I’ve been doing research on what distinguishes good blogs from poor ones, especially by reading “lessons learned” posts by bloggers. I’ve come up with 20 principles I think are worthwhile. Let me know which ones you agree or disagree with.
1. Pick a topic for your blog.
Pick a general topic you are passionate about, and stick with that focus as you post. Near the title of your blog, identify your blog’s focus so new visitors can know immediately whether your blog aligns with their interests. In the following image, the blog identifies its theme in the tagline and provides an explanation of the topic on the home page. Paradoxically, having a specific focus actually gives you more to write about. Like a novel, your blog takes on direction and purpose.
2. Encourage comments.
Allow comments, and respond to comments. Blogs are dialogues, not monologues. If you turn commenting off, you lose out on the Web 2.0 aspects of your blog. Comments enrich your thoughts and take you to a higher level of analysis. You benefit from the additions, corrections, tips, and other feedback from readers. To encourage comments, don’t require sign in. Activate Akismet and this math plugin to avoid spam. Add the Subscribe to Comments plugin so users can be aware of follow-up comments. When people comment, respond to their comments, and keep the dialogue going because this is what Web 2.0 is all about: connecting users to each other and sharing information.
3. Make it easy to subscribe.
Make it easy to subscribe to your feed by placing an orange RSS button in a highly visible location. Route your feed through Feedburner so you can keep track of your subscribers. You can also offer an e-mail subscription using FeedBurner. In the example below, subscription information is prominently displayed in the upper-right corner.
4. Include an About page.
Include an about page to let people know more about you. Are you a technical writer based in Seoul, a developer working at Microsoft, a Russian open-source business mogul? Your blog reveals your personal views, so introduce yourself to your readers. Don’t blog anonymously. You can include a photo in your About page — some think it makes you more real to your readers. Include some basic facts, such as where you live, your job title, your interests, and other biographical information. You may want to omit the company you work for, if content on your blog inappropriately reveals company information.
5. Present your ideas visually.
In this culture of scanning and clicking, long blocks of text aren’t read. Break up your text with visuals—graphs, charts, photos, blockquotes, and videos. Annotate the images to reinforce your meaning. Creating Passionate Users always reinforces its message with visuals. If you get photos from other blogs or from Flickr, include a link back to the source. Most popular blogs are visually rich.
6. Keep posts short and to the point.
Keep the text in bite-sized chunks that readers can quickly consume — brevity forces you to get the point quickly. A good post can be 1-2 paragraphs long. Even if your posts are lengthy (like this one), remove all filler and communicate your message concisely. You can also chunk up long posts into several small posts, or use subheadings.
7. Use subheadings for long posts.
If you do post long, use subheadings to break up the text. Copyblogger is a great example to follow. Also use the “Read more” tag so users can scan down the front page without having to scroll eternally. In the example below, Copyblogger breaks up his lists with subheadings and keeps his paragraphs short.
8. Link abundantly.
Links increase readership and let others know you’re writing about them. Others can see incoming links in their blogs. Links also enable trackbacks and pingbacks, allowing your content to appear in the comments section of other posts. Blogs are collaborative, linked conversations. The example below shows a trackback. I linked to another blog in my post, and that link appears as an excerpt in the comments section of the original post. The Kramer plugin is helpful for automating trackbacks, and you can use it to show inbound links in the sidebar of your blog. Links also boost your Google rankings, converting your blog into a powerful search engine optimization tool.
9. Make headlines descriptive.
Avoid vagueness and ambiguity in headlines. Readers scan down a list of titles in a feed, so the article title is telling of whether they’ll read the post. With millions of blogs and new content daily, readers have to skim, scan, and jump around just to keep up. Make it easy by clearly describing your post’s content in the headlines. Copyblogger has some excellent advice for crafting headlines. You can also entice readers with some copywriting techniques, such as asking interesting questions, making lists, stating paradoxes or contradictions, or just being exuberant.
