Saturday, April 2, 2011

Better Blogging

The letter B stands for Blogging.

Would you like to increase your blog traffic and the number of followers? Here are a few simple tips:

1. Follow Back: When someone follows your blog - follow them back.
2. Comment Back: When someone comments on your blog - comment on their blog.
3. Shorten Your Post Length: We want to visit a lot of blogs, and when there's a LONG post, it slows the process down.
4. Silence the Autoplay Music: It's fine to have a playlist or player, but give your visitors the option to hit play rather than requiring them to hit stop.
5. Eliminate the Word Verification: Do you REALLY need it? Again, it slows the process down.
6. Make Sure You are Follow-able: (ha ha - Strunk and White would hurt me for my word usage, I'm sure.) When we click on your name or on your little picture, can we follow you back to your blog? Check it.
7. Post Regularly: You define how often, but when someone visits your blog and you haven't posted in two months - - what's the motivation for them to ever return?

What is your Best tip for Blogging?

27 comments:

  1. Great tips indeed, Margo. I'm a new follower and would love a follow back at :
    http://oaklawnimages.blogspot.com/

    Kathy at Oak Lawn Images

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  2. Wonderful tips! Thank you for sharing!

    I need to be better at following back and commenting back. I fail at those.

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  3. I always reply to everyone, and take an interest in everything THEY do. Hugs...

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  4. Terrific post, Margo, worth tweeting. I try to follow everyone that follows me. But if a blog is too time-consuming to upload, I move on.

    http://gail-baugniet.blogspot.com

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  5. GREAT tips! I agree with all of them. The only one I'd add is, BE KIND. :)

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  6. In my experience over the last couple years, You should not blog to gain followers. You gain followers because you want to blog, and it will shine through in your posts.

    At the end of the day, you'll get to post what you want to post, instead of what you think your followers want to read.

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  7. those are some great tips! thank you for sharing

    http://baygirl32.blogspot.com

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  8. Great list! I can't follow because I'm not on Blogger, but I do try to reciprocate on comments, and I love when others do the same. As for auto-play music, that's one of my biggest pet peeves. I'm usually listening to my own music, so someone else's just clashes. And if I'm not listening to music, it's either because I don't want to or I can't because I'm in a public place, so having a website automatically load music is inconvenient at best and embarrassing at worst.

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  9. Blogger words to live by!
    Just stopped by from the A-Z Challenge!!
    gigglelaughcry.blogspot.com

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  10. Great tips for blogging! I hate word verification and I admit I used to have it! Then I started following 300+ blogs. Now it's my nemesis.

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  11. Wow, I wish everyone participating in the Challenge was following these suggestions!

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  12. these are great tips and I appreciate them. I am trying to grow my blog and I am hoping that some people will like what I have to say.

    Teresa
    http://icecoldpenguin.blogspot.com

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  13. We at the A to Z Team have been stressing these points for the past couple months and it's good to keep hearing bloggers spread the word. A blog needs to be friendly if the owner wants blog business and you've told us how. Thank you.


    Contrary to my usual practice of subscribing to comments, to save time during challenge I will not be doing so during April. If you want to respond to my comment , please email me directly from your email notification for the comment.
    Thanks.

    Lee
    Tossing It Out
    Twitter hashtag: #atozchallenge

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  14. Great tips here Margo. I agree with all of them. I wish Wordpress would allow me to add the follower widget, but unfortunately the only options I can offer are RSS, email and networked blogs through Facebook. *Sigh*

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  15. I really can't stand it when I go to a blog and a song starts - then i have to figure out where the heck the widget even is, so I can turn it off. I always have music playing when I'm on the internet, so these songs playing over the top of what I'm already playing are irritating.

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  16. The points you mentioned have been stressed by the hosts, unfortunately many have not heeded them , thanks for your post it was great reading .

    Thanks for your kind comment on my blog, much appreciated.
    Yvonne.

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  17. Thank you for the tips for better blogging.
    Enjoying my first year in A to Z challenge

    sema
    Expressive Impressive
    Your New follower from A to Z challenge

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  18. Simple, straightforward advise. Thanks for stopping by my blog!

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  19. Thanks for the blogging tips!

    I used to be on dial-up, so pages that are graphic-heavy irritated me.

    Fellow WordPress users, you can get the embed code for the Google Friend Follow widget. Copy the code, open your WordPress Dashboard, go to your widgets page, put a text widget into your sidebar and paste the code into it. Save, and you have the widget!

    Marian Allen
    Fantasies, mysteries, comedies, recipes

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  20. I like to put up cool images. Give an Image Credit of course. Google Images is a great place to find them.

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  21. Clever as always. Have fun with the challenge.

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  22. Great tips! The easier you make your blog to read, the more followers you'll have!

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  23. Yes, yes and yes. There have been a number of really long posts and I find myself linking to another blog because I just don't have the time.

    Great tips!

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  24. That is a very complete list of tips for bloggers. We should all strive to follow your list.
    Manzanita
    Wanna buy a duck

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  25. Awesome tips! I can't add much more, keeping them short is always good! ;-)

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