ROCKFUSE » Blogging Tips

7 Things that you shouldn’t be doing when starting up a blog!

admin — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:49:00 +0000

Recently I’ve been engaged in starting up many small niche blogs in very varying niches. And there had come been many things I wished I hadn’t done when starting up some of them. But it’s all part of the game and it’s a learning process. We all make mistakes and we should learn from them. So as an outcome of my own learning process, I’ll present this code to you – my code of the things that shouldn’t be done when starting up a blog.

I only hope that you find it useful.

Waiting till you complete the blog setup to register a domain.

This is an absolute no-no. If you’re concerned about your Return-on-Investment from the blog, the sooner you start earning money from it, the better. And Search Engine traffic being the best kind of free traffic that you can get, it’s extremely important that you start pumping up traffic from Search Engines as soon as possible. To do that, the sooner you register the domain and let Search Engines get familiarized with the domain, the better off you’ll be. So, once you come up with a domain name, register it and set up a temporary page till you get done with the set up.

Don’t order a gazillion links within the first few weeks.

Intelligent Search Engines like Google had developed advanced mechanisms to spot the trends a certain site might be developing over time. And this applies to the trends of Paid Links also. It might sound really weird, but sometime back, I had around 500 paid links pointing to one new blog. The traffic dropped drastically. And immediately after I removed the links, the traffic went back up. When 500 sites suddenly start pointing to a new website, Google gets cautious. So avoid ordering a ton of links till the blog gains osme solid ground.

Do not wait to monetize it

Some people may tell you that you should be waiting around 2-3 months to monetize a new blog, but so far from what I’ve heard, all I can say is – I don’t know why you should wait to do something that you’re eventually going to do anyway. I mean, if you’re eventually going to put up ads on your site, you might as well have them from Day 1 because

You’ll start earning some money from Day 1
The people that wouldn’t like to see ads on your site wouldn’t want to see them even 10 years later.

Do not start your blog on free domains having the thoughts of moving it to a paid domain once you get some money

I hear this in a lot of blogging forums from relatively new bloggers. They would always go like “Should I keep my blogspot/wordpress domain or should I move to a new one?”. Here’s the deal – if you move your domain, most of the things that are attributed to your domain including links and popularity is going to lessen drastically. So either you spend 10 bucks and keep a domain from the beginning, or you just have that free domain going. Don’t plan to move out down the line – it’s going to be really hard.

Do not wait to pump up your best pieces

Psychologically, new blogger tend to “hold on” to a great topic they find for a post till they have a little more subscribers, a little more traffic and so on. But the truth is that till you get some quality content on the front page of your blog, it’s going to be some time before “a little more traffic” becomes a possibility. If your blog is fairly new, take a chance on that great post. Promote it a bit on Social Media sites, and if it’s really going to make a difference, you’d experience that difference right then than later.

Don’t gear down your blog promotion

Many new bloggers tend to wait till they have around a good number of articles before they actually go ahead and do prominent blog promotion. My 2 cents? Don’t wait. Even if you have 2 blog posts of really good quality content, go ahead and do some blog marketing. Submit your feed to RSS directories, Submit you articles to Social Media sites (through others if possible) and do some article marketing in various article directories. Either you can wait for your blog to grow or you can do something now and accelerate that growth.

Do not sell links till you get a solid PR

The more you sell links on your site, more deprived your PR is going to be. People will come to you giving you a $7 per month deal on your 10 PR1 pages for 4 links in each. Don’t take it. If you do, probably in the next PR update, it’s going to go down to a big 0. Surely, you don’t want that to happen?
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Bloggers! Do you pay attention to your “Content Accessibility”?

admin — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:42:09 +0000

Most of us are masters of writing what we know and what we don’t know. That’s why some of us make a living out of it, right? But have you ever considered the possibility that the potential of your great content is limited just because you don’t tend to pay much attention to the simple thing called “Content Accessibility”?

