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How To Make Your Blog Sticky

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One of the areas I feel most blogs fail at, is the concept of community. I know that’s an odd statement, as blogs are all about conversation, but most blogs seem to entirely miss the point of the “on site” community.

Sure you link to other blogs, and talk to other bloggers in your niche, sure you have comments enabled — in fact, in terms of distributed community blogs work really, really well. In terms of on site community however, they fail miserably for the most part. And it’s largely down to the blogger himself.

There are a few practical things you can do to foster your on site community, and trust me when I say that allthough the people that make up your community are mostly worthless in terms of monetization, they can be a core part of your blogs success. And with them, you can create something that goes way beyond the “one guy talking” approach many blogs take.

10 Ways to Make Your Blog Sticky

Here’s my list of top 10 things you can do to foster a sense of community among your readers.

1. Design for Repeat Visits

Forget all those stupid bells and whistles, useless navigation and other such “novelties”. When you design your blog, bear in mind that you want people to visit your site several times a week, or maybe several times a day. Use lots of white space, easy color schemes, large(ish) text and clear headlines and links.

Hint: Stupid mapping gimmicks are not sticky, they’re annoying.

2. Keep Advertising Minimal for Repeats

I wrote about time sensitive adsense last week. Try and extend the idea to showing less ads for logged in users — these people are NOT the ones that will click your ads, so make life easy for them.

3. Provide a Recent Posts List

And don’t just provide it, promote it! The recent posts list on Performancing is one of the most important links on the site. It allows users to track ongoing conversations much like you would in a forum. This is KEY to getting people to converse on your site. The idea of “comments” is good, but the idea of “conversations” is better, and by facilitating that, a post you publish today, could still be active weeks from now.

Often the value of our blogs is not in the original post, it’s in the conversation.

4. Answer Your Comments!

It’s an astonishing thing to have to say, but man, the amount of times i’ve commented on a blog, only to go back (i tag my off-site conversations as replies) and find that the author hasn’t even bothered to answer me, or aknowledge my comment in any way, is staggering. If you want people to talk to each other on your blog, you need to be part of the conversation.

5. Use the Right Language

It’s a small thing, but an important one I feel. Instead of talking about I, talk about We. Instead of talking about me, and you, talk about US. With me?

You need to give your readers a sense of ownership.

6. Post Frequently

And not just frequently, set a pattern and maintain it. If you plan on posting a few times a day, then post at similar times every day. It helps readers get a sense of momentum from your site, and gives them an indication of how often they should be returning or checking their RSS.

7. Private Message System

Either put in a private message system on your blog, to allow members to communicate amongst themselves, or make a link to a form to email other members without giving away their email addresses.

8. Allow Member Posts

Either on a pre moderated acceptance basis such as we do at Performancing or by inviting members to email you their news — give credit for submissions, and encourage those submissions.

9. Include Members in Decisions

And no, i don’t mean that you need to make site decisions via committee, I often say in these types of posts that i’ll most likely do my own thing anyway, but would appreciate some input on the subject. Including members in decisions about the site again fosters a sense of both community and ownership.

10. Don Neglect the Distributed Community

Dont ignore other blogs in your niche. It’s a mindset thing, but by not viewing similarly themed blogs as competition, but as friends, and linking to them generously, you’ll find it easier to keep your own members happy. Chances are they visit other blogs in your niche anyway, make it easy for them.

Any More Ideas for Making Blogs Sticky?

I’ve only listed 10 things there, there are undoubtably more ways in which we can foster a sense of community amongs our readers. Do tell us your thoughts in general, and specifically, what works for you.

With Navigation, Less Is More

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The state of navigational links on blogs is getting out of hand. If you’re blog’s purpose is to make money, why do we insist on distracting our readers with hundreds of useless links?

Your blog should guide your reader to where she wants to go, or to allow her to discover where she wants to go. By placing huge lists of links in side navigation, or cramming the bottom of your posts with social bookmarking javascript links, you only make it harder for her complete her task.

Make Choices Simple

Give a child 2 things, and ask them to choose one. Now give them 5 things, and do the same. Now try it with 7. What generally happens, and i speak from experience, is the child gets confused by the choices, and quite often actually upset by not being able to choose.

Hopefully your readers are a bit more sophisticated than my 11mt old, but you see my point right? This works with anything: It’s easier to make a choice, if there are fewer items to choose from.

The Problem with Blogs

With blogs, i think there are two major problems:

  1. Template designers and blog systems have too many features — too busy playing catch up with competitors to realize their design choices are stupid.
  2. Bloggers get to make those choices. Im not saying bloggers per se are stupid, what im getting at, is the fact that faced with a lot of choices, an easy choice to make, is all of them!

