In addition to making money, most bloggers want two things.

1. Traffic



2. Comments

Unfortunately, both depend on the actions of others, and those “others” are often fellow bloggers.

Today’s Lesson

When bloggers make the rounds to other blogs, they’re mentally asking themselves questions and/or making choices. For example,

1. Do I have time to read this post in its entirety? Or will I skim it?
2. Does it appear the blog author wants my opinion?
3. If so, did they ask for it? Or is it implied?
4. If I leave a comment, will it add value to the post?
5. Is this post worthy of being promoted on my favorite social media site?

As blog authors, we can help make those decisions easier.

Such as,

1. Are we asking for comments?

Did we end our post with a question? Or does our post appear so “complete”, it sends a subliminal message comments aren’t welcome?

2. How easy is it for others to leave a comment?

Does the commenter have to register or jump through hoops to pass the security features of our blog? Or have we made the process of commenting as simple as possible?

3. How easy have we made it for other bloggers to promote our work?

Are we including buttons which take our visitors directly to Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon? Or do we expect them to “figure it out” on their own time?

4. Is our post worthy of being shared?

Does is hold value others can benefit from? Is it grammatically correct and void of typos? Are the facts correct?

5. If a reader lands on our home page (www.ourblog.com) do they have to click again to read the full post?

Are we using excerpts and the “continue reading/more” feature? If so, does this feature make it easier for our visitors to read our blog posts?

6. If we’re showing a post in its entirety on our homepage and the reader does NOT click through to the post, does our homepage show the Retweet button or an application which will make it EASY for someone to share our article?

Or does sharing our post require additional work on our readers part?

7. Are we asking others to promote our posts on their favorite social media site?

Or are we assuming our visitors are mind readers?

Truth be told, we can’t/shouldn’t expect our visitors to read, comment on, AND promote our blog posts each time we publish something new.

Just like with us, their time is limited.

If we’re lucky, they’ll do one; comment OR promote.

But usually not both.

Today’s Assignment

If you could only pick one, what would it be?

To receive comments?

To have your post promoted on a social media site?

I’d love to hear why you picked what you did.

P.S. This post was inspired by what social media consultant Vered, shared in her comment on the Call Me A Hypocrite post:

…When time is short, I promote posts that I like on social media…

Thank you Vered.