If you’ve never heard of the term, well, I don’t blame you. Just for the record, it’s the simple process of making sure that the better part of your content can be accessed by the poeople who refer to your blog.

The point I’m getting onto is that writing great content is only half the job. The other half consists of promoting that content and making it accessible.

What’s the difference between promotion and accessibility?

Simply said, promoting your content will bring your great blog post exposure within the time that it was published. Accessibility makes sure it continues to get some exposure (not as much as it used to, though) even after it’s published.

Let me take you through this process by a few practical examples that I employ.

It’s almost a cliche saying that you must have “Popular Posts” in your blog, because everyone does it now. But how many of you actually edit them to reflect on your blog content? Face it. Sometimes, the content on the top aren’t the most enlightening. If you’re really sure that you have better content in your blog that didn’t receive the exposure it deserved, don’t forget to push the numbers. It’s a bit shady, but after all, you must not forget that it’s your blog.
Making your blog categories more accessible and promoting them more prominently can give your old blog posts continued exposure. There’s a ton of ways you can do this. Be innovative – capture the visitor! For the record, I do this by having the categories up on my blog header.
Creating good archives can really tighten the lasso on those curious visitors of yours. I use an ajax plugin for this purpose, which effectively organizes my archives for easy access. Take a look at it if you already haven’t.
One thing that we bloggers are really lazy to do is to find old posts and interlink them with the new posts. But it’s worth the effort I tell ya. It would make sure that when your new post goes double platinum, your old post would at least go platinum. So in that way, interlinking your posts will make sure your blog will go triple platinum instead double

Tags: content writing content accessibility expose content blog posts
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Does updating your blog more give you more visitors?

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:36:15 +0000

I always wondered about this. And as any of you would think, I went for the seemingly obvious answer. That was of course before I tried investigating it myself. So did I change my perception about the whole thing? Did I end up with the conclusion that I was wrong? Well., to sum up my stand on this I would put it up this way.

Posting more definitely gives you more visitors, but it’s up to you to find out whether it’s worth the effort.

Before justifying my stand on this, let me tell you why posting more gives you more visitors.,

By posting more you’re creating content and the more content you have, more search engine traffic you will get. But it’s always not the best way to get traffic. Simply because, without doing sufficient seo, you’re not going to get much out of it at all. And creating good, quality content takes time, which can probably hinder your potential.

What if you can simply cut down your posting frequency and try promoting your content more prominently?

Let me give you a real life example. I used to post six or more times per week sometime before. My goal was to create as much content as possible. As a result I was putting aside good number of hours for this blog alone. But with time, I changed this approach and concentrated on creating content whenever I felt like I had something important to share. And I put that leftover time and used it to do more seo and social media promotion.

As the result, I’ve steadily improved my traffic and I did it within a fraction of the time that I used to commit to this blog, earlier than this.

But ultimately it all comes down to you. Like I said you should decide for yourself just how much is too much. Think about it and you just might save some of your valuable time.

Technorati Tags: posting more blog traffic posting frequency update blog blogging
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24 Productivity Tips for Bloggers

admin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 02:58:33 +0000

I often hear bloggers saying – “I have three blogs but I barely have to to even update one frequently”. Well, if you have a 9-5 job, it’s understandable. But sometimes, we just tend to think to ourselves – “Gosh! I’ve been in front of the computer the whole day, and I haven’t even done anything productive”.

So, do you have productivity issues with your blogging? Do you think you can do much better and much more with your time if you know how to do it? Well, today, these 24 Productivity tips for bloggers might help. They can save your time, energy, sanity and your money! In a nutshell, they can help you to become a more productive blogger.