Bloggers can be forgiven for not being design guru’s, im not one, and i doubt you are either. But template “designers” need to take a long hard look at design 101 and start producing templates that actually help readers, not overload bloggers with choices.

Some Things are Just Stupid

Let’s assume your blog’s purpose, or at least one of them, is to make you money. So we’re not talking about you livejournalers out there, or little jimmy’s cat blog, we’re talking about a website where every little decision you take can change the income you derive from that site.

Here’s some of the things i think in the above scenario are just plain stupid:

1. Blogrolls

Problem: People are getting used to blogs, sure, but they still expect a sidebar to be full of category navigation and contact details. Why the hell would a list of your favorite sites be a good candidate for that prime piece of real estate?

Solution: Put one link in your side navigation to a dedicated page of your favorite resources — hint: Make it a really great list of links, and it will add real value and attract links all by itself.

2. Archives

Problem: Again we find something utterly useless to most people taking up prime space on your blog and distracting/confusing your readers. This may have been all well and good 4yrs ago, before you started to try and make money on your blog, but now it’s just a waste of good space.

Solution: Create an archive page, if you must. Place one link to it from your side navigation. Use Categories as prime side navigation instead, people get it, and it’s not confusing.

3. Links at Bottom of Posts

Problem: It’s that whole “going overboard” thing again. There just isnt any need for a dozen different links at the bottom of every page. Contrary to what you might think, they are not helpful to most readers.

Solution: Decide what you do and don’t need. This depends largely on your audience. At performancing we think most of our readers are smart enough to be able to quickly copy a url and paste it into their email client, so no “tell a friend” for us. We also think many will have a bookmarklet or browser extension that helps them use things like del.icio.us – no need for one of those either then. You see my point right?

Try and chop that list of links down as much as possible.

4. Widgets and Gizmos

Problem: “Web2.0” is all very fun, but let’s face it, most of it is a useless bunch of drivel — putting these silly little mapping widgets, or social gizmos on a site that’s purpose is to make money is just moronic. Save that shit for personal sites, not businesses.

Solution: Realize that you don’t have to jump on every silly trend Steve Rubel posts about and that you actually have an opportunity here to really make something to be proud of. Make it simple, make it clean, and above all, make it pay!

Rant Over

Phew… as you can tell, that one’s been a long time coming heh! I do hope it makes some sense though, because really, the state of blog navigation is atrocious on the whole, and if making money is your goal, you really do need to avoid “feature creep” in navigation.

10 Business Models for Bloggers

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Whether you’re blogging full or part-time, if you expect to make money, you need to have a clear business model. It’s no good just posting and expecting the cheques to roll in, you need to plan for how that cash will start flowing.

There’s a vast array of different business models out there that center around a blog. I want to look at what I see as the top 10 though, and get your thoughts on those, aswell as ones i’ve left out.

Here’s the top 10 business models i see out there currenty, in a very rough order of popularity.

1. Advertising

There are, as you might well imagine, several sub-sets to the advertising based business model. As a general revenue model though, it’s clearly #1 for bloggers — Adsense has made it possible for even the most low-traffic, uncommercial blog to make some money, but professional bloggers have taken contextual advertising to new heights with seriously targeted blogs, and well integrated ads.

There are a few types of advertising model though, it’s not all Adsense you know!

  • CPM based banner ads for broader, higher trafficked blogs
  • Niche advertising. Meaning pinpoint precision targeting and negotiated deals with ecom’s in that area
  • Sponsorship. Where you target a particular sector, and have a company “sponsor” your blog — not quite the same as regular advertising, as it’s very much a 2-way endorsement type of affair.

2. Affiliate Marketing

This could almost have been a subset of advertising, but really, done correctly it’s marketing not advertising. A typical affilite marketing based blog will be either:

  • A niche product / product group blog
  • A niche audience blog (no, not quite the same as above)

And will generate sales by sending traffic to selected merchants via in-post text links, banners and special offers. This seems to work great in product blogs, and if you combine it with some more regular advertising, you can start spreading your risk — one really good thing about affiliate marketing, is that if you get sick of the merchant, you can always just swap your links out for another, and it’s not uncommon to make bespoke deals with merchants in your niche.

3. Consultancy

Experts in their fields that provide consultancy, full time or outside of regular jobs can make a pretty good salary by blogging on their areas of expertise. It’s particularly common among PR companies themselves, marketing agencies and web based service providers such as Search marketing and business blog consulting.