10. Archive by topic.
Archive your posts by topic rather than date. (Date archives may be appropriate for blogs that are personal journals only, rather than topic-driven blogs. For topic-driven blogs, date archives mean little to readers.) About a dozen categories is a good number. You may not know all your categories until you’ve been blogging a while. Along with the archives, include a search feature.
11. Include a list of related posts beneath each post.
Many users find your site by searching for specific information. When readers find your post, why not point them to other posts on your site with similar information? Doing so can increase the page views per reader. In WordPress, you can automatically create a Related Posts section based on matching keywords with the Related Entries plugin. If you want more control (with more effort), use Darren’s Related Posts plugin. You type keywords in the Custom Fields section of a post, and posts that match the keywords are connected as related.
12. Allow users to contact you offline.
Readers may want to contact you offline with a question or comment — perhaps to propose a book deal or to extend an invitation to speak at a conference. You will be perceived as an expert on your topic (the go-to-guy for that topic), and the user’s question may not be related to the comments section of your latest posts. If you make your contact info readily apparent, users can reach you. You can use a contact form plugin (Contact III) or simply make your email address available. In the image below, an editor from Wiley posts — with embarrassment — an invitation for a book deal within the comments.
13. Present your real viewpoint.
“Be yourself and speak your mind,” John Chow says. Readers enjoy the personal aspects of a blog. If you never voice your opinion, your blog loses appeal. You don’t have to reveal your personal life, but a glimpse here and there is appropriate and provides human appeal. In the following screen, the writer expresses her frustration with health insurance limitations. You can rant and still keep it professional (as she does).
14. Write for your future employer.
A blog can be a dangerous tool, and you should know that your future employer, and possibly your current employer, will read it. Avoid posting anything confidential, gossipy, overly-emotional, rude, company-related, or otherwise self-damaging and unprofessional. A blog can be both an asset and liability depending on the information you post. There are at least a dozen stories of employees fired for blogging. Respect your company’s information restrictions, and don’t jeopardize future employment opportunities.
15. Include a Top Posts section.
You can use the WP-PostViews plugin plugin to automate a Most Viewed posts section, or you can create your own list of classic posts. Once your classic posts leave the home page, they’re often buried in your site. Like displaying trophies on a mantle, showcasing your classic posts allows more readers to find and enjoy them.
16. Provide an index.
Much of your site’s traffic comes from search engines. And many readers are first-timers on your site. Providing an index readers can quickly scan (such as with this site map index plugin) is an excellent way to let users skim your entire post collection. An index may increase the page views per visitor. It also shows you just what you’ve written. It’s like a Table of Contents for your site.
17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title.
If your blog title doesn’t match the URL, it will be harder for users to remember the location of your site. It pays to use your own URL. Even if you just purchase a domain and point your hosted WordPress.com blog to it, it looks more professional. Readers don’t always use RSS to read your blog’s content.
18. Include a Recent Posts section in your sidebar.
A recent posts section in your sidebar provides an at-a-glance index for your latest posts. Especially if you write long posts, the recent posts section allows readers to see what you’ve been up to without scrolling down a lengthy page.
19. Reward commenters for commenting.
If you add the Show Top Commenters plugin, you can show the people who most frequently comment on your blog. This is a simple way to create your own community of readers with similar interests. You should read their blogs and comment on them as well. In this way your blog turns into more than just a one-person show: it becomes a virtual community.
20. Post often.
Posting regularly to your blog, such as daily, every few days, or every week, will change your experience of blogging. It will help you stay engaged with your topic. It will build a greater community of readers, who will post more comments. More comments will make blogging more rewarding and fun, not to mention more content rich for your site — leading to more page views from search engines.