Try to write a more than one post at once, as much as you can.
Moderate your blog comments at a specific time. Not every 5 minutes a comment gets posted.
Automate things that need to be frequently updated. Like Sitemaps.
Workout your blog posts’s structure before starting to blog.
Keep your IM Client, E-mail notifier and etc., offline while blogging.
If you’re a person who gets easily distracted, try blogging from a place where there are less disturbances.
If you can, have a specific time on your day to post to your blog/moderate comments and etc.
You can’t be on top of every social media site. Choose a specific number of communities you want to be a part of.
Don’t get carried away while creating content for your post. If you care about your time, be specific and concise.
Take enough time to analyze your blog statistics. But don’t do it 5 times a day.
Maintain a daily to-do list with realistic goals, and stick to it. We lose our time when we are trying to figure out what we want to do with our time.
Do the hardest thing on your to-do list as the first thing. Temporary motivational boost awaits…
The easiest way to get something done is to nuke it. Know which thing you can nuke to make more time when you’re short of it.
No matter how tempting reading RSS Feeds might be, don’t get carried away.
You don’t have to read every post that comes up, although you can learn something new from most of the things you read.
Let things slip-away if times become extremely rough and make up your mind. People can’t be 100% accurate.
If you feel like the juice is not worth the squeeze, throw away the fruit and get another.
Have a list of specific things you want to achieve within a specific week/month. Your daily to-do lists will be largely influenced by these.
If you look for images in your blog posts, use creative commons searches. Saves you time and gives you necessary permission to use them.
Do not multitask. You will lose the focus of both tasks at hand.
Do what you need to do. Not what’s fun.
Do frequent value assessments on your doings. If something doesn’t create value – to the extent that you’d like to, it’s better left undone.
Be specific in your blog chores for the day. Instead of saying I will do 2 posts today, try to incorporate the length, the title and when you’re going to do it.
If you’ve got a great idea for a post, write it somewhere visible and look at it from time to time. This will give you more ideas to further improve a great idea.

Please contribute if you’ve got any more productivity tips. If you picked up something new, good luck with implementing that. Let me know how it went.

Technorati Tags: productivity, bloggers, blogs, posting, batch processing, moderate comments, automate,analyze, read rss, accuracy, blogging
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How do you Respond to Negative Reader Comments?

admin — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:09:16 +0000

Before I start, I must say that this post is an exception to the “nice guys finish last” rule. Not that I’m a form believer in it, but there are so many bloggers in the same niche as me who tend to build their blogs on controversy. I don’t have anything against them, and neither do I approve their ways.

So, if you’re being a controversial blogger and had used your fair share of controversy throughout your post, then you asked for negative comments – and it’s all a part of being a blogger. Anyway, coming back to the point, what would you do wen you get a negative comment or a two for few of your blog posts even if you weren’t being so controversial?

Once a few days, a reader of ROCKFUSE(not a regular one) would send in a comment criticizing me for no reason at all or pointing out a mistake that I’ve done and being a bit harsh about it. So how can you tackle these things?

Although I’ve lost the original comment, one reader left an anonymous comment on the post – “Are you splitting your PageRank in half for no reason?“.

Although I can’t exactly quote it out, the basic idea was this.

That I’ve made a logical error in my language so one whole sentence doesn’t make any sense – and it’s something unexpectable from a blogger trying to make money by blogging.
That I’ve a PR0 and I shouldn’t be talking about SEO when I’ve no PR at all.

Well, I had two choices. Either to ignore the comment or to reply to it by mail. I do not approve negative comments if they are out of the subject matter and if they are anonymous since no one would possibly benefit from reading that. And I hardly ignore a comment that is not just hollow criticism.

So, this is a screen-shot of the e-mail discussion that took place between me and that commentator. Hope it would explain a lot.

And I’m proud to say that none of my negative commentators had ever held grudges with me at the end of out discussions. So, I guess nice guys don’t end up last after all, right?

