As you continue to blog, your regular readers will eventually grow accustomed to your voice as a writer, even if you write in a mostly factual fashion. Over time, you’ll come into contact many of your readers by email and comments and you’ll begin to establish a relationship of sorts with them.

What does this mean? When a major event occurs in your life and especially in relation to your blog, don’t be afraid to share it. If you purchase a house or have a child, share your joy with your readers. If you’re linked to by a major site or reach a certain threshold that you set as a goal for yourself (500,000 visitors or 1,000 posts), let your readers know about it.

To put it bluntly, if something fills you with joy, share it. The optimism and happiness that comes from the event will flow out of your writing right to the reader and they will feel a bit of joy as well.

This doesn’t mean that you should flood your blog with stuff like My child just said “poop” for the first time! (unless you’re running a parenting blog or something). Save celebratory posts for truly major events, or semi-major events that relate to your blog.

Here are some tips about celebratory posts that will maximize their effectiveness and impact for the reader.

Mention events that match the theme of your blog. For example, since this is a personal finance blog, I’ve mentioned significant debt eliminations on here, such as the paying off of my truck better than a year early. It’s something that excited me greatly and it also fit the theme of this blog. I also plan on blogging (in detail) my first home purchase, which is coming in the next year.

Include a picture if possible. If you have a new house or a new child, a photo or two can really show the excitement of the moment. You can even post a video if you want; stick it up on YouTube and include that video in your post.

Don’t overdo it. If you experience a life-changing event, it’s great to mention it once in a celebratory manner, but don’t let it take over your blog. Your readers are there to read about the topic at hand, not your new child. A celebratory post is a great way to build attachment between the reader and the writer, but only if done occasionally. If the life change causes you to have a new major interest, start another blog. Very few blogs can make such a transition; dooce is the only one I can think of, as it changed from a professional rant blog into a parenting blog.

If you met a goal, set a new goal and talk about it. If you’re posting to announce your site has had 100,000 visitors, state what your next goal is, what you learned, and how you’re going to get there. If you’re posting to celebrate losing ten pounds, talk about how you did it and what you plan to do next. Make it about more than just meeting that specific goal and tossing confetti in the air.

And with that, the Building a Better Blog for 2007 series is finished. Let’s celebrate!

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. This is the final post in the series; you can jump back to the previous entry, Don’t Forget the Fundamentals.

When I’m actively blogging, I often assume a great deal about my readers and their pre-existing knowledge of my topic. I often go so far as to assume that, even after I’ve researched a topic, I’m roughly on par with them in terms of really understanding the topic, so I focus on my own reflections on a complex issue without explaining it.

Whenever I do this, I punch myself in the arm. Why? If I do it too often, a large bruise will start to appear, both on my arm and my blog. People will see it, not understand it, and avoid it.

How do you solve the problem of attracting beginning readers without alienating your regular audience? My solution is to make roughly one fifth of my posts focus specifically on very fundamental issues, such as the difference between APR and APY and how compound interest works. My regular readers usually read these as well and the posts tend to attract a lot of comments, as these experienced readers look for places to fill in holes that I’ve missed.

In short, occasional “fundamentals” posts do not alienate your regular reader base - and can attract new readers.

Here are several avenues you can take for identifying and writing posts on fundamental topics in your area.

Make a list. Take fifteen or so recent posts on your blog and make a list of every word that refers specifically to something within your domain. Maybe you write an art blog and you discuss artists all the time. Maybe you write about NPR and regularly refer to contributors. Maybe you write a financial blog and drop the term EPS all the time.

Write a blog post explaining, in your own words, what exactly each term means. Don’t assume the reader is stupid; treat them as if you are explaining the topic to a friend. Imagine, for example, that you’re a literature blogger and a friend stops over, pulls a book off your shelf, and asks, “What’s this about?” Would you talk down to that person? Probably not (unless you’re massively condescending). Imagine that the person you’re writing for is that friend who just pulled a book off the shelf.

Encourage comments on these posts. Such posts tend to attract lots of comments (for me, anyway), but it can’t hurt to even request comments at the end of that post. This encourages your regular audience to fill in gaps (and feel smart) and your new readers to ask questions that they might have. Never forget that blogging is a conversation and you’ll be fine.

