» How To

When blogging, one thing you always want to do is to keep in touch with your readers. You’ll always have your quiet readers who never comment, etc, but there ways to get them to speak up…without having them actually speak up, which we’ll get into later.

But to the point, it’s very important to connect with your readers to be a successful blog. Because, let’s face it, without your readers…you don’t have much of a blog, do you? There are a few ways to connect with your readers that take little time or work on your part.

The first thing you can do as a blogger is simply get involved with the comments that your readers read. For some unknown reason, many bloggers will read the comments but don’t really take the time to interact with them. I’m not sure why? I mean, in a way, you have a very small “celebrity” type personality when you own a blog, and people do enjoy hearing from you, the blogger…so take the time to write back to their comments, be it a question or not. It’s lets the reader know you are reading what they’re writing and are willing to take time out of your busy schedule to let them know they’re important.

Another important way to connect with your reader is using the “social platform” method, which is simply letting your bloggers know more about you. As a blogger, you should fill out your “About Me” areas of your blog and do so thoroughly. Readers like to know about the blog owner/author and it’s a good feeling for the reader to have more than just an idea or image in their head about who exactly you are. Pictures also work well. A face to put next to the writing really improves a readers perception of you and your blog. In addition to the “social platform” method, you also should take the time out to connect with your readers through social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. If you don’t have an account, time to sign up. Make sure you let your readers know you have profiles on those websites as well.

Lastly, use your sites content to your advantage. Through the stats page in your blogging platform, you’ll be able to see the popular postings and what people like. In addition to that, set up public polls that will allow readers to help you decide what types of things will improve your blog. There are many readers that are quiet (as I stated above), that will be more than willing to anonymously help you improve your blog…so let them. Ask simple questions about how you can improve your blog, what they would like to see more of, see less of, etc.

It’s very important that you include your readers in your decisions, because without your readers, you have a journal…not a blog.

The other night I was watching a special on fishing and for odd reason, it occurred to me that fishing is very much like blogging. I know, it’s a really odd combination to think of (not sure how I even came up with it), but the two fit hand in hand.

To anybody that has ever went fishing or even watched it on television, you know the proper way to get a fish on your line is to bait it with something enticing to them. In a blogging sense, your bait, is your blog post title. Not only do you need a relevant blog title, but you need a blog post title that will make the reader want to go further. Many times, it doesn’t matter how wonderful your article is if there isn’t that instantaneous attraction, many readers will skip over it.

Once you’ve got your reader (the fish) hooked with your bait (your post title), then it’s time to reel the catch in with the article. As shocking as this sounds, many times, it’s much more difficult to actually come up with not only a relevant, but catchy blog title which acts as the “waiting” in fishing. Once you have the reader (the fish) on the line, reeling them in is the easy part, so writing your article should actually be the easiest part of the process.

As important as it is for blog articles to be informative and unique, you’ll never get the fish without the proper bait. I know many bloggers who write these magnificent postings/articles that are a joy to read, but very few ever do because the title has little relevance and/or it’s simply not engaging enough. So while it’s important to take time to write your blog posting, it’s just as important (if not more) to sit down and take some serious time to consider the right blog title for your posting.

Also of note - there is a way to get a second blog title for your post, and that’s by downloading the Plugin (for Wordpress.org blogs) named “All In One SEO Pack”. Once you install this automated plugin, it will properly set up your postings (and overall blog) for search engines. But the extremely neat thing about it is that you can add an entirely different title to your blog post, giving you TWO unique blog post titles which can only help.

To download All In One SEO Pack, click here.

One thing that I’ve always recommended bloggers do is make sure to include a picture in their blog post, be it actually within the text of the article or on the default/preview home page (as exampled by this blog). As interesting as your articles might be, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Not only does the picture captivate the reader and bring them in, it also adds a little needed spice to your article.

Oddly enough though, finding pictures (especially the RIGHT picture) proves to be challenging at times. Personally, I always have used Flickr.com or Yahoo.com and their picture search engine to locate the pictures I needed. The main problem I continually ran into though was the pictures were rarely what I asked for and/or the pictures were unavailable to be saved to my computer or linked to, defeating the purpose.

Google provided a similar service to that of Yahoo’s picture search engine, which yielded similar results, but they’ve revamped their picture search engine to make it much more user friendly as well as the ability to search for different types of picture licenses.  Though, it does take a bit of searching to find the needed page, so you’ll need to look carefully. To find the new features, you’ll need to click the Advanced Image Search page and then  under the usage rights section you will see a drop down menu with different types of licenses that you can search for. This is an extremely nice feature to have as you should be aware that not all images are free for you to use.

To use the Advanced Image Search, click here

If you’re an experienced blogger, you might not have too many difficulties installing Wordpress. However, if you’re new to blogging you might run into trouble - and don’t feel bad, I was there as well.

There are a few ways to get around the manual instillation of Wordpress on your blog, one of which would be sign up with a website hosting company that offers “Fantastico”, which is a one click install of Wordpress. The most popular host that uses this service would be GoDaddy.com.

If you are not using a host that offers “Fantastico” though, there are other options that can be looked at, as explained by DailyBlogTips.com:

Not all hosting companies offer Fantastico, though, and maybe you already signed up on one and can’t change now. For those people there is a new tool called EasyWP Install. It is basically a PHP script that you need to upload to your server and execute by accessing www.yourdomain.com/easywp.php. The script will then download all the WordPress files automatically and put them on your server. After that you will just need to finish the installation by going through the WordPress setup.

To read the full article, click the following link - DailyBlogTips.com

As somebody who has installed the Wordpress software using all three of these methods, I would recommend using a host that uses a “Fantastico” script which will allow you to have a one click instillation of the software. If you do choose a host without the ability to use the “Fantastico” script, then using the EasyWP Install would be your next best option, especially if you’re new to the software.