4. PR Vehicle

This type of business model is very similar to #3 — Usually it compliments and existing model. Evangelizing your company or products on a blog can create a great way for customers, potential customers, other bloggers and press to interact with your company and products — thus selling more of them!

5. Lead Generation

Lead generation blogs are very much like consultancy blogs, in that their authors blog on areas of expertise, positioning themselves as experts in their field. The main difference is simply the end result. Whereas a consultancy blog will also “generate leads” for their consultancy offerings, a lead generation blog may very well take information sent to them and forward it to a company they have a standing deal with for completion, or perhaps nework for someone that can fill the request.

So, that was the top 5. The remaining 5 models are far less accurate in their ordering. Im really uncertain about a couple of them, and would welcome some feedback!

6. Product Sale

Possibly this one could belong further up the list, im not sure it does though. Thing is, it should do, as its a very effective model from what i can gather.

Focus on one product, or a small family of products and be THE site to go to for information on those products — Naturally, your blog will sell those products, either directly or indirectly using affiliate marketing or regular ads.

7. Donation

Probably the poorest excuse for a business model in the list in my opinion. I just can’t find anything to like about relying on the good will of readers for your income.

8. Subscription

If you publish an “expert blog”, one way to monetize it is to not publish all of your information. Make some of it, perhaps more detailed blog posts/reports or sections of the site by subscription only. You don’t see this a great deal, but it can be pretty effective in some areas.

9. Syndication

Syndication as a business model? Sure, works kinda like the consultancy or lead generation gigs. It’s not so common, but people do write specifically to get published in more traditional media, and on larger websites.

10. Ecommerce

This one, i have never spotted in the wild. Not yet anyway, because im 100% sure they exist! If you think about it, it makes some sense — im not talking about bolting a blog onto a shopping cart, im taking about turning a blog into a shopping cart.

It’s something i would personally love to expore more, so if anyone can add information to this entry, please do.

The way i see it is this: If blogs are conversation, and if links are speach, why the hell aren’t we talking about buying? Right there, in the blog — not pointing to a product page, posting about a product and writing your pitch as a blog post.

UPDATE: Thanks to Andy for reminding me about Woot! — not sure how i could have missed that, but i did, and it is an ecom blog imo…

Any More?

Come on, we all know i left out a whole stack there. What other business blog business models can we add to the list?

Co-blogging, Finding Your Blog Buddy

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Blogging need not be a lonely profession. Perhaps you would get more fulfilment, and produce a better blog, if you found a writing partner?

An immediate benefit to finding a blogging partner, as I mentioned in Top 10 Blog Disasters and How To Deal With Them, is if you need to be away from blogging for any length of time the blog still gets updated. There are more benefits though

  • Fresh ideas – to keep a blog going for any length of time you can’t run out of ideas. Another brain to bounce off might be just the thing you need to get creative. Brainstorming is more effective and more fun with someone else!
  • Proof reading – it’s easy to miss your own mistakes, having someone else read your content and understand it is very valuable. Yes your readers would pull you up but it’s nicer to catch mistakes early and fix them before too many people see.
  • Different perspective and experience – a different background means a different understanding, new ways of looking at things, different stories to tell, a different world-view. These all add colour, depth and texture.
  • Variety of tone of voice – one way of saying things could get monotonous so another voice on your blog can spice up the conversation a little.
  • Sounding board – if you are in any doubt or concerned about something you have someone on hand who understands the work and can offer advice.
  • Stabilising influence – if you are prone to wacky ideas, thinking of packing it all in and going travelling, or other spur of the moment craziness your writing partner can help settle you back into reality.
  • Motivator – sometimes we have trouble getting started, on occasion a bad piece of feedback really upsets us, a blogging buddy can help you get back into the flow and push us to achieve greater things.
  • Second opinion – we don’t always get things right first time.
  • Shared responsibility – sometimes a job is easier when you share it with someone else.
  • Research workload halved – if you are going to seriously cover a niche there is always lots of research to do. Everything from keeping up with the news to detailed investigation. We can’t all know everything that is going on in our niche or have the depth of knowledge on every topic required. With someone else on hand you can split the subject matter between you.
  • Double the expertise – related to the research point above but once you have done your reading one or the other of you will be able to answer any questions thrown your way .. hopefully!
  • Someone to celebrate or moan with – sometimes we just need an insider who understands and can share in the joys and lows. Misery loves company and champagne tastes better when shared.
  • ..

I am sure you could think of more.

