There is an ever growing community of blogs in big and small niches out there. Some are better than others, and you can be to. In this list I have gone through some of my fellow bloggers blogs and sorted out what they do to be visible to others, set them apart and keep recurring visitors to their blog.
1. About you page
The about you page is often neglected by a lot of bloggers, me included. This is the page that most people will go through if they are first visitors, they want to get to know you and what you are into to see if you are a match to them at some level. You should describe what you like to do and what your interests are. Also include a short 160 character description from this page on your front page with a link to your about page so people see it straight away.
(Image from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1189107)
2. Put a email newsletter signup form on your sidebar
Make it easy for people to subscribe to your newsletter. The sidebar is ideal to this, and you can easily get for example Aweber to get you a short script to put in the sidebar with a recommendation to subscribe to your newsletter. Also explain what people will get when they subscribe and why they should. They would mostly want to get updates from your blog and special content only sent to subscribers so they don’t have to check in on your site all day long, but rather check their mail when you post something new.
3. Put sharing links on your blog
You have to use the visitors as a way of spreading your content. If you visit WordPress’s plugin directory you could search for social media, then you will find ways to include sharing buttons to facebook, twitter, google+ and other social networks so people easily can share the content to the network they are a part of. Include this in the top and bottom of your posts to help people to share it before or after they have read your post.
4. Include a subscription to your newsletter in the comment section
If you look at some of the top bloggers in the make money/internet marketing niches you will find that they include a request of the commenter’s to check a checkbox that will subscribe them to their newsletter and also follow ups on the further commenting on the blog post. This way more people will subscribe.
5. Put up a resource page in your navigation
People in your niche are most likely out to get more information, programs and get hold of other resources that could help them or otherwise give them a nudge forward. The resource page should contain this information and they will most likely come back if the resources you provide help them in one or another way.
6. Reward your top commenter’s
You would want people to comment on your posts, and you should include an open ending to your posts, leaving it up to the visitors to continue the discussion. One way you can improve your comments on posts is to reward the top commenter’s to receive a place in a top list in your sidebar so they will have an incentive to comment on posts to get “fame”.
7. List your most popular posts
In WordPress you can get a plugin to show the most popular/most read posts of your blog. This means the visitors value this posts and others might to. So include this in a place where people see it and can easily read those posts.
8. Be easy to contact
After you have blogged for a while people will want to reach you for more information or to give you tips or opinions on your blog or content. So be easy to reach on a email account you dedicate to your blog, show them that you actively read and comment on the comments in your posts, provide a way for people to reach you through social media and any other place you may be reachable. Remember to get back to people with an note to show them you have read what they had to say and answer any questions. This will make them raving fans.
9. Create your social media profiles according to your blog
Go on to create social profiles on all the places you can think of, make them auto update the content from your blog and setup the profile according to your blog. Use the same colors, pictures, logo and edit it so they are familiar with you and your blog when they see you in other media.
(Image from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1213694)
10. Turn your best posts from the past into videos
Go through your blog and any statistics you have to sort out ten of your best posts. Update them if you need to and turn them into a video. Put the videos on all possible video sharing sites and link the description back to your blog. And put the videos in the blog as well to present the content in a new way. Check out Camtasia for doing this, it enables you to record your microphone and an PowerPoint presentation so it’s easy to make videos.
11. Turn your best posts into new updated podcast
As with number ten on this list, you should start a podcast with your blog. Then you reach out to people that want your content but are on different medias, like iPods, iphones, ipads and iTunes users. They also don’t need to read all your content and can listen to it instead.
12. Create an eBook about what you teach in the blog
You already have a list of your ten best posts from the previous list items. This is the content people want the most. You should go through the topics and go even deeper into the fields of those posts. Research and provide more value. Turn it all into an eBook to either sell on your blog or include it as an incentive to subscribe to your list.
13. Get a customized blog theme
All the big bloggers recommend this and most of them have specialized themes, some based on existing themes but they got their personal touch. This is a part of branding that you should use. Think of yourself, why do you like Pepsi or Coca Cola the best? It’s branding and sometimes taste, but you indentify with the brand and want to show people what you are into. This applies to blogs as well.
14. Maximize your Adsense earnings with more ads and Google custom search
If you use Adsense as your primary source of monetizing on your blog, you should maximize the potential earnings. Go through their guidelines for how many ads you can place on you blog and do that. You can also include a customized search box that you can put on your site. This way people can search your site with the power of Google, and you get any earnings that is generated through that specialized search.
(Image from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1082770)
15. Be easy to subscribe through RSS
Show a big button of the RSS logo. Make people know that your blog have an RSS feed and put it a few places on your site. People are used to using RSS readers now and you should help them in including your site in their reader.
16. Use fresh sparkling images in your posts
After you have written a post, go through the content you have and find some places that you can include pictures that gives some of your content more focus. There are a lot of places on the web to find free images, like sxc.hu, that you can use on your blog with accordingly presented accreditations. This will make your content look more a live and not be as boring as long posts can be.
(Image from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1221387)
17. Encourage people to submit guest posts
People also want to get up in the blogging field. A great way to get seen is to guest post on other blogs in the same niche. You can also ask other bloggers to guest post at them to capture some more readers. You should also encourage people to guest post at your blog. This way you don’t have to write as much blog posts as you used to and your readers will find other interesting people in the community to follow and get other perspectives from.
18. Mind map your way out of writers block
If you often get writers block this is a golden nugget. Take a piece of paper in front of you, write down you niche or blog name in the middle. Write every category you think people will be interested in around the middle, then write three to five things that each of this interests could be broken down to. Then you already have a big map of subjects you could write about in the future, do this regularly and you won’t be facing writers block.
19. Be active on other blogs in your community
Go to Google and search for your blogs niche. On the left side you will find several options to specialize your search. Click on the blogs link and then the Google search results will only show blogs in your niche. Go through the blogs and read some of the posts you find there, supplement the posts with good information in the comments that will be valuable to readers of the posts. When you comment you get a link to your own blog and will get readers that find your valuable comments.
20. Share this post with your readers
The final one is to share this posts with other bloggers, help them by giving them a link to this post, so they also will build stronger, better, more valuable blogs that benefit you in the end since they got the information from you and your niche will be better overall!