Occasionally (not always), link to your explanation by linking the appearance of that word in future posts. Readers who come to your site and are confused as to who John Hodgman is or what APY is can just click on the word and be whisked to another blog post on that specific topic.

After you’ve done a lot of these, post a compendium. This post can just list all of the “fundamentals” posts you’ve made. Once you’ve created this, add it to your site’s sidebar along with a link that says something like “Getting Started” or “[Your Topic] 101.” This way, when new readers come along, they at least have a chance to understand your most recent “deep” post.

Your content will bring new readers to the site, but if you put forth a bit of extra effort to make their entrance easier, they might just stay around for a while.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Celebrate With Your Readers, or back to the previous one, Don’t Clutter It Up.

When a visitor comes to your site, the first thing they’re looking for is content. They want to see what you’ve written and they don’t want to be distracted by confusing things. The more confusing options you throw out there, the less likely they are to feel welcome on your site and the less likely they are to stick around.

Simplicity is good; clutter is bad. Successful sites generally keep the clutter in the sidebar and out of the way of the primary article. Even clutter outside of the primary article can be bad if it’s unclear and without obvious purpose to the casual reader.

Quite often, the design intention is good: a blogger wants more things that are useful on the site. The problem comes in when a casual reader arrives and is overwhelmed by options that are less than clear. Here are several common mistakes that some bloggers make when designing their site.

Social bookmarking icons We’ve all seen the row of icons that covers the bottom of a post, each one linking to a different social bookmarking site, right? If you haven’t, here’s an example. For casual users, these are just plain confusing, even if you have a tool tip popping up that says “add to furl” or “add to delicious” … those statements make little sense to people who are just searching Google for a key piece of information. On the other hand, for experienced users, the icons are still a waste because most of us have our social bookmarking sites of choice already integrated into our browser toolbar. These icons don’t have an audience and they’re just distracting to most users.

Site metadata icons These include buttons that link to Feedburner and to other sites that aggregate RSS feeds, as well as to all sorts of additional sites. An example of this that doesn’t go too far into overkill can be found on the right hand bar of pfblogs.org. These are fine in small doses - one or two that link to something interesting can be fun - but some sites go into overload mode and the whole thing becomes distracting for the casual user.

“Gadgets” Many people have a penchant for including gadgets of all kinds on their site, often in multiples. For an example, see User Generated Content, which includes several such gadgets on his right hand bar. While these are all right for a personal site, if a casual user pops in, it’s basically information overload time and they back away slowly. I recommend never using more than one such gadget, and making sure that it aligns appropriately with the rest of your content.

The most important thing to remember at all times is that a visitor comes to your site to read the latest postings and nothing else. The more things that you throw at this user, particularly those that create a “busy” display, the harder it is for that casual visitor to read your post. Thus, it’s always better to minimize the extraneous material on your site and focus on your content above all.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Don’t Forget the Fundamentals, or back to the previous one, Talking to Other Bloggers.

Many bloggers operate in a bubble. This bubble includes themselves and perhaps a small number of bloggers that focus on topics similar to their own. I know that this is often true, even for me: I talk to a lot of other personal finance bloggers, but I rarely communicate outside of my own “circle.”

So why write about talking to other bloggers? Simple. Since I started The Simple Dollar, every time I have engaged a blogger outside of my own “circle” of blogging associates, the interaction has been worthwhile. This even includes somewhat negative interactions, like my debate with several non-personal finance bloggers over Wesabe. This positive response may be surprising to some (including myself, as I didn’t have this experience with earlier blogs), but I’ve found there are several keys to positive interactions with other bloggers.

Before you begin, though, you should define what you’re looking for. I’m often looking for intelligent people to discuss things with; usually, this comes down to finding an interesting blog that covers a topic I’m unfamiliar with. If the blog is interesting enough that it makes me want to become familair with the topic, then I don’t hesitate to write to the author of the blog. This may or may not lead to links, but for me I don’t really care too much - it’s about meeting new people and growing as a person, which will in itself improve me and by extension my blog.