The key is the partnership is mutually beneficial. You don’t necessarily have to write for the same blog but I think that model has the best chance of working.

Finding your Blog Buddy

So the first task is where to look. Second is what to look for. The two are very closely related. Your writing partner needs to be

  • Knowledgeable
  • Reliable
  • Honest
  • Flexible
  • Good writer
  • Excellent communicator
  • Compatible

I was once given the advice to not go into business with friends or family. I find it very difficult to not become friends with people I work with but it might well be good advice, after all money can cause arguments.

You might find someone who comments on your blog a good fit. Perhaps there is another blogger in your niche. There could be just the right person on a forum you visit. These are good places simply because you get to see samples of their writing.

Trial period

Kind of like dating, some people dive straight into marriage, others date for a long time or have a long engagement. I guess there are promiscuous bloggers too, heh. A trial period might be a good idea if you find someone who is OK with it. There is bound to be a settling in period. We all have grumpy days (apart from me, I am a complete angel) so try to give each other a bit of slack.

Start as you mean to go on

A good idea would be to set out from the start ground rules and stick to them. How will you split the rewards and how much work do you expect off each other. In your space what constitutes a good post? Will you have word count quotas, number of posts, quality, traffic counts, revenue?

Make a plan and set goals. You don’t necessarily need to achieve each goal you set but do make them semi-realistic. The main point is to align the way you are heading so you are both aiming for the same target. Otherwise one of you might want to be famous and the other be a adsense kingpin. Review your progress regularly and celebrate your achievements.

How about you?

Do you blog alone, do you have a partner or even a team? Does it work or is it a nightmare. Please tell us about your experience..

Finding The Time To Blog

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I must admit, I haven’t got this time management concept completely cracked. When I am writing time seems to warp, I appear to go from 10am to 9pm without blinking. Because of this affliction I have been trying to find some ways to make my use of time more efficient, here is what I have managed to come up with so far.

My first job in the morning is spent catching up. Over night I will have a few dozen emails, hundreds of posts to read in my feed reader, advertising accounts, revenue stats, etc etc. This can take anything from an hour to two hours. Next if I haven’t been inspired already by what I have read then I need to think up ideas for post topics. Nick has already corrected us that too much RSS reading can be self-defeating so I am trying to moderate how much feed reading I do, or at least stick to the quality stuff.

I like to post a couple of in-depth posts here, between a thousand and two thousand words each. The reviews took half a day each because they were so labor and research intensive but I can do about a thousand words an hour on average. You can see that doesn’t leave much time for the rest of my commitments. As they say, time is money, I would say with professional blogging it is almost literally true!

My tips can basically be narrowed down to three steps:

1. Prioritise

I’m sure you will agree I need to gain control and be more efficient. First I need to drop any unnecessary tasks. Out go the off-topic and fun blogs from my main OPML (can read those at the weekend). My adsense account doesn’t grow so quickly I need to check every ten minutes.

A good tip from time management experts is to keep track of your daily activity in a log, you will soon see where your time is going.

Don’t give up everything that gives you pleasure, reading the Dilbert cartoon isn’t going to break your time bank! You just need to judge what you do based on

  1. Essential
  2. Non-essential but Beneficial
  3. Waste-of-time

Be strict with each activity and place it into one of those three containers and act on the feedback it provides you with.

2. Delegate

Are there jobs that you are doing that do not make sense for you to do? There might be tasks that take a lot of time that are better or more cheaply done by others. Many people pay for their content to be written and place their own role as editor. If you are better at selection and improving rather than creating from scratch you ought to consider it. I have delegated looking after admin, such as taxes and bills to my wife. It also means she can be paid a wage so between us we pay less income taxes – double benefit!

If you have a leaky roof then it probably needs looking at right away but rather than fix it yourself you would be better paying an expert, you might find their hourly rate works out less than yours and can do a better job! I often say “if a job is worth doing it is worth paying for” ;O)

3. Negotiate

Make sure everyone knows when you are working and that you need to work. Negotiate with your family, friends and others who call on your time. Yes you need quality time with people (otherwise you will just go quietly mad) but they can not barge in and interrupt any time the mood takes them.

People tend to see their own needs as important or urgent. Find out if something is absolutely necessarily got to be done when they say it has. Amazing how often something they need to discuss right away really doesn’t, often the task is not even necessary.

Do you need to be the one who does the household chores? Would it hurt for them to be put off and scheduled to a later date?

Summary

Using these techniques I am just about coping but my situation is far from ideal and only likely to get more demanding. You can tell I am by no means an expert time manager so please give me the benefit of your experience, how do you manage your time?