Technorati Tags: blogging,negative,comments,criticism

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How to get inspiring blogging topics

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 20:28:34 +0000

If there was one factor within the headline that could capture a reader almost instantly, and even subscribe to your blog for long time reference, it would probably be the ‘inspirational factor’. Most of the time, it’s about writing a headline that everyone can relate to – and can appeal to the masses. When people check out your articles, most of the time, it’s not because they like the headline. It’s because the headline inspired them to check out the content below.

Bottom line is, it’s not always about the headline. It’s about having the “wow!” factor of that headline echo through out an inspiring post. Check out some A-List blogs and read their most popular posts if you don’t believe me.

If you thought writing on an inspiring blogging topic can be really tough, well, I must say it’s really not. Here are a few tips that I employ, and that could be useful for you on how you can get inspiring blogging topics:

Blog about a pressing issue

I’ve seen very good results when I wrote about pressing blogger issues. An answer to a question that masses face, can bring you a flood of positive responses. For starters, think about a pressing issue that’s creating a waves. And blog about it in a way that people would want to read. There’s really nothing to it. Address that issue and provide your own perspective. People would want to check it out since it’s something they can relate to too.

Invoke a strong emotion

This is what most controversial bloggers tend to do. But, you don’t have to invoke a negative emotion for it to be so strong. It’s basically about manipulating the brain waves of the reader since they are feeling so strong about something. Get into your readers’ shoes and tap into your head. How can your niche positively and genuinely make a difference? I could write about how bloggersunite unites the bloggers for a cause and so on. But this may not be employable in certain niches like celebrity gossip, unless, they are being negative:)

Blog about how you were inspired

This is exactly I’m doing right now. People love reading how others were inspired. It gives the whole thing a higher value. For an example, my post about “What tuning a guitar taught me about blogging“, receives hits even now, despite of the fact that it was written many months ago. In that post, I describe how I was inspired about maintaining my posting frequency, by looking at how a guitar was tuned. Which was really an analogy, which brings us to our final topic.

Do an analogy

I find this to be an extremely effective way in inspiring a reader, but it’s also the hardest. It takes a lot of time, and there’s a lot to be analyzed and “wired”. Unfortunately, this is a very niche specific thing and I’m afraid I can’t really exactly tell you how to do this, though I can assure you that with a little creativity, anything’s possible. This was my latest analogy. It’d help you to grasp an idea.

How would you inspire your readers? Do you see it as a vital way to build a better blog?

(Image Credit: Marko Milosevic)

Technorati Tags: blogging,inspiring,posts,topics,inspire,headlines,blogger,emotion,analogies

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How to Engage in a Conversation with your Reader-base through your Blog Posts

admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 05:07:54 +0000

Image Credit: Brian Solis

If I had to state the most significant difference between blogs and other CMS’s (Content Management Systems), I’d probably say that the biggest difference is that blogs are more humane. Aren’t they? For one reason or the other, blog is not just a cold and lonely web site. When you’re reading a blog, you tend to hear and feel the personality of the blogger. You tend to personify the wordplay and tend to engage in a conversation in your mind with the person responsible for the wordplay – the blogger.

Engaging in a conversation with your reader-base can be very powerful in making your blog more sticky. It will silently motivate the masses to follow your blog, since it’s not just a blog they are following. It’s you – a person.

So, how can you exactly engage in a conversation with your readers? Well, from what I’ve learnt…

Ask Frequent Questions

If you’ve been following me around for a bit, you might be knowing that my writing style involves in asking my readers a lot of questions. Right? (There – I did it again). This is a method that speakers utilize in keeping their audience’s attention undivided. Why not see whether it can work for your blog? If you want to effectively engage in a discussion with your readers, the first rule is to keep their attention undivided.

Imagination Helps

This is something that I borrowed from Steve Pavlina – one of my all time favorite bloggers. He says in one of his posts that whenever he blogs, he imagines that he’s talking to a real person at the other end. If you read his posts, you can see the effect created by this method. He reaches the masses with his blog but one can genuinely feel as if Steve is building up a strong conversation, that one MUST be engaged in.