First, never begin an interaction by merely asking for a link. This is, of course, assuming that you want to actually want to begin a worthwhile discussion with that blogger; if all you want is a link, then go right ahead and ask. If you open up by asking for a link, you’re basically telling that blogger that all you want is something from him or her.

Second, try to engage the blogger right off the bat. The best way to do this is to ask questions about their blog, both content-specific and otherwise. If you’re engaged enough to write to the blogger, you’re probably engaged enough to have read several posts, so they should be able to provide you with enough fodder to ask questions.

Write something engaging that can trigger a response. A frothing “I luv ur blog!” email will make a popular blogger smile, but it won’t get anything in return. Since you’re hoping to establish a conversation, you’re going to need something more meaty than that. You can express an admiration for their blog, but there needs to be more content to your email, particularly something that triggers a response.
Include a link to your own blog, but don’t shove it in their face. I usually just include it as my signature right beneath my name, just enough so that if they find my email interesting, they might click on it. I usually don’t mention it any more than that at first unless they ask about it.
Look for opportunities to meet other bloggers. I live in rural Iowa, so my opportunities to meet other successful bloggers are rather slim, but I am always looking for opportunities for blogger meetups and conventions. Attending such events can not only bring about interactions with other bloggers, but it can also make you feel much better about your own blog, reinvigorating you with the spirit to blog.

Remember, above all, blogging is a conversation and bloggers are good conversationalists.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Don’t Clutter It Up, or back to the previous one, Engage the Casual Visitor.

One issue that has always interested me is how one can maximize the retention of visitors from social bookmarking sites like Digg. These visitors are only coming to your site to read a particular article; typically, they don’t stay around to read other things. A similar notion is true about visitors from search engines (though their tendency to stay is somewhat higher).

What do these situations have in common? Obviously, these readers found your site through methods that didn’t involve your direct recruitment. They were drawn to your site because of a specific piece of content that relates to them somehow. Even more important, this reader is often highly uninformed about your topic of discussion, but is seeking some piece of information related to your topic.

The question is how do you convert these viewers into long-term viewers. Here are some suggestions to keep those viewers on your blog and perhaps convert them to regular readers.

Give them lots of opportunities within the post to dig in further. Link specific points in new posts to appropriately-related articles from your archives. This encourages the interested reader to click on the link, which will take them to another article that might answer their question. Of course, this post should also have specific points linked to archived posts and so on. Don’t rely on these links, though; your post should express a full thought on its own without links. The links merely serve as a way to expand thoughts and to pull in the interested reader.

List related posts. Whenever a user sees a post, they should find links to similar posts on your site. This is particularly true for search engine visitors: once they find a page on your site, it may or may not answer their question, but similar posts might address their needs, and providing a link will keep a user reading, which is what you want. For WordPress users, there’s a great plugin that does this automatically; for users of other blogging software, you may have to really work to find other ways to do this.
Make some of your best posts easily available. You should keep a list of your best posts either directly on your sidebar or on a page linked to on your sidebar. If a person visits from a search engine or a social bookmarking site, they’re looking for good stuff, so pointing them to potential sources of good stuff is always a strong idea.

Engage them directly. If a post of yours shows up on a social bookmarking site, you might want to stick a paragraph that introduces your site on the top of that popular post for a week or so. This paragraph should include a one-sentence description of your site and a few links to your absolute best posts. Although I don’t usually follow this practice, I have seen it be successful in practice, particularly if your blog is rather obscure and this is your one moment to be seen by a large group.

Answer your email if at all possible. Quite often, casual viewers will fling a question at you if they see your site and are interested, but you didn’t immediately sate their interest. This is an opportunity to, in the worst case, pick up a reader or, in the best case, pick up a lot of readers. Answer courteously, quickly, and accurately if at all possible. If you’re to the point where you’re receiving dozens of legitimate emails an hour, you can reconsider this, but your blog is probably so successful you have no reason to be reading this, anyway.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Talking to Other Blogggers, or back to the previous one, Post Consistently.

