Being a blogger is about more than just writing killer posts every day. And knowing what aspects of your blog need work is only the first step to actually managing your blog properly. Here are some helpful ideas for making sure you are not wasting your time on just one aspect of your blog while the other areas suffer.
You might be an incredible writer who just loves to crank out post after award winning post, but being able to break down how you need to manage your time to make sure your blog is successful is key to making sure people are actually reading those posts. After all, getting exposure to your blog can be even more important than the content of your blog.
Here are 5 areas to keep an eye on when managing a blog or website.
1. Tweak your design so it’s not only search engine friendly but user friendly as well. Many times bloggers just assume that their blog looks awesome simply because no one has complained about it. But most of the time a visitor will just leave your site if the colors are repulsive rather than taking the time to let you know.
Every week you should be making small tweaks (or big ones if you need a complete overhaul) to make your site easy to navigate. Change-up your homepage now and then as well to give it a fresh feel to repeat visitors and regular readers. But don’t forget about SEO and making sure your site is easy to crawl, and that there are not errors or bad links on any of the pages.
2. Keep in touch with your readers. If your readers love to make comments on your posts make sure you take some time every day to reply to them. Even though it takes time out of your day and it may seem insignificant, making every reader feel important is essential to keep your loyal base growing. Just one reader with his own blog could even be the reason your blog gets hundreds of more visits, so you never know who is reading those posts.
If your site has a forum you should also try to be as active as possible on there too. Even something as simple as replying to emails from your readers is important so take some time out of your busy blogging schedule to answer every question (except all that spam of course).
3. Network with other bloggers in your niche. This is one of the most important things you can do. By reaching out to other bloggers it not only helps to keep you sharp and to stay on topic, but it also helps to build relationships and even get a few backlinks from other blogs as well.
But you should never have the attitude that you just want to get something from other bloggers. Ask them if you can publish a guest post for them or even ask to do an interview. Always offer to give something first and you never know what they may offer in return. You can start doing this by leaving helpful comments on other blogs for an extended period of time before reaching out to the owner of the blog.
4. Read other fresh resources for information. It can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking you know it all in your niche, but it’s important to stay informed of the latest news and events surrounding your blogging topics.
You can do this by searching your keywords on Twitter, checking out Yahoo Answers, reading other blogs, and looking for any news stories about your niche. This will help to keep you sharp, and your readers will appreciate getting new and fresh content every week. If a blog is just recycling old news it is unlikely that serious readers will want to come back very often for more of the same.
5. Now write some great blog posts. I saved the most obvious point for last because many bloggers only think about writing and they leave off the other 4 points of time management. You should put everything you have into each post. You can tell when you wrote an article half-heartedly, so don’t be tempted to publish anything you are not proud of. A blogger who is confident will write blog posts that exude that confidence and it’s a lot easier to read than just fluff.
Each of these steps should be done each day or each week, depending on how often you publish content. Simply divide up your day into these 5 areas, and make sure you don’t skimp out on any of them. There are other areas you can spend time on as well, but these are some that have worked well for me and I hope they work well for you too.