How to get regular readers -part1
ADVERTISEMENTSAfter following my series on increasing blog traffic, you might have got a few extra traffic by now.
You may also have noticed that most of the traffic that visits a blog are temporary. So how do you make these one-time readers come again and again? In other words, how do we get regular readers? Read on to find out…
Regular readers do not translate into regular comments. Being a regular reader is like joining a community and sharing your ideas regularly. But there are regular readers who just stay shy and watch what’s going on in a blog and do not contribute their comments. Such people are called lurkers.
But they have their own reason for not commenting. It could be because they are also subscribers to many other blogs.
So getting back…how do we get regular readers? Let me share a few tips with you.
Original Content
The first step is to write useful, well written and engaging posts. Do not reblog. No one will come to visit your blog to read something they already read in other blogs. If your readers like what they read the first time they find your site they are more likely to come back.
Page Design
Most of the traffic to a blog will not enter directly from the homepage,which is why individual page design is important. Make your individual pages as attractive and easy to navigate as your homepage.
Create a navigation bar and put it on every page on your blog. The navigation bar should link to just the important pages.
Guide your readers
When a new reader reaches your blog, they will scan through what is displayed and will leave soon.To keep them longer on your blog, provide them with more on the same topic. Here’s how you can do it:
- Link within your posts to older posts that are relevant whenever possible.
- If you use WordPress, install related entries plugin. This will help you to pick relevant posts automatically.
- Include a link to the category you have published the post you are writing in. This also helps your readers to find more similar content.
Explain what you blog about in a few words
If your first time blog readers cannot make out on what topic you mainly blog, they might just leave. Explain what you blog about in a few words, on every page of your blog.
Here at JohnTP.com, I blog about topics that fall into the main categories of Technology and Internet. So I chose- Technology,Computers & Internet.
A good place for this is under your logo. Be sure to put them on every page of your blog.
You may also want to read Part 2 of this series.
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Posted on March 30th, 2006 | Category: Blogging |
Shivaranjan
April 1, 2006 at 2:39 am
Rightly Said John… Waiting for your second part. I have definately got extra traffic from your previous posts… Keep the good work buddy…
Madhur Kapoor
April 2, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Thanks John
Will implement all of your ideas when my exams get over .
YOur tutorial on how to increse traffic really helped . I am getting visitors now .
johntp
April 2, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Wow.. it’s great to hear that my tutorial on how to increase traffic has helped you. It makes me feel like posting more on such topic
Madhur Kapoor
April 3, 2006 at 6:06 am
Do post your ideas if you have more . I am sure everyone will love it .
Les
June 29, 2006 at 7:43 pm
Great stuff John - Well put - and very true. Keep at it!
Les
Rainy
July 10, 2006 at 6:33 am
I concur wholeheartedly with this. Since it’s impossible to read line by line for every blog I tried out, therefore, a clean and easy-to-navigate site design is of utmost importance. Many times I stumbled on a horribly designed site with contents thrown all over the place, the info may be very interesting, but I never got the chance to find out for I left as fast as a flash of lightning.
I have really enjoyed your tutorials about traffic boosting, very helful and practical.
Rainy
(And right, the “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” option at the end of comment box is very neat too!)
Mike250
August 24, 2006 at 12:16 am
I think what’s great here is you are catering both to the user looking to increase traffic and better their blog, as well as the user who wants to validate that they are already doing the right things. Thanks for your post and all the great information!
zooplah
August 30, 2006 at 3:28 am
Yeah, it would be nice if those related-entries plugins fucking worked. Sorry for the rant.
Why does it have to be about a single topic. Isn’t that what categories/tags are for?
Mike250
August 30, 2006 at 3:30 am
It may not work great… so I changed it to say “Possibly Related Articles”. If I really wanted to improve it for my needs I could go in and work the SQL over myself. I guess you could do the same.
Graham Keellings
October 2, 2006 at 2:50 pm
Some good advice, especially about linking to related posts. In my opinion it is better to take the extra effort to do this manually, rather than to rely on a plugin which searches for keywords (ymmv).
But what about linking to future posts?
You are talking about how to get readers to come back. Sometimes no fancy software tricks are needed, just a simple sentence at the end, like “I will have more to say about this over the course of the next few days”.
sourcer
November 1, 2006 at 9:27 am
Great advices, now you can be sure that i am a permanent reader, i really like the way you are saying “things”
Good job !