After discussing the dangers of leaving your audience hanging, it became clear that a concise description of why a posting schedule is useful and how it should work is needed. Although many professional bloggers offer up the bromide of how important a posting schedule is, it is rare to find a description of the actual process of determining a posting schedule, making it clear to your readers, and sticking to it.

First of all, your posting schdule does not have to be daily (or more than daily). The Marketing Profs give a very good explanation why the supposed “rule” of a daily post is no longer important. And they’re right, to an extent: you don’t have to post every day. Instead, you need to find your own rhythm and then develop a schedule that utilizes that rhythm for regular posting. Do not buy into the hype that you have to post daily or several times a day; you don’t.

Rather than just blindly accepting a pace that you might be unable to follow, spend a few weeks determining your “normal” pace. Write for your blog as you would write normally without worrying about any post requirement. Make sure that this timeframe is rather normal and doesn’t include any irregular events that would cause significant downtime in your posting. Once you’ve completed three weeks or so, count up your posts and divide by the number of days. This is your “normal” pace of posting.

Once you’ve figured out your normal posting pace, toss it out the door. Although it’s a great number to use in defining your posting schedule, it’s a poor number to base your whole posting schedule on. Why? If you post at this rate, you’ll eventually fall behind and give up. Period.

Instead, calculate what 60% of your normal posting pace is, and use this as a schedule. For me, my “normal” posting rate is about ten posts a day (yes, many of them are this length; yes, I’m a logorrheic anomaly). Thus, my baseline schedule is about six posts a day. For many people, it could be that their normal flow is about a post a day, so their schedule should be about six posts every ten days.

Once you’ve figured out your approximate schedule, arrange it so you have fewer posts on the weekends and more posts on weekdays. For example, I post between six and seven posts per weekday (the seventh post is usually part of a cursorily-related series, like this blogging one) and three to four posts per weekend day (the fourth post is usually part of that series). If you’re posting six posts every ten days, then plan for posts every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Now you have a posting schedule that matches your natural flow of writing well. Except… as you start with it, you’ll find yourself building up an excess of posts. What should you do with them?

When you have excess posts, set them up to be automatically posted as if you won’t be updating in the near future. If you post along normally, you’ll begin to build up a block of unposted future posts. Give them each a posting time so that they’ll post according to your schedule if you find yourself unable to post due to an emergency or a planned vacation. At various times, I’ve had almost three weeks of future posts built up for The Simple Dollar.

If you have a timely post that needs to go up now, just swap it for the next post and put the removed post at the back of the line.

In the end, what you’ll have is a blogging schedule that enables you to naturally be ahead of pace and prepared for the event of a disaster so that you don’t leave your audience hanging.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Engage the Casual Visitor, or back to the previous one, Write in Series.

I’m often baffled by bloggers who confess to having a complete lack of ideas to blog about when the possibilities for dozens upon dozens of posts are sitting there right in front of them. All that you need for a large number of posts is one idea that can be broken down into a lot of others and the knowledge of the art of writing in series.

Most people think of series in a very limited fashion: a detailed enumeration of a list, for example. The fact is that a series is merely any collection of posts with a common theme among them, and a well-executed series is one that provides a lot of post ideas right off the bat. Take this series, for example: it was borne out of simply making a list of the lessons I’ve learned from blogging and suddenly realizing that most of these ideas make for a good post by themselves. It wasn’t enumerated or anything; it was merely a random collection of ideas on a theme.

In fact, most successful blogs use series in some respect. This is because the benefits of writing in series are numerous: it provides a forum for a more detailed investigation of an issue than a single blog post really offers, it provides fodder for a number of blog posts, and the continuation of a series provides a lot of incentive for readers to continue tuning in.

Here are some tips for defining and executing series in your blog.

Start off with a list. If you have a “big” central idea, try making a list of the ideas within this idea that you’d like to cover. The thread between these sub-ideas is the core of a series and that list can be the starting point for a large number of posts. Even better: if you can find a pre-established list of ideas, someone has handed you a list to work with. For an example of the latter, see my rewrite of a list from Money Magazine.
Don’t post them all at once. Your readers can get overwhelmed if you post a lot of posts on a single topic. Don’t post all of the members of a series at once; instead, recognize this as a great opportunity to keep something in reserve.