Use Humor

A good sense of humor can really brighten up your content. But, do not be Eric-Cartman-offensive in your humor. The whole point of using humor in a post is to brighten up your audience and take them to the lighter side of the things. You don’t have to be Pablo Francisco to come up with something simple, right? Bottom line – Humor, makes your blog more humane.

Cite Personal Experiences

Your personal experiences might be completely irrelevant to someone else. And you might not be eliciting them through your blog since you think that other people will not give a damn about it. Well, if you’re trying to write a 400 word post and 300 of it fills some random personal experience, this might be true. But, for the sake of making your point, if you cite a short personal experience, it’d undoubtedly bring your readers much closer to you. It’s give a positive testimonial to your genuine nature as a blogger.

Encourage Comments

So, this is where the literal conversation builds up. Encourage your readers to comment and give their opinion. After all, you’ve been engaged in a conversation with them throughout the post and until the end, it’s been a one-sided conversation. If you’ve effectively engaged in a conversation with your reader, then chances are likely that they want you to listen to their side of the story too. In fact, useful content + interactive language = lots of comments.

Blogs depend more on the sticky subscriber rather than the here and now Sitehopper. Engaging in a conversation with your audience means that you will keep the stick subscriber sticky, and convert more Sitehoppers to be sticky. Try it out. After all, it takes two to Tango, right?

Technorati Tags: Blogging,Conversation,Content Writing,Inspiring Posts,Comments

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How you can follow 200+ blog feeds successfully, everyday!

admin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:45:36 +0000

In the past, and every other day, I’d have this thing or the other and ultimately forget or will not be able to find the time I need to check the feeds of the blogs that I follow. Although I don’t follow many feeds by e-mail, with my Feed Reader(Google Reader), and my Following list(explained later) I pretty much follow 200+ blog feeds everyday. And by follow, I mean reading every single RELEVANT and IMPORTANT post that I come across. So this post is about “How I manage to follow 200+ blog feeds successfully, everyday!”

Letting my feed reader do most of the tracking for me.

Well, out of the 200+ I follow, 120+ are in my Feed Reader. I use Google Reader and I really hate to see a gazillion posts piled up at the end of everyday from blogs that have high posting frequencies. For an instance, Lifehacker. So, I use Google Reader to subscribe to blogs that have relatively low posting frequencies. Blogs with a frequency of about 1-2 posts per day or lower and a few very well-written blogs with slightly higher posting frequencies like 2-3 posts per day. Otherwise, seeing 400+ posts everyday, really de-moralizes me to read what I need to know.

Also, I use Google Reader to track only blogs that are really relevant to what I need to know. Nope, I don’t mean only about blogging. But rather I follow a lot of great entrepreneurial, business management, HR management and a couple of personal blogs as well. This way, I have a sense of urgency of reading what I like to know and I successfully follow all of my Feed Reader Feeds. Since Google Reader comes first in my daily reading list, finishing it up means I’ve read and finished the most important stuff I need to know on that day.

And that, gives me a sense of accomplishment.

Following the lists.

Earlier I told you that I don’t track blogs like Lifehacker through the feed. Subscribing to Lifehacker clutters up my Misc. category of the Feed Reader very much. So instead, I have three folders in my Firefox bookmarks toolbar.

Everyday Reads – Lifehacker goes here. Some well-written blogs that just can’t fit in my Feed Reader goes here. So, after I’m done with the Feed Reader, I can follow the list here. And plus, I don’t feel obliged to read the blog if I should miss anything amidst their high posting frequencies. Except for that, large and medium sized blogs, or even well written “just getting started” blogs that are worth a read everyday, goes here.

Odd/Even day Reads – Much like odd day parking, I follow these blogs once two days. These are above average, well-written and worth commenting blogs I’ve chosen. Although a majority of these blogs are small blogs, I enjoy reading them. Sometimes, the best and the most unique tips come from these. And I genuinely like to help out those blogs by commenting and paying them a visit once in a while. Since I don’t have enough time to read all of them everyday, I’ve split them into two groups, and labeled them to be read once every two days.

