The S R blog has a great article by Jarrod Hunt called 27+1 Tips for Building and Maintaining a Blog Audience and I think that anyone considering starting a blog, or even people who’ve been blogging for some time should visit the site and read the post.
The article talks about the importance of considering the topic of your blog before you get started. You don’t want a blog that’s just like a thousand others, you want yours to be a little bit different, unique and stand out from the crowd so that you can begin attracting visitors pretty much right from the start.
Each tip is well thought out, and when put into practice I’m certain that a blogger would be able to both build and maintain an audience. I actually think that this article could have been broken up into several in depth posts. Perhaps at some point Jarrod will do that.
One of the key points discussed is that you should be consistent in your post. Depending upon your topic you might be able to only post once a week, or perhaps your goal is to post at least once a day. Whatever your plan, make a schedule and stick to it. If you only post once or a few times a week try to do it on the same day, and even around the same time on the days that you choose to post. Your reading audience will grow accustomed to your schedule if you stick to it, and come back regularly to see what you’ve posted that day.
I’ve set up several of my blogs to automatically publish a post that I’ve written ahead of time just past midnight each day, and many of my visitors now know that if they visit my site in the early morning hours they will get to read something new.
Actually setting up automatic publishing on your blog wasn’t discussed in the article but I think it would make a great addition. When I’m in a writing mood I’ll often write several posts at once. When I do this, I can set them up to be published on different days at a specific time. If a blogger were to set up automatic publishing and use it all the time on their blog they really would be consistent with their posts. This would also be handy if a blogger were to go away for the weekend or off for a weeks holiday. Other than perhaps the lack of commenting on the part of the blog owner, the blog would still run as normal and visitors to the site might not even be aware that the blogger is off on a vacation.
The article contains a lot of great tips about promoting your site, and the importance of interacting with your audience. Another tip suggests that a blogger should be topical and timeless. By this they mean that you should aim to write posts that will still be relevant if read a year or two later.
Read the article. I’m sure you’ll learn a few things that will help you build your sites audience and get them coming back for more.
