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Make Readers Care About Your Blog

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By DAN ZAK, The Washington Post

Published: November 12, 2007

For a rookie blogger, there's nothing more disheartening than seeing "0 comments" at the end of a six-day-old post.

"No one cares about your blog." It's a mantra that has been around almost as long as the blogosphere. But it doesn't have to be true.

There are several things you have to do to help make this a reality. Here are tips from bloggers who started small and steadily found an audience:

Tell stories rather than sticking solely to links or photos. "Unless you're Perez Hilton or the peeps at TMZ or the Superficial, links and photos won't keep people coming back," says Melissa Jordan, 42, of Bethesda, Md., who writes Church of the Big Sky ( www.merujo.blogspot.com). Make stories compelling and, most of all, relatable.

Create a voice for yourself. Find one and brand it, whether it's through writing about one particular topic or blogging about many topics with a singular tone (writing with concentrated snark, numbering your thoughts in groups of five, delivering posts in haiku). People are more likely to remember your blog if it offers something unique.

Make everything easy to read and access. That means keeping your visual aesthetics simple. If someone stumbles upon your blog, have flagship content at the forefront: Put information about the blog on the home page and link to high-quality posts so random viewers don't have to search for the essence of your blog.

Sift through blogrolls and create your own. Blogrolls - the list of links to other blogs that appears on someone's home page - are the simplest form of interconnectivity in the blogosphere.

"Blogrolls are invaluable," says Washington resident Kris Likey, 33, of I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Wino (www.mama likey.blogspot.com). "When you find a blog you love, click on the links on the writer's sidebar. You are bound to find at least another site or two that are interesting to you."

Widget your page. Widgets, or third-party items that can be embedded in your page via HTML code, help direct traffic to and from your site. Learn how to use RSS feeds and Google Reader. Sign up for free at Technorati (www.technorati .com) or BlogRush (www.blog rush.com), both of which provide widget codes that spread links to your posts far and wide.

Comment early and often. "Spend about twice as much time commenting on other blogs as you do writing on your own," says Janet Daly, 26, of Washington, who has blogged at www.loveisblonde .com since August 2005 and turned five daily readers into 500. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't love getting a lot of comments. It's great to get so much positive feedback, and I feel like I've made some great friends through blogging. But it also means I spend a lot more time on my computer replying to comments and commenting on other blogs in return."

Pray for a link from the big boys. "It doesn't hurt to somehow convince a really popular blog to say something nice about your blog and provide a link to it," says Dennis Chong, 34, of Washington, who wants his blog to remain anonymous. "A few times, Wonkette linked to me, and my numbers for those few days went through the roof."

Nominate yourself for awards. Leon Scott, 29, of Washington, won best humor blog in the 2006 Black Weblog Awards, which attracted a slew of readers to his site and got him a guest spot on NPR's "News and Notes" program last month.

"Definitely enter a blog contest," says Scott, whose 4-year-old site, Yeah ... I Said It ( www.listentoleon.net), gets 800 to 1,000 hits per day. "One of my readers nominated me, and it definitely helped me gain a large readership."

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