left, and if they ask questions to you, be sure to take the time to answer them.
As a blogger, you want your readers to feel a connection with you. Your blog should accept comments from readers, and you should take time to respond to some of them personally. You’ll need to decide if you want to publish all comments as they come in, or whether to hold them for approval before they appear on your site.
Try to make sure that you do not go overboard with the design of your blog site. You do not want to overwhelm. You want to keep your blog clear and concise. In many cases, a simple layout with a good color scheme will suffice over a flashy site.
You have spent some time reading all about the world of blogging. Like anything else in life, the more knowledge you have about a subject, the better off you will be. Keep this article handy for referring to anytime you may need it, and have fun on your journey.