Running a successful blog is not an easy task, and if you are just starting out, you also have a lot of work ahead of you. If your getting under 1,000 monthly page views and your bounce rate is nearing 100%, than you have to reconsider your approach to your own blog. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you also have to do a little research before you read any further.
The biggest question of all for any blogger-how can you make people want to visit your blog?
1) Your blog’s speed and design.
With the risk of sounding like an expensive car commercial, your readers want your blog to be quick with chic design. They don’t want to have to wait two minutes for the page to load because you insisted on that overly dramatic, too long to load header. Cut the fat and make sure you have only what you need on your blog page. Readers are more likely to stick around if they actually can get to your blog without their internet browser freezing.
2) Give them a reason to stick around.
Give something to your readers-whether it’s a free ebook, a promotional item that they can win if they subscribe to your newsletter, or information on how they can improve their own business or craft. This is a question you must ask yourself if you want your blog to benefit. Not everyone can make a blog that turns into a book or a movie. What the rest of us have to do is to give people reasons to return to your blog and that will increase your readership and improve your stats.
3) Be consistent with your blog posts.
One thing that does cause readers to fall by the way side is inconsistency. If you post every other week and maybe longer, you may not realize how you are losing readers by not having a regular schedule. Keep a schedule-whether it’s every Wednesday or Tuesdays and Thursdays. It may be a discipline at first, but it’s definitely worth it.
This blogging thing is a little like building your own night club. If you do it right, you’ll be having a ball every night (so to speak). If you don’t…well, you’ll be dancing with yourself.
