Blog Visitors Can Be Like One Night Stands

Posted by Barbara Swafford on Monday, January 7th 2008

Filed in: Archives, Blogging Lessons, Increase Traffic Tags: Blogging, Blogs

You may be asking yourself, how can I meet a loyal blog visitor?

In the “personals of blogging”, your may state that you are looking for

“A visitor who will visit my blog often, who will share their thoughts, stroke my ego, and who may even be available for a long term relationship.”

Today’s Lesson

Blog visitors will “find you”, via a “dating service” called search engines, referrals, or direct traffic.

One blog “dating service” is just as good as the next.

But, blog visitors can be like one night stands.

After they “meet” your blog, they do one of five things,

1) They extract the information they are looking for, and leave, never to be seen again.

2) Because they don’t like the looks of your home page, they don’t even give you a chance.

3) They love your theme and the content that you share, and put your name in their social bookmarking “black book”.

4) Better yet, they put you on “speed dial” (and subscribe to your RSS feed)

5) Or….they may marry you (and provide a link on their site…to yours)

I’m a sucker for happy endings, so I will add……….”And they lived happily ever after……..”

In the advertising world, it’s often written that sex sells.

With blogs, content sells.

Provide consistent, quality content, and you may find many long term relationships.

Today’s Assignment

Review your blog, has it had one too many “one night stands”?

Does your blog need an extreme makeover?

Have the lines of communication with your readers taken a nose dive?

Can a visitor easily subscribe to your blog, via an RSS feed?

Tags: Blogging, Blogs

10 Comments

Ian Denny

said on January 7th, 2008

That’s an excellent analogy - and something I need to look into far more from this perspective.

I’m not sure I’ve had the consistency or added value yet in what I write.

Next task - start writing in advance an awful lot more so I can just publish.

[Reply]

Barbara

said on January 7th, 2008

Hi Ian,

As we have often been told, blogging is easy, however, you almost need to become a bit of a “tease” so readers will come back for more.

Maybe there is something to be said about the “art of the chase”.

[Reply]

CatherineL

said on January 8th, 2008

Hi Barbara - that is a great post. I loved the title. Now - that RSS feed thing is a good point. I only just got a reader myself and I do not even know if my feed button works. I will have to check!

For me - the blogs I usually never go back to are the ones that are just selling things in every post and provide little useful content. Also - the ones that are consistently rude to readers put me off.

I was reading one blog to try to discover why the blogger had banned by IP ( logged in using anonymouse), but I was getting links from his blog for some reason.

Now the blog had started off great, with some interesting posts. But, I noticed that in just about every other post the blogger bashed other bloggers for not being as great and knowledgable as he was. He even had posts that contained links to several bloggers that he didn’t like for some reason. It was unbelievable.

Then I found my reason for being banned. I had linked to someone who the blogger believed had plagiarised work from someone else!

Goodness knows how many other people the guy has banned, but I have to wonder why people like him bother blogging at all.

Now a makeover is something my blog definitely needs. I just hope I can do what is needed without accidentally deleting it!

[Reply]

Barbara

said on January 8th, 2008

Catherine,

Like you say, in your business blog….stay clear of negative people. The same holds true for blogs that contain negative content.

Granted, with a blog you can say whatever you want, as it is your opinion and…your blog, but those of us who like to try and help others, won’t waste our time reading “bashing blogs”, more than once.

If you have a question about updating your blog, send me an email and I will see if I can help you out.

[Reply]

CatherineL

said on January 9th, 2008

Thank you Barbara - I am so tired now but I will email you in the am. I find it easy to update my sites, but everytime I try to do something on Wordpress I break it.

I can use adobe photoshop - on a simple level, and what I’d really like to try to do is add a basic logo and pictures in my post without wiping out the entire blog!

[Reply]

Barbara

said on January 9th, 2008

Hi Catherine,

I will watch for your email.

In the meantime, I, too, am in the process of learning/teaching myself about adding images/photos to my blogs.

I’m still a little ways out on that, but as I learn, and feel comfortable about sharing (accurate information), I will. Although WordPress has a good article in their “codex” section, until I do it myself, and feel like I know what I’m talking about, I hesitate to write about it.

[Reply]

Sarah

said on July 9th, 2008

Just rereading some old posts here - but that, is a TOTALLY CUTE (and extremely accurate) post!
Sarahs last blog post..What the Raw Food Diet is Not.

[Reply]

Barbara Swafford

said on July 10th, 2008

Hi Sara with a “h”,

Thank you!

I forgot all about this post. It’s a good reminder as to where my head was over six months ago.

[Reply]

Dr. Nicole Sundene

said on October 1st, 2008

I’m never too late for the party here, am I?

After having a few articles hit the front page of Digg, I can resemble the cold feeling of the one night stand. And left with bad spam comments to boot! Ick…

Dr. Nicole Sundene´s last blog post..55 Healthy School Lunch Ideas

[Reply]

jan geronimo

said on May 29th, 2009

I maybe a lurker - only able to leave a comment when no one seems looking - but, nah, I’m not a one-night stand kind of blog reader. I keep coming back: to check out what’s up with this blog, to rummage through your archives, to scowl at the long line of comments, trying to understand the strange alchemy you’ve cooked up to make them come back for more of your blog servings.

I’m not a one-night stander - is there ever such a term? “,)

This post I’m afraid deserves a reply - what bloggers call bouncing off another writer’s idea. It’s so irresistible doing so. Will let you know when I have come up with something.

Splendid post - love it.

jan geronimo´s last blog post..Welcome to Writing to Exhale

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