It is easier to build a relationship with your reader and engage with them if your blog is sticky. A sticky web site compels visitors to come back again and again, and to stay longer too. My blog is reasonably sticky because the author is so good and has such insightful things to say. 
But in all seriousness though, there are things you can do to engage your readers more effectively. For instance, you can form a community where they all talk to each other. Most blogs, unfortunately, are abysmal at that. Even my blog really doesn’t do a very good job of bringing readers together and involving them in a group discussion. It’s entirely too easy to be up on one’s soapbox, to start a conversation and also finish it.
Here are some practical suggestions for making your blog sticky, courtesy of Performancing:
- Design for repeat visits
- Keep advertising minimal for repeats
- Provide a recent posts list
- Answer your comments
- Use the right language
- Post frequently
- Have a private message system
- Allow member posts
- Include members in decisions
- Don’t neglect the distributed community
Filed under: Blogs Business Blogging
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word: 
Stickiness is a primary goal for most websites. A site that is sticky gets people coming back again and again, and staying longer too.
It is easier to build a relationship and engage your reader if your site is sticky. My blog’s reasonably sticky because the author is so good and has such insightful things to say.
But seriously though, there are things you can do to engage your readers in some of the dialog. For instance, you can form a community where they are all talking to each other — most blogs are really abysmal at that. Even my blog really doesn’t do a very good job of bringing readers together and getting them to talk to each other.
So how do you get off your soapbox as a blogger and start conversations without finishing them, and let your readers take over?
Performancing has a nice list of practical things you can do to build online community of your blog:
- Design for repeat visits
- Keep advertising minimal for repeats
- Provide a recent posts list
- Answer your comments
- Use the right language
- Post frequently
- Have a private message system
- Allow member posts
- Include members in decisions
- Don’t neglect the distributed community
Filed under: Blogs Business Blogging
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
TrustBite is the CEO blog of TRUSTcite founder Hannah Samuel. The blog is opinionated, insightful, informative and helpful — all the sorts of things that a good CEO blog should be — and establishes Hannah’s credibility as a thought leader, while generating PR and building inlinks. The blog is outfitted with an RSS feed, tag pages, and has been optimized for search engines.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: Trustbite
Filed under: Business Blogging Portfolio SEO
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Professional Association of Innkeepers International 2006 annual convention — Phoenix, AZ
A blog could do wonders for your online marketing. Learn the tools/tactics to use, the pitfalls to avoid, and how to make it pay.
Filed under: Business Blogging Seminars
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
Professional Association of Innkeepers International 2006 annual convention — Phoenix, AZ
Every email marketer’s biggest challenge is getting their emails delivered, opened and read. Don’t worry, advanced tools and tactics like whitelisting services, domain verification, and spam scorers can help save the day!
Filed under: Email Marketing Seminars
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
Professional Association of Innkeepers International 2006 annual convention — Phoenix, AZ
Don’t want to get caught in spam filters, alienate your recipients, or burn your list? Then come to this session and learn the fundamentals of successful email marketing.
Filed under: Email Marketing Seminars
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
Strategic Branding — Auckland, NZ
Branding campaigns appear in many forms online besides the ubiquitous banner ad. There are blogs, RSS feeds, paid search ads (e.g. Google AdWords), contextual ads, natural (organic) search listings, text link ads, microsites, and podcasts, to name a few.
- Gain an understanding of each of these channel’s unique benefits and where each fit in your brand strategy
- Learn best practice techniques applicable to these new channels, with numerous examples
Filed under: Business Blogging Email Marketing RSS Marketing Seminars Web Marketing
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
9th Annual Strategic Communications and PR Forum — Auckland, NZ
New digital communication technology has drastically changed the landscape of possibilities in reaching your audiences. Find out what the latest technology trends are, and how they can be utilised to add value to your brand.
- New communication channels and their use
- Using technology effectively
- Viral marketing trends
- Emerging PR tools - RSS, blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks, social tags, search engines
Filed under: Business Blogging RSS Marketing Seminars Web Marketing
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
I’ve posted onto BusinessBlogConsulting.com a list of my favorite WordPress plugins and what they do and why I like them. If you’re blogging under the WordPress platform, you might want to trick out your blog with some of these great plugins.
The list includes: PodPress, Popularity Contest, Google Sitemaps Generator, Akismet, Adhesive, Ultimate Tag Warrior, EmailShroud, Transpose Email, WP-EMail, WP-Print, Subscribe2, In-Series, Permalink Redirect, Gravatars, Subscribe to Comments. WP-Notable, A Different Monthly Archive, Related Posts, Related Posts for your 404.
That’s not quite 20, so I’ll add one more to that list — a suggestion from commenter Neville Hobson (thanks, Neville!) — FeedBurner Feed Replacement, which makes it easy to “migrate” your pre-existing RSS subscribers over to Feedburner once you sign up for the service (which is excellent, btw).
Filed under: Blogs Business Blogging Tools
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
What follows below are some of my favorite WordPress plugins and why. Many of them I have in common with Cavemonkey’s excellent Top Ten WordPress Plugins list. Here’s my list, in no particular order:
- PodPress - makes it super-simple to post podcasts; includes an inline media player
- Popularity Contest - offer a leaderboard of your Most Popular posts based on views and ratings
- Google Sitemaps Generator - creates a Google Sitemaps XML file. What’s killer about this is that it uses Popularity Contest’s ratings for the priority scoring that Google uses to determine how frequently to spider your pages
- Akismet - you’d be a fool to run a blog with comments turned on and not use this plugin to stop the flood of comment spam. ’nuff said!
- Adhesive - gives you the ability to flag certain posts as “Sticky” so they float to the top of the category page regardless of whether it’s the most recent
- Ultimate Tag Warrior - creates tag pages and a tag cloud. Great for SEO as I’ve said before.
- EmailShroud - an email address obfuscator to thwart those evil email harvesters. Scans for email addresses in posts, but won’t work on email addresses hard-coded into your theme.
- Transpose Email - another email address obfuscator. Doesn’t automatically scan for email addresses, but can be used from within your theme files.
- WP-EMail - “Email this post to a friend” functionality
- WP-Print - Printer-friendly version of posts
- Subscribe2 - let your readers subscribe to your blog updates via email
- In-Series - link posts together into a series, regardless of dates posted or categories selected
- Permalink Redirect - fixes the canonicalization problem where the same page loads whether the slash is there or not. Important for SEO.
- Gravatars - puts the commenter’s “Gravatar” image next to their comment
- Subscribe to Comments - a commenter can check a box on the comment form so that they get notified of further comments to that post
- WP-Notable - places a row of buttons alongside your posts so the reader can easily add your post to their favorite social bookmarks service (del.icio.us, digg, etc.)
- A Different Monthly Archive - a pretty way to display links to archives by month
- Related Posts - link to related posts automatically based on the content of the post
- Related Posts for your 404 - your File Not Found error page can now suggest related posts to the misguided user. Cool!
What are your favorites? Did I miss any important ones?
Filed under: Blogs Business Blogging Tools
|
Email to a Friend |
Printer-Friendly |
No Comments »
Spread the word:
