Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

More on blogging.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

I've come across a couple of sites that might be of interest to those who want to take their blogging "seriously" as opposed to hobby-ist or flippant blogger.

First, the nine habits of highly effective bloggers:

Blog on a consistent basis.
Putting in a 100 percent effort on your niche.
Setting your sights far ahead.
Reading fellow successful blogger's blog.
Tagging on other blogs.
Interacting with the crowd.
Leave comments for others.
Joining communities and participating in events.
Write with confidence.

Second, to off-set that, are the common mistakes of a new blogger. This post is from the blog AdesBlog.com, which is filled with posts highlighting articles and websites that are of use to bloggers. What mistakes should you avoid, as a new blogger?

Display RSS chiklet too early.
Display too many ads.
Start the blog on free blogging platforms.
Design your own theme. (My early designs were...rough. It takes practice.)
Not posting own ideas. (Though political blogs, even popular ones, often are a link-fest or re-hash.)
Posting irregularly.

Another related blog post is this one, from CashQuests.com: Five mistakes from the past.

Another useful post from the AdesBlog is about getting more comments on each post. As the article rightly points out, users can't see the stats or any of the things going on in the background. All a blog reader has to go by, as far as the legitimacy or popularity of a blog, is the number of comments. As a blogger, you want comments. So, how do you get more comments? You:

Be active in your own comment threads.
Ask questions.
Spotlight commenters.
Leave something out. (A particularly intriguing idea I'd not considered.)
Return the favor.
Pick your favorite comment of the week. (An idea I'm thinking of implementing.)

And finally, a post on how to find new readers for your blog:

Define your target audience.
Find your target audience on other blogs or web sites.
Find your target audience on social media.
Find your target audience on forums.
Optimize your blog for new readers.
A one-month growth challenge. (Which includes guest blogging* on another blog, starting a social networking account and interacting, leaving 50 comments on other blogs, and more -- go read it to find out!)

The AdesBlog also has a post on growing your blog, some of which has a few overlapping ideas as already mentioned above, but also some interesting ideas:

Give something away. (I have lots of freebies on this site, lots of hits.)
Get connections to vote for you on social media.
Run a competition. (I've had contests, though not had impressive success yet.)
Write a free report. (I offer free art ideas and downloads, but not written something substantial -- good idea.)
Start a meme.
Guest post on a popular blog. (I did it once and it did, indeed, increase my hits and blog participation. It was not long-term, however.)
Buy a StumbleUpon campaign.
Comment on five popular blogs.
Send out links to your best content.
Join a forum in your niche.

One common thread through all of this? You'll need to spend some time online, not only familiarizing yourself with forums and blogs and content and unwritten "protocols", but you'll need to start taking part. It took me a while to cave to ads and social networking sites (and I can't say I'm thrilled about it), but if you want to be known and found online, you need to be out there doing a bit of work.

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