I know when I first started my blog I had no idea what I was doing. I really enjoyed visiting humor sites because they relaxed me when I was stressed. There’s nothing like a good laugh to make you feel better. So, I decided to create a humor blog about the strange messes people get themselves into, and that has slowly evolved into the Odd Planet that you see before you today.
I’ve only been blogging for a little over a year now, so I’m still new enough to remember those first few months when I was trying to find this sites direction. I’m also still new enough to blogging that I can stand to learn a few more things.
SR asked me to look over an article on their blog entitled “27+1 Tips for Building and Maintaining a Blog Audience”. I was happy to accept their offer as I think this is a great article that all bloggers – new or very experienced – should read.
The article starts out with the fundamentals of blogging which is of course deciding upon a topic for your blog. Sure there are a lot of general blogs out there – some started for purely personal reasons, but if you want to attract an audience for your blog you might do well picking a niche and making your site original.
The article goes over all of the basics in easy to understand terms. There’s information about the various blogging platforms, domain names, and then it gets into the nitty gritty of building your audience. There are so many great tips in this post that if I went over them all my post would be as long as theirs. If you are interested in building your audience I strongly recommend that you read this article. You couldn’t possibly come away from it and think that you didn’t learn at least one thing if not 10 or 20!
The only thing that I think they might have discussed more had to do with comments. The article talks about the importance of allowing visitors to comment on your article. You can get feedback that way, and as you write your new posts you can write while keeping in mind what your audience has told you in previous comments. You can learn what they like, and what they respond to.
What they missed out on saying is that you should also reply to your comments. Not in new posts necessarily, but right in a posts comment section or by email. Stay in touch with your blog visitors, let them know that you enjoyed their comments. When you interact with your site visitors this often helps to encourage them to return.