However, if you have nothing to say, don’t blog fluff. That annoys readers even more than not posting and you will lose readers. But if you stay engaged with your topic — reading articles, books, other blogs; listening to podcasts and other recordings; attending events and seminars; and reflecting on the work you’re engaged in — you will have plenty to say each day. Whether you can carve out the time is another matter. The Technorati graph below shows that the most popular bloggers post about twice a day; the least popular post a dozen times a month.
Resources
- Weblog Usability: The Top 10 Design Mistakes, by Jacob Neilsen
- Five Principles to Design By, by Joshua Porter
- 9 Lessons for Would Be Bloggers, by Joshua Porter
- 10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid, by John Chow
- How to Make a Great First Impression with Your Blog, by Mitchell Harper
- Blogging Tips and Mistakes to Avoid, by Joe Lewis.
- 10 Blogging Mistakes I’ve Made, by Webomatica
- Do You Make These Mistakes with Your Blog, by Brian Clark
- The 5 Immutable Laws of Persuasive Blogging, by Brian Clark
- 10 Effective Ways to Get More Subscribers, by Brian Clark
- 18 Lessons I’ve Learned About Blogging, by Darren Rowse
- Who the Hell Are You? by Lorelle VanFossen
- The Top 10 Clues That You Are An Amateur Blogger, by Lorelle VanFossen
- The Most Powerful Blogging Technique Ever, by Brian Clark
- Top 10 blog mistakes? – maybe, by Kay Smoljak
- Common Blog Mistakes and Users Can’t Distinguish Blogs, by Rok Hrastnik
- 10 Principles of Highly Effective Blogging, by Darren McLaughlin
- 10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Appealing, by Tom Johnson
- How to Start a Blog, by Phil Windley
- The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog, by Guy Kawasaki
- Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore, by Eric Kintz
- The noisy tragegy of the blog commons, by Seth Godin
- The First 100 Days: Observations of Nouveau Blogger, by Guy Kawasaki
- 10 Simple Tips for Better Blogging, by Angsuman Chakraborty
- The first 7 days of blogging, by Neil Patel
- 10 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid, by Moey
- Why Do Blogs Fail? by Partha Battacharya
- Of Blogs and Novels, by Beth Long
- Top 10 Blog Writing Tips, by Denise Wakeman
I’m interested to hear your thoughts. Do you agree or disagree with any points in particular? Did I miss something major?
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Twenty Tips for Bloggers…
These twenty tips are from IdRatherBeWriting, they are very inspired, so make a list of all the tips for myself. you can find the details of the post here.
Pick a topic for your blog.
Encourage comments.
Make it easy to subscribe.
Include an About pa… -
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It was a great article. Your ideas are great. It was really very good article. These 20 tips are really very helpful for me. I really appreciate you. This was amazing. Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog – Tips for increasing the usability of your blog for your user is great.
I thought your one on ‘Keep posts short and to the point’ was funny after reading the length of your post
But honestly I agree with a lot you said. I am a big fan of community participation and regularly invite people to comment on my blog, I noticed that when you engage with a user at the start of your post by asking for their thoughts they are not only more inclined to do so but also to take a vested interest in what you are writing about.
Stephen, good point about asking a reader for their thoughts at the start of the post rather than at the end. Sometimes if I ask at the end, it’s often ignored.
Nice Tips!! Finding a topic you like and are knowledgeable about helps you be able to write interesting posts… Your posts do not have to be brilliant works of literary art… They simply have to be engaging, interesting, and most of all fairly frequent… You will find blogging to be the easiest and most enjoyable if you pick a good topic for yourself…
I agree that enabling dialogue is one of the biggest appeals of blogging. Nowadays It’s an interactive medium among the people. And this top 10 is always a feature I look for on a blog. Your technique seems like it would work, but it creates more work for you. Now am going to try and put this to some use for my photography and digital camera blog. Thank you.
Nice information and nice to see you friend. I will come to your blog more often. Blogging Center.
Visit My Blog too friends.