“Read it later” list – If I come across a great post in a blog that I haven’t come across before, and if I don’t have enough time to check on the blog or the post, I save it for later using the “Read it later” plug-in for FireFox by IdeaShower. Of course, I can bookmark it, but the “Read it later” list is a list I follow whenever I have time and I feel like. Great for one time reads and helps me save my bookmarks too!

Having a “follow list” drastically saved my time, un-cluttered my Feed Reader, and made me have the most out of my reading, and the engaged discussions in blogs.

Choosing Carefully on what I “Buy”

I consider subscribing to a blog as buying something. Well, it doesn’t cost me money. But something far more important. Time! So, when I come across a new blog, I carefully see whether it’s something worth subscribing into. I mean, we should have a valid reason as to subscribing to something that requires us to contribute something in back right? For an instance, subscribing to problogger had made me a better blogger. So I know it’s worth the investment.

True, this doesn’t mean anything to a person who subscribed to 1000+ feeds but really hasn’t visited the blog, nor the Feed Reader in a week and a half. But, I’m strongly guessing you aren’t one of them?

Buying something doesn’t stop there. Depending on the time I have, I also sort out my reading lists in the Feed Reader. If I’m really short on time and the post topic doesn’t interests me, I know it’s not worth an immediate read. So I save for later and move on.

Making most of the kill-time

When I get some free time in College or while I’m traveling, my mobile lets me do the feed reading through WAP. It’s really simple when you’ve got Google Reader since through GPRS, you can connect to the Google Reader’s mobile interface. And what’s cooler is it comes with packed functionality. If I can’t finish reading something or if I think I should go home and look deeper, I “star” it. (Add to the list of starred items) And when I come home, I can take care of the “Starred Items”.

Do you utilize any out-of-the-box methods to follow blog feeds? Or, do you simply think my methods are ineffective/effective? I’d love to hear your comments on this.
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How to create the Ultimate Weekly Blogger Timesheet

admin — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 00:40:12 +0000

Have you ever wondered what’s the best time you could get that great post you wrote out of your drafts, for it to make it to the front page of Digg? To have that leading edge and actually maximize the traffic, revenue and the exposure a blog post might give you? To drop that bomb timed up to the best possible timing? MindBLOGGER today, will try his best to give you guys the answers that you need.

Define the Blogger Timesheet

Much like a timetable, but only less specific and focuses on one week at a time. A blogger timesheet, by definition, is the schedule for your blog posts throughout the week. I’m sure most of you are already having a weekly overlook and posts distributed throughout the days of the week to be posted in you blog.

For those of you who haven’t well, having an organized weekly timesheet can be very beneficial for a number of reasons.

It will chain you up with the responsibility of posting up on your blog, and that in turn will help you keep your posting frequency consistent.
It will give you a clear look on your blogging workload for the week.
It will maximize your blog’s income of Traffic, Revenue and etc., thorough at the right place at the right time.

Sounds pretty useful ha? So, this post’s whole focus would be in the third point – Maximizing the blog’s income of Traffic and Revenue and etc., through ~~being~~ posting at the right place at the right time.!

Posting at the right place at the right time

Well, since we know what right place(your blog, d’oh!) means, let’s just look into the “right time” part. What’s the optimum day to pull off that great post and what’s the best day to pull off that average post you’re not expecting much from? Surely, you’d lose something, if not a lot, from mixing up the two, right?

According to my experiences, here goes.

