Having a blog has become as essential as having a website. Everyone from the housewife down the block to the Fortune 500 company on Fifth Avenue has a blog. According to BlogPulse.com, there were 126 million (and counting…) blogs in 2009. This sudden burst of blogs has been made possible with applications such as Wordpress, Blogger, and Tumblr—which allow novices to whip up their own blogs in minutes.
However, not all blogs are created equal. If you don’t keep up with blogging trends, and think in a smart way about your blog, you may be lumped into the 126 million (and counting…) blogs and go totally unnoticed—and that would be a bummer!
Here are some tips to make your blog more intelligent:
1. Exchange Content for Emails
If your blog is already attracting an audience, why not offer exclusive content to your users in exchange for their email addresses? Sending an email newsletter with content not seen on your public blog, or offering an exclusive download, such as an eBook, will ensure that you give users a reason to hand over their addresses. By building an email list, you can keep track of how often your visitors frequent your site.
Example: I Heart Luxe’s weekly newsletters offers members exclusive content not found on its site.
Example: Travel blog Everything Everywhere gives subscribers a free eBook of blogger/professional travel enthusiast Gary Arnd’s 25 favorite travel photos (in high resolution) when they sign up for email updates.
2. Show Off Your Numbers
Displaying the number of Tweets, Diggs, or Shares your site or post has received will not only show that you have actual readers (hooray!), it will also encourage those readers to share your content and join those numbers.
Example: Smashing magazine displays the current tally of the hundreds of thousands of readers and Twitter followers it has accumulated.
Example: Mashable displays the number of Retweets, Shares, and Diggs for each post. 1,492 Retweets—now that’s just outright bragging!
3. Ask Your Readers for Content
Encourage users to engage in your blog by inviting them to send photos, tips, or thoughts on a particular subject. Most likely your readers are visiting your blog for a reason—and they may know just as much as you (or perhaps even more than you) about the subject of your blog. Inviting readers to submit content creates a sense of community and engages your audience.
Example: Gawker.com makes it inviting and simple to send a tip to its site.
Example: Consumer Reports wanted to predict what its members might want to know about the new iPad before it was reviewed. Readers were asked to post their questions in the comments section of any blog posting.
4. Make It Mobile Friendly
Since blogs have often become a source for instant updates and alerts, it’s important to make your blog mobile friendly. Mobify is a free service that translates your Wordpress blog into a mobile-friendly site supported on up to 500 mobile devices. Another alternative is Google Reader, which generates a mobile view of your RSS feed.
Example: Engadget offers iPhone and other mobile apps for its readers to download.
5. Integrate Facebook
Readers logged into their Facebook accounts will be able to see their friends’ activity on your blog. If there isn’t enough activity, posts with the most recommendations among all of your readers will be displayed. This a great feature for integrating personalized content into your blog—and it’s all in the hands of Facebook. Just fill out a simple form and paste the code on your blog. Set up your site here.
Example: The NHL displays Facebook-recommended posts—you can see what posts your buddies are reading and sharing about your favorite hockey teams and players.
6. Create a Widget You Can Share with Other Blogs
You can share a feed of your blog’s content by creating a grabbable widget for readers to put on their own sites or blogs. You don’t have to be a developer to create a widget—Widgetbox makes one for you as long as you have an RSS feed, or a feed from YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, or one of several other media sites.
Example: Readers or bloggers can post a feed of the latest news from MTV on their own Facebook, Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, or any of dozens of other personal sites.
7. Get Creative with Ad Space
In some cases advertising is an essential means of maintaining a blog. However, conscious consumers are becoming too savvy to click on an obvious ad, and bloggers are having to give up precious real estate for advertising instead of using it for content. There are more-innovative ways to make money with your blog while conserving space.
Example: Abduzeedo, a graphic design and photoshop tutorial blog, displays an ad wall in its footer—a series of 36 favicon-style GIFs that link to advertisers’ sites. This is a smart and space-saving method to display ads without cluttering your site. (It’s also quite lucrative!)
Example: Just Jared uses an ad network called Pixazza, which matches apparel seen in photos from online retailers such as Macy’s, BlueFly, and Shopbop. With just a click, readers can buy the very same outfit Gwen Stefani is wearing in a paparazzi photo. The ad network’s website doesn’t do a good job of explaining exactly how this works—so I’m just going to assume it’s magic!
8. Make It Fun to Share
Using the Meebo Bar, users can drag and drop stories into their favorite social media sites to share with friends. Instead of monotonously clicking one button, users feel that they are sharing and engaging by dragging and dropping posts.
Example: TMZ uses Meebo to share posts and can view statistics about shares all in one place.
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