Does your blog have these things?
Your blog can survive without having many different things, though some certain things help you as a blogger immensely in today’s socially networking world. You can focus solely on blog content, but if you do not pay any attention to the elements surrounding the blog content, your blog as a whole may suffer or may not reach the heights you want it to.
So how can you make sure your blog performs well outside of the scope of your blog content? Here are 5 things your blog should have in order to engage people.
5 Things Your Blog Should have
- Comments.
A blog without comments enabled can be like a social networking site without any users. Blogs can be very powerful if people are allowed to engage on it. Allow commentors the power to comment on your blog, or else blog readers may think you are simply using your blog as an overall marketing tool.
- Social Media Sharing Features.
Allow blog readers to share your blog articles. For example, every RA Project article including this one allows you to share it with others. Check out the share buttons above and below this article.
- Different Delivery Methods
You should allow your blog to deliver itself to your readers and clients through multiple channels of delivery.
- Security, Safety & Privacy.
Your blog should offer security in terms of making sure any e-mail address, name or any other identifiable information of a blog reader or commentor stays safe and does not end up in the hands of any scammers or other people. Your blog should offer safety to everyone so that someone voicing an opinion through their comments does not get bashed or bothered by others on your blog in an extreme fashion. Your blog should also offer privacy to people, so that people can interact with you and other commentors with as much anonymity as they wish and as much anonymity as you can possibly offer.
- People who engage with your blog.
This may sound strange, though this is also one of the most essential features of any successful blog. You should try to invite users who actually do something around your blog in addition to simply navigating around. Your users should comment or interact with the different things your blog has to offer. Any and all of your efforts that revolve around getting more traffic to your site should keep that principle in mind.
Does Your Blog Offer the Above 5 Features?
Does your blog have the above 5 things available for all your readers and clients?
Please share your answers, questions or any tips through your comment below. Thank you for reading.
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Hi Bes, it looks like you’ve covered the essential elements for making a website commenter friendly. I was missing two of the items, the email subscription option and some of the social media features, but I just happened to have added them earlier today.
Since the focus should be on content, I don’t want to spend too much time on the bells and whistles, unless they are necessary. Hopefully, I’ve got the important widgets covered now. Thanks, Ray
Hi Ray. Thanks for the comment.
What kind of email subscription and social media features did you add to your site, if I may ask? You are right: content should usually, or almost always, get more attention or at least results than other things. Other things are important too, though those other things are effective usually only when the content itself works. Thanks again!
Hi Bes, The Email subscription is through Feedburner, and the social media feature that I’m using is AddToAny at the end of each post. Ray
The Feedburner email subscription works well; I used it myself for about 2 or so years I think. Once you reach a stage [or if you've already] of wanting full customization over content templates, subject lines, sending emails outside of rss feeds and more, try Aweber. It’s great. Let me know if you ever need help with that.
Also, AddToAny is good too. Here’s one more that I use that may be of help to you: http://www.sharethis.com
I think all the things which you have mention here are very basic & in maximum blogs this all things available, so I think if you can share something else excluding it then that will give you some extra benefits.
Hey Marks, thanks for the comment.
Sure, I’ll cover some exact steps you can take to implement on your blog, saving you lots of time.
Hello Bes,
I fully agree with you! To have a successful blog today it is essential to have that interaction for your users. The best way to do this is, as you outlined, is to allow blog commenting and social bookmarking/sharing.
This doesn’t just satisfy the visitors but also helps spread the awareness of the blog.
Good article, and good comments. I believe you should also add unique content and avoiding duplicated content. Duplicated content may cause page penalization and a lot of bloggers do not know that.