Blogging tips to make you a better blogger

Yes, I’m back.

Its been a long time in coming, but I decided enough was enough and that I had to give this blog some attention now. I’d say that this is one of the most difficult things for bloggers to do if they stray off schedule - making that first post that announces their return. It has to be perfect and anything less than that will remain as a draft for eternity until they wake up to face reality as I have now.

I’m sure many of you would have experienced this already, or will experience it in future - so here are a few tips that will help you out of such a situation.

• If its a planned vacation, start ahead by reducing your posting frequency so that your readers don’t feel an abrupt void. If you normally post everyday, reduce your posting to a few days a week during the first few weeks and reduce it further to once a week or so in the following weeks. Your readers are less likely to notice your absence if your posting frequency is low.
• Follow the golden rule of stocking up some posts as drafts so you can publish them during the course of your vacation - the more the better.
• You could also adopt the tried and tested rule and rope in some guest bloggers to post for you if your stock of posts dry up. On one hand, it will keep your blog updated with fresh content and on the other hand, it will give your readers more variety.

Of course, the tips that I mention above are only if you’re going on a planned vacation. If you’re forced to go on an unplanned vacation like I was, you’ll just have to make do by publishing that perfect return post. Here’s how.

• Start by reading up on the blogs you used to frequent before you went on vacation - it helps to give you a general idea of anything new that’s happening in the Blogosphere.
• Read some of your older posts so that you get into that rhythm you’ve been missing for so long - this post was an inspiration that I had after I read a couple of my older posts, so you can be sure it works!
• There is no such thing as a perfect post, so whenever you get an idea, keep at it and you will find that the idea develops into a post almost as if by magic - like this one has.

My recent post on 12 Wordpress Editors that you can choose over the default WYSIWYG editor was one of the posts that took me the longest to write, simply because it involved quite a bit of research. I would have to thank Monika for recommending Windows Live Writer to me, that got me wondering if there were other editors too - which culminated in the post. It all began with Maki submitting the post to Sphinn. The rest, as they say, is history.

How it Happened

When the post went live, it was barely noticed - I was quite surprised that it didn’t elicit a single comment even from my “Active Readers”. Admittedly, I was disappointed since the post had taken the longest time and most effort to come up with and to see it looking forlorn made me wonder if the post was not written effectively enough. I was tempted to submit the post to StumbleUpon, note that I’m fairly new to StumbleUpon and have only stumbled a modest number of sites. In keeping with that, my stumble brought in only a trickle of visitors that didn’t help much in increasing the activity.

I almost let it go the next day and was brain-storming for my next post when I noticed a link in my Dashboard from Sphinn. I was pleasantly surprised since trying out Sphinn was something I had been putting on the backburner for quite sometime now. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw not one, but ten Sphinns for the same post I had almost given up on - almost. I needed no further encouragement to sign up and thank those who had Sphunn the story, and especially to Maki, who had submitted it. How he came across the post is beyond me, I do hope he’s reading this post from his RSS reader!

What followed is what Steven describes as a Domino Effect of Traffic. He explains how second tier social media sites like DZone, CSS Globe and Sphinn can be used as stepping stones for succeeding with bigger sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumbleupon. In my case, what happened was, when Maki submitted the post to Sphinn, it brought along a few targeted visitors who also happened to have a power profile on StumbleUpon. Thus, when members from Sphinn found the post useful, they Sphunn it and Stumbled it. This set the domino effect into motion.

When the post hit the front page of Sphinn, it brought in a handful of unique visitors, some of who also Stumbled the post, which eventually resulted in a huge traffic from StumbleUpon - the post is still listed on the StumbleUpon Buzz page.

Digg killed my traffic

After the first day of traffic from StumbleUpon, I decided to experiment with a Digg button to encourage visitors to Digg the post and in turn, increase the traffic further. Without a lot of fan-fare, I stuck a Digg button to the post and sat back, expecting visitors from Digg to kill my server. What happened in reality though, both surprised and intrigued me - the traffic from StumbleUpon started drying up! Visitors from StumbleUpon were no longer thumbing up the post which meant that the rate at which newer visitors would come, was reduced.

I wondered if it was because the StumbleUpon effect wasn’t big enough and it was dying out after a day in a natural process. Since there wasn’t a lot of traffic anymore, I also removed the Digg button since the post had only received a grand total of 4 Diggs. I let it stay this way for a while and was pleasantly surprised to find that the post started attracting traffic again, the very same day! I attributed this to the wide vagaries of the Blogosphere and reckoned that it was just a one-off incident.