Saturday: This is the half-busy day. People usually don’t read blogs on Saturday. (Normal people, not hardcore bloggers) Subscriber stats and the traffic stats usually drop temporarily. So, this might be a good day to do a “not-very-brilliant” post, the one that you don’t expect much from. Can be a free review or that random thought which people would care less. Also, for me, Saturday is a break. I usually take up the topics off my notepad and lay it out for Sunday’s level 5 brainstorm. Just chill-out! And take your eyes off the blog stats for a day.
Sunday: The not at all busy day. People are busy being lazy and having that long Sunday sleep. Try not to post anything important as many RSS Feed readers and E-mail subscribers might lose the detail in the inevitable “Monday-Clutter”. On Sundays I usually brainstorm for a few blog posts, write them and save as drafts. S – stands for sanity. So, have some. After all, it’s the only one you’re going to get. Not very keen on posting on Sundays. But, if you want to keep your posting frequency intact, you know the drill!
Monday: Busiest Busy Day. People are usually trying to sort out the 50+ e-mails in their inbox and clear out the 1000+ posts in their Feed Reader, just to stay organized. Beware! Posting early on Monday will usually add that great post to their “just-clutter” list. Traffic and Subscriber counts hit back up and by late afternoon, everything starts to calm down. In the late afternoon, if you’re really anxious, go ahead! Publish that post which you’d been longing to see for ages on the front page of Digg! People will get into their normal reading habits when your post hits their Feed Readers or Inboxes. You’d also have the edge with your post being one of the very first they are starting their fresh week with.
Tuesday: Business back to normal busy-ness. Traffic is on full swing, and subscribers are eyeing your feed. Probably the best time to pull off the best post and make an impression. It’s the day everyone “officially reads” their subscriptions. Also, bringing your best out on a Tuesday will give you the best chance of making the most out of a Stumble or a Digg streak. Which means, throughout the rest of the weekdays, your post will receive some serious social media traffic, depending on how good it is.
Wednesday: People will still be coming to your blog from the Tuesday high’s. So, don’t disappoint them. Pull off an equally good post so that you’ll create a good impression on the random visitor, through your high-quality posts. Show ‘em that you’re a consistent pro-blogger. Take the advantage of the situation. Also, take a look around your stats and figure whether “Tuesday Post” worked upto your expectations. If not, identify where you went wrong and try to cover it up on Thursday.
Thursday: The mellowest weekday of ‘em all. Time for your average post. Usually, people become a bit more active in blogging communities. A good day to land a contest or a controversial post which gains 127 comments.
Friday: A bit busier than Thursday. People are busy preparing for the weekend and you better avoid posting something good later in the day, just to avoid most of ‘em accidentally looking over it amidst of the desktop cleaning process. You don’t want that? Post early on the day for optimum results.

Points to ponder

If your post is good, regardless of the time published, it will get what it deserves. The objective of this post was not to tell you when to post but rather to tell you when to post for optimum results.
Keep an eye on the Time Zones. Most of my traffic comes from North America so, I have a huge time difference between Sri Lanka – where I live and North America. Then again, a big part of my readership is based here too. So, I have to work in a way both time zones get satisfied with my posting frequency.
These recommendations are of my personal experiences What worked for me in this niche might not work for your in your niche. But, you get the idea. I hope this post would be helpful to you in building a similar schedule.
I have not been superficial in this post. These are purely based on my experiences and usually what works for a blog in this niche, and what works with most of the blog readers upon this planet. I’ve done a mini-research on this topic for little over a month, and this post is my conclusion.
Although big blogs can’t benefit much from a timesheet like this, for medium and small blogs, every subscription counts. So this post was mainly targeted for you guys.

Care to tell me what you think about this?
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How to build your blog through reader comments

admin — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:20:00 +0000

When I visit a new blog, there are a number of things that convinces me to subscribe to it. Off the top of my head, subscriber count, author’s best posts and the comments count. That doesn’t mean if the subscriber count and the comment count is low, I won’t subscribe to it. But rather, especially the comments count assures me that,

People are genuinely interested in your blog.
The author encourages and discussion and is willing to get involved with the readers
The blog is something worth reading and subscribing to.