Thanks for these Great tips, I will use them in my blog :
http://moneytoptips.blogspot.com/
Very nice article! Thanks for this!..
thanks admin
Hi nice tips i like it too good.
thank you for share it.
These all good tips,but akismet is not good for me.
Wow, awesome outline of tips. Even though this is over 2yrs old there still is a lot of relevant ideas.
Thanks Andrea. I should probably create a new post that revisits these usability principles.
Great Tips, thanks, I wish it will be good for all
Great advice in this article. I’ve been looking for ways to get popular/top 10 posts up on my site, and your article gives some great advice and links to get there. Also validated some other approaches I’ve had to blogging, so thanks for that!
My favorite part of this whole post is “5 reasons you should treat your employees like dogs”. Classic!
Do you have any advice in terms of *when* is an effective time to post articles? How to publicize them? That’s something I think would be very valuable to bloggers.
Thanks!
Even though topic was posted 2 years ago but most of the tips guidelines are still applicable! Thanks!
@Alltop_Blogging just tweeted this and I followed the link.
Some very good advice here.
That archive by topic tip is great. As I’ve spent most of my professional life working on websites, not blogs, it hadn’t occured to me that date categorization isn’t very helpful for the user, apart from showing you’re posting fresh content.
I’ll go and update my site with that feature now – Thanks
I read this post off a re-tweet from @jonathanfields – love, love this. This is very timely for me – I’ll be checking in to see you! Thanks for putting so much value out there.
Marilyn Carpenter
Charlotte, NC
mcarpenter21 – twitter.
Some of these posts and links are a real gold mine. I wish I had run across this blog before I did practically every blunder and no-no listed on some of these responses and tips links!
Mehera, thanks for the note. Glad you found the tips to be useful. I’d revise the post a bit now, since I no longer follow every one of my usability tips. I do try to follow most of them, though.
Getting the best interest rate is moot if your job is outsourced, particularly if it is in the profession you have studied for in four years (or 6 years – masters degree) of college. But loft buyers tend to be doctors, lawyers, and bankers or their adult children who are college students, so maybe that’s not a problem?
If you have the cash and can pay off your purchase in one sitting, if you have more cash to be able to sit out for two years without income, and if you found your dream loft. Splurge!
Great tips, thanks for sharing them with us, I hope all internet marketer can benefit from these amazing tips
I’ve just entered the world of blogging and find this incredibly useful – thanks for the info.
/c
Thanks for the post, i enjoyed reading it. blogging is not as easy as many think it is, it’s hardwork. any how thanks.
Having a topic for a blog is the start of all things.
Getting comments makes a blog to write by itself and to climb in search engine rankings by itself.
Presenting your ideas visually will keep readers on your blog.
Keeping posts short and on the point will keep readers coming back for more.
Presenting your real viewpoint is the thing that will make your blog different without the fear of someday getting short on inspiration.
Any of the 20 points in this post can make a huge difference in a blog and everyone of them should be dutifully observed.
But the key point is why having a blog in the first place and this should be shared with readers. Readers will participate in the blog more directly and bring much more in the experience.
Great Article! Informative and nice share.
Thanks
Excellent guidelines, I bet only 20% of bloggers follow these tips. I really found the archive by category not date very useful. Over all great advice.
Bjones
Very good and useful tips. Given images are great it is always easier to read when your thoughts are supported by the images
nice – keep it up !
Without a doubt, this article is really the latest on this deserving topic. I agree with your conclusions and am eagerly look forward to your future updates. Just saying thanks will not just be enough, for the extraordinary clarity in your writing. I will at once grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. Gratifying work and much success in your business endeavors!
New information for me. Thanks and I want bookmark now.
Thanks for sooooooo many great ideas. I have been blogging for 3+ years and every once in a while I like to step back and see how to make it better and I have a bunch of todos to do now.
I was looking for some blog techniques so this was great.
Thanks
Love the post.
