It is true that when it comes to blogging content is king, but what if you have great content and no one cares? How often have you stumbled across a site and left without even checking anything out because nothing jumped at you? I know I have done it more times than i can remember because most people are very visual. People are easily distracted and if you can’t pull a reader in to your site you can forget about a strong return from those that do actually read something.

How do you go about separating yourself from the pack and creating a site that offer both strong content and an enjoyable experience for the reader? Some of these tips are common sense, but you would be surprised how quickly people drift away from the basics and need some reminding. I will try to provide you with some new ideas or tricks that might help increase page views, readership, and return visits.

1. People Love Pictures

I know it sounds silly, but people will stop to check out pictures before they read a word. Granted that on some sites this is more critical than others. My celebrity site is heavy on the images because people love to look at celebrities, but every site can use visual aids to draw people in to a post. Even if you say that your site doesn’t really lend itself to pictures you can always find something that is relative. Use images to draw people to a particular post to a critical section of a story. Use images to lead people to continue reading on another page or to take some action on your site. Images are simple to add and can pay off with great rewards.

2. Lists

This is an oldie but a goodie. People love lists! Television, magazines, and radio are full of lists they get people hooked because you need to see how a list ends and if you don’t you feel like you missed something. A list within your post makes it easy to skim over and find points of interest. It will get visitors looking through your posts since it won’t require a lot of effort to find the meat of a story. Most people are going to be somewhat lazy when it comes to getting information and if you can make it as easy as possible for them to find what they want you might find a loyal visitor.

3. Rewards/Contests

Who doesn’t like getting free stuff? This can be a great way to gain readers, but it has its dangers. Running a contest or offering some form of reward system for loyal visitors has to potential to bring in a solid influx of traffic. The dangers with this method is that once the contest ends you usually end up with an inflated RSS base since most contests require subscribing to a sites e-mail feed, your traffic will usually drop off, some people will doubt your honesty with running the contest, and unless you find sponsors it will cost you some money. When you weigh the good and bad about this method you have to do your homework and decide if a contest is for you.

By the way i will be putting a contest together on PerfectBlogging.com to officially kick off my ownership. i am just waiting for a new theme to be completed so stay tuned!!

4. Find some friends

This goes beyond simple link building and getting on some site’s friend list with 100 other random sites.  Sometimes getting your posts noticed is done by having other sites link directly to them for you.  I use “Links Of The Day” posts to build a relationship with other blogs in my niche.  They in return do the same back for me.  Remember that the Net is big enough to allow for many sites in the same niche to be successful so working with other similar sites is not a bad thing.  Find out what sites are at the top of your blog topics and reach out to them.  The worse thing that can happen is they never write you back.  Most people are very easy to deal with and can be used as a great resource.

5. Post a series

This one is easier said than done because a series post is difficult.  For those that aren’t sure what I am talking about when I say series I mean a post that is split into several different parts that would go live on different days.  the theory behind this method is that readers who enjoy Part 1 will have to come back to find out what you will say in the upcoming parts not yet published.  This is a great method, but you have to take your time.  You need to select a topic that lends itself to a multi-part series, a topic you have a broad understanding of, and a topic that you can create solid content for.  Pick the wrong topic and you have a post that will waste three days of your time and valuable site space.  Pick the right topic and you will see a nice bump in readership.

Filed under: Blogging strategies, Blogging tips