Superblogger Robert Scoble offers a nice list of things to do to make your blog better … which will lead also to building your audience and getting them involved.
Here’s the list in brief, and you can read the details at the original post:
- Know how traffic will find you.
- Pick a niche and own it.
- Get specific with your title tag.
- Demonstrate authority.
- Use more media.
- Link to other bloggers you like (or hate).
- Use bullets and numbers. Copy Guy Kawasaki.
- Hold a contest.
- Beg for help from other bloggers.
- Write better headlines.
- Cause some heck.
- Maryam and I put 15 other ways up over on the Blog Business Summit’s site.
- Get Shelley Powers to link to you.
The comments to the post offer many other great ideas too. One especially good one points out that you must also have interesting, well-written content.
As much as I respect Robert’s ideas about blogging, I confess that I don’t regularly read his blog. The ratio of topics I’m interested in to those I’m not interested in is too low — and the total number of items is so high, I don’t have enough time to deal with it. Now and again I add him back to my feedreader, but then after a while I get worn out just skimming the posts and I take him off again. (Of course, now that I’ve linked to him, I feel I should give it another shot….)
But so, what does that say about the validity of the ideas on this list? Just that even if you do everything perfectly in setting up and running a blog, it’s still going to appeal only to some people. And that’s fine: They are your audience, and you’ll have created a great on-going conversation with them.
(Thanks to Steve Garfield/Off On A Tangent for the link.)