Are the commentators so important to the growth of your blog? In my opinion, and as an obvious fact, absolutely yes. Commentators virtually run blogs. They can probably be regarded as the blog’s hardcore fanbase.

The basic logic of comments

In the clearest and most concise manner:

Commentators are most of the time your loyal readers.
Author must initially encourage comments thmeselves.
Comments encourage more comments.
More comments encourage more subscriptions.
More subscriptions means accelerated growth in your blog.

Savvy? So that’s the purpose of this post. To show you how you can grow your blog though comments.

Making your blog commentator-rich

Tip #1: Always return your comments

This is probably a must for you if your blog doesn’t average 137 comments per post. Readers might give their opinion, ask questions or just complement you for your post. Reply them. That gives your readers a sense of feeling that you actually care about their presence in your blog.

When someone wants to comment in your blog, giving that person the impression that you will actually go thought their comment and reply accordingly gives the reader the feeling that what they are doing is not going to waste. And that will undoubtedly convince them to “invest” their time in your blog.

Tip #2: Fish-out the random commentators

Does your blog have those commentators who find your articles randomly, and leave a comment and never come back? Fish them out. They were interested in your blog and that’s why they commented at the first place. With some extra effort, you ca probably score.

What can you possibly do? Well, this is what I do. When a new user comments on my blog at the first time, I send them an e-mail message thanking them for commenting, asking them to come back around and encouraging them to subscribe.

If you haven’t already tried it, for WordPress users, I recommend Comment Relish. A WordPress plugin that automates this process. You just have to specify your message and your first time commentators will get the message instantly!

Tip #3: Write posts to trigger comments

It will be advantageous for you if you write some posts from time to time that are open for debate. If you write about how black coal is, well, it will hardly trigger a good discussion since coal is anyway black. But if you can write about something that relates to most of your reader-base and something that you can’t give a proper conclusion to, well, I assure you, it’ll trigger some good discussions!

Make an impression that conclusion is very tricky and allow your readers to come up with their own conclusion to your post – trust me; It works!

Tip #4: Encourage comments though post content

(I know, I know, this might be an exhausted tip but for the sake of keeping this post informative, here goes…)

When you are writing a post, be sure to ask questions and ask for opinion whenever possible. It’s an old-fashioned way of encouraging comments that still works. Might be at the end of your post, might be in the middle, might be about how you can improve something or simply asking for their opinion. You’ve got nothing to lose.

Tip #5: Keep your commentators tied-up

This is very similar to Tip #2, but here, instead of encouraging random commentators, you encourage established commentators.

Whenever a reader leaves a comment in someone’s blog, they hardly come back to check out the reply. And, your reply, as mentioned in Tip #1, will encourage more comments from them. But what if they never come back around to see your reply?

This is what I do. Whenever a reader asks a question, I reply to his/her comment in the post itself and mail a copy of the comment to the given e-mail address. I know – who has the time, right? Well, it doesn’t take me anymore than the time I take to reply a normal comment. Introducing – Comment to E-mail! A powerful plugin that allows you to reply a comment and mail the reply at the same time. Check it out

That pretty much solves it:)

Tip #6: Avaters and Top Commentators widget.

So as the final tip, it might help if you give your commentators some personality. They would love to display their sexy Avater in your comments area and gain some visual appearance. And let’s face it – it also makes our blogs look good?

Not forgetting the largely popular Top Commentators widget. I have “above the fold” top commentators widget in this blog. That is to show my genuine appreciation to all the people who contribute to MindBLOGGER’s growth. If you don’t have too many real-estate issues in your sidebar, you might want to try that.

So there goes… Off the top of my head, as innovative as I could be, keeping the cliches short and irrelevant out – top 6 tips to build your blog through comments. Feel free to share your methods and tell me if I’ve missed anything. After all, I should be encouraging you to comment on this:)
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