A few hours before removing the Digg button, I’d sent a few shouts to my friends on Digg to which Karen and Edgewhere kindly obliged, bringing the total to 6 Diggs. Karen also left a nice comment saying that she’d Dugg the article. On a whim, I put the Digg button back and waited yet again for the “dreaded” Digg effect - in vain. Instead, my StumbleUpon traffic began to dwindle. It didn’t take me long to put one slump in traffic and another slump in traffic together to realize that the Digg button was actually what was killing my traffic.

What could have happened was, when the visitors from StumbleUpon arrived, they saw a prominent Digg button displaying a total of 6 Diggs for the article, which is rather abysmal by any standards, effectively, impressing upon them that this was an article that hadn’t received many votes and may not be of interest to them. Thus, they would just Stumble away. This is purely hypothetical of course, but it seems to best explain the “W” in the graph. So much for the Digg effect. What you could do better, after learning from my experience of losing four days of traffic could be to use a Digg It! button that doesn’t show the Digg count, until it is up to a respectable number. I had to learn the hard way that perception is very much the reality - hopefully you’ve had it easy.

Recipe for Success

1. Do a bit of market research and determine what other people in your niche are looking for. I addressed a concern that a lot of people had - Monika was the first to suggest it to me, I soon realized that there were a few other bloggers who were also using third-party editors and many more who weren’t aware of it, like me. This created the perfect situation for the post.
2. Try to make the list as comprehensive as possible. Most people are busy and would like to see concise descriptions of all available options. Of course, it may not be possible to cover them all, but if you account for the majority, it will certainly help. A list with many items seems to do the best with Social Media - its just too irresistible to see all the resources on one page and will tempt them to bookmark/promote it.
3. Social Media helps a lot in bringing in traffic - its one medium that doesn’t distinguish between an established blog and a newer one. Bring it on your side by displaying appropriate buttons prominently that entice readers to click. Hiding the Digg/Del.icio.us count initially, until it reaches a respectable number seems to help as seen from my experience.
4. Use second tier social media sites effectively. Submit your post to as many of the smaller sites as you can at the same time - Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon all factor in the time that an article becomes popular.
5. Its natural that a percentage of readers would spill over and click through to other posts on your blog - help them find your best articles by listing them right below the post. The articles listed just under my post marked as “You may also like reading” which are effectively from the Related Posts plugin, received the most hits. Unfortunately for me, not all of them were my best ones. I’m sure I would have got a better response had I placed similar articles that are also my best ones. Don’t rely on the plugin to do it for you - hand-pick them yourself for the best results.
6. Don’t kill the effect by displaying ads that are more prominent than the article itself - it reflects badly on the blog and personally, I’d just move on. Although you may be tempted to make a quick buck, hold onto the temptation and you are sure to reap better benefits later.
7. If you think your post is really good and that it could use just the slightest bit of promotion, you could ask your closest friends to help you out. But be careful not to spam them with posts everyday - that just reduces your chances when you’ve really got a best-selling post. It really is a no-brainer, but be sure to return the favour if they need some help too.
8. Remember to thank those who promote your article by sending a mail or adding them as a friend or anything else that you’re comfortable doing - so long as they know you appreciate their gesture.

The Result

The post has already got almost five times the traffic that the whole blog got in the past month. More importantly, the subscriber count has doubled in as many days and I’m still counting. (If you were one of the people who Stumbled/Bookmarked on Del.icio.us/Sphunn the post and are reading this one by RSS, this is to say - thank you!)

I’d recently participated in both Monika’s and Courtney Tuttle’s group writing projects with my post on how to upgrade your theme to use Wordpress 2.3’s tagging features. As always, the projects were received well and attracted quite a few entries. Today being the last day to submit the picks, I wanted to share my favourites with you.

• Sarah, who has gained considerable experience in her stint of 3 months in the Blogosphere, shares her tips on how to attract comments on your blog. The mere fact that this post has attracted over 40 comments as of writing this, is testimony to the fact that these are tips you don’t want to miss.
• HackWordpress.com is very good at providing quick hacks to improve your blogging experience if you are a Wordpress user. They’d submitted their article on how to add edit buttons to wordpress themes and in keeping with their reputation, its a well-written article. I had followed the same steps earlier for my own theme and I’m sure its something I don’t want to do without.
• Although this one’s a bit off-topic, it makes for some very good reading and since we all go on vacation at some point of time, I’m sure you could use a few tips on planning your vacation online.

In appreciation to all those who participated, here’s the full list:

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