When you finish a list, neaten it up. Make sure that members of a list link to an overall master post and also link directly to the “next” item in the series. This is difficult to do while you’re posting the series, but when you finish it, it’s well worth your time to add these options. Why? A reader from a search engine that is drawn into the article at all will be willing to follow links to more items in the series.

Have some consistency with the titles. Bloggers will be interested to know when you post a new item in the series, so be sure to include the name of the series in each post in the series. This also aids those terms (in the title of the series) to appear as terms related to your blog on search engines.

A series is not only a great way to continually provide ideas and posts for your blog even when you’re suffering from a creative drought, but it can also engage your audience and keep them coming back for more.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Post Consistently, or back to the previous one, Use the Senses.

The web is inherently a visual medium, and like any other visual medium, a big portion of success in the medium is sensory appeal. Many, many people recall things based upon imagery and visual impressions and blogs are no different: time and time again, we see that images help make for memorable posts.

Take, for example, the image of Suze Orman to your upper right. For those unaware, Suze is a well-known personal finance guru who uses a “trendy” personality to help promote her advice. Because of her prevalence, I occasionally post commentary on her, and so I use that image in posts about Suze.

Yet there are often times in which images are a negative. Serious sites that occasionally use highly goofy images are doing themselves a disservice. Poorly executed images are a great way to chase away your readers; instead, look for images that will intrigue your reader base.

There are several useful keys to consider when using images:

Photoshop is your friend. If you are unfamiliar with using Photoshop or GIMP, you should learn to use one of these packages at least well enough to do basic image editing and modification. These tools allow you to create and modify images to your heart’s content. This is particularly true if you relied on someone else to do the visual design of your site, as you’re likely reliant on other’s images for anything you might include. Don’t let this be the case: learn some Photoshop and let your imagination lead.

Make it visually striking, but not distracting. If you use an image that blends in with the rest of the post, it will be harder for the reader to become engaged with the picture. On the other hand, an image that flashes or blinks can actually distract the reader from reading. The goal is to find images that will attract the reader’s eye upon first visiting the site, but don’t restrict the reader from reading the article. The best choice is a visually attractive still image.

Ensure that the image relates to the article. People often post pictures that they find amusing in articles that have no relation to the image. As a reader, I get really confused by this: “Why is there a picture of Hulk Hogan in a story about fabric softener?” If you post an image, make sure it connects to the story in some way, either in an obvious way that doesn’t require explanation or in a less-obvious way that becomes clear upon reading.

Be careful with humor. I usually try to avoid humor in image form simply because of the diverse audience. If you have a clear indication that your readership would prefer highbrow or lowbrow humor, then you’re much safer, but I’m less confident about my readership (while I feel pictures of celebrities with Photoshopped comments is too lowbrow, reprinted New Yorker cartoons might be overdoing it). My one recent attempt at a humorous image (see right) didn’t do so well.

If you can use the picture for subtle commentary, do so! Recently, I offered up some commentary on Jim Cramer, a stock analyst who hosts a show on CNBC. Jim is known for being loud, fairly aggressive, and having anger management issues, which is actually part of his appeal. Seeing this, I tried to create an image of Jim that represented these aspects of his personality without creating an “evil” look. One glance at the picture to your upper right will tell you whether I succeeded or not.

Along with this, consider the possibility of using words that evoke the other senses: descriptive terms that relate sense, smell, sound, and touch. Some blogs may never have the opportunity to use these, but food, audio, and textile blogs are well-served to learn many adjectives.

One big recommendation: don’t force audio on your readers. If you choose to embed a sound clip, make sure that it does not play by default. If I visit a site that automatically plays noise, I will never return to that site as it is attacking my sense of hearing (and the sense of hearing of others around me) without my choice. Keep in mind how people in quiet environments (such as the library) might feel if bombarded with audio.

The more dimensions you use to engage the reader, the more likely they are to stick around and listen to what you have to say.

Building a Better Blog for 2007 is a month-long series at The Simple Dollar, outlining steps you can take to build a long-term healthy blog that will attract readers. Jump ahead to the next essay, Write in Series, or back to the previous one, Don’t Know It All.