This is a really good discussion! It is interesting that it has spanned over a few years and is still relevant. Thanks for the viewpoints – Happy 2010!
Wow. So detailed presentation of the great tips ever. Visually and written. Thanks a lot.
which niche will drive more traffic to your blog….
A really good bloggers guide with good advice. I love how you made it a joy to read by adding in images with the text to highlight your points. I agree with all you said, I just need a blog of my own now.
How much force you can put out is basically how high you are going to jump. Increase strength = Increase force.
wow, great post. thanks
Kenneth
This is brilliant – thank you! I have just created a new blog, Blogworm, at http://tvustudent.wordpress.com, as part of my postgraduate research project/ dissertation into blogging and blog usability and user experience. I am investigating if good usability in Blogware relates to go usability in Blogs they create – or not. I am going to do hueristic usability evaluations of different Blogging tools and usability tests of different blogs. I am going to post my research findings on my blog as I go, plus all the info I dig up as I do my project. I’d love to hear your views as I start to publish findings, and how they relate to your own here. As a starter, for getting my blog off the ground to be as useable as possible, this article is very helpful. Thank you.
Interesting idea — does usable blog software lead to usable design? I think that yes, certainly that would be true. Part of the usability of WordPress is the way the code is architected. It’s broken into a lot of separate files so you can easily zero in on the code you need to change. In contrast, Blogger’s code is compiled into one big file. You can change all the code in Blogger, just as you can in WordPress, but changing it in WordPress is a lot easier. Hence more people are able to make the changes that they need in order to implement a more usable design.
So many thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I think strongly about this and really like learning pile on this topic. If quite possible, though gain expertise, would you mind updating your web page with successful information? It is tremendously helpful for me.
Interesting!! You’re right about our favorite post often buried deep and never comes back to the surface. Creating a list of all posts ever made and put a link for that list on the homepage/top nav-bar is a way to prevent this happening. Thank you for reminding us.
Hi
I have just finished my usability study of 5 personal blogs.
The following were ‘basics’ which blog designs are generally doing well, and are expected by users, if they’re not part of the user interface the impact on user satisfaction is very great:
1) The right information at the right time to readers to gauge readership (comment counters, retweet counters, Facebook ‘like’ counters)
2) Clear Time and date info on when a post was posted
3) Enable users to easily View comments and Leave comments.
4) Provide good profile info – with a photo
The following would resolve the main issues users are having with blogs:
1) Make subscribing easy: offer Email subscription as well as RSS, provide self-explanatory text and instructions, and make it really visible in the first part of your blog screen above the page fold.
2) Make it clear what your blog is about. A blog shouldn’t be a puzzle. Self-explanatory descriptive titles, headings, introductory text and welcome messages will all help to resolve the mystery of what a blog is about and why you’re blogging.
3) Keep the main stuff above the first page fold – long pages make users work too hard. Good content architecture and structure in blog content categorisation, tagging and pages all reduce the effort needed by users to scroll.
4) Give users a search facility to find information. Make the search visible at the top of the first page and give it labelling to show it is to search the blog. If you have search function don’t bury it down several page folds – put it where users need it – at the top.
5) Get organised down there! Linking to related articles or posts, tagging, and content categorisation, consolidate the number of tags so there are not hundreds, and use a tag cloud or category cloud or some kind of navigation menu so users can see the content options at the top of the first screen. Pages also help to organise content.
6) Give them clear navigation on every page/ screen with a persistent link to your main page as the Home Page.
7) Help your readers to share the love. Twitter Retweet, Facebook ‘like it’ and email sharing are all essential.
I have published the complete usability study on my blog at http://tvustudent.wordpress.com
Kind regards
Kathy
These are all great ideas. I have found myself not link as much as i should be – I am definately going to pick up the frequency of these.
Its great that we have the ability to use top posts, relevant posts etc.. the tools we have available to use and the integration with other Social media are creating a whole new blogging world.
Great article.
Thanks