Profit Baron

I remember mentioning on FriendFeed that Techcrunch were no longer the #1 Technology Blog as Mashable became the #1 based on traffic stats. I’d like to point out that I still consider Techcrunch as the #1 technology blog due to the influence on the industry and various other factors including the Techmeme Leaderboard.

However this led me to think recently if another blogger is your competitor? After all you may be posting great content which in your opinion is better then your competitors yet they may have more readers, comments and attention.

As most of you are aware blogs create content which they hope will draw an attention to produce revenue in the form of advertisements. Thus, readers subscribe to these blogs as they are provided with the content they require due to the fact that it is easily available and that there are little resources involved in subscribing to blogs or multiple blogs for that matter.

Although, you may consider this a problem when there is ‘niche saturation’ something which is present in the “Make Money Online” type blogs due to several blogs being created and developed in 30 days which then went on to sell for $x,xxx+ or when there are numerous blogs which are  writing about similar topics.

Nevertheless the problem is attention. This is because each reader has a finite amount of resources, something which Paul Buchheit highlighted over on FriendFeed regarding RSS Readership which led Louis Gray amongst other users to their Google Reader statistics.

Let’s continue with the Google Reader theme. When I’m using Google Reader, I keep pressing ‘j’ (although their is a pause in between each press to see the title of the content) until I see something which grabs my attention (headline, image etc) and I will then go onto read the post where I may share or star the item. Otherwise, if I see nothing attention grabbing, I’ll keep on pressing that ‘j’ key.

Thus, the real competition isn’t other blogs but the relevancy of content to the individual.

On the other hand being relevant itself isn’t enough because, whilst the content may be relevant to my interests (which is why I subscribed to those feeds in my Google Reader anyway) the content has to be interesting to provide value.

Thus attention is the something which you require in order to gain comments, readers etc. This is why you need to take advantage of other bloggers assets specifically their attention assets by becoming friends with them rather then being their competition. After all, this provides benefits for both of you as you both have attention which sharing each others attention can build both of your brands.

Having a blog which isn’t getting any user participation is discouraging for anyone, especially if you have been running that blog for a while.  However, I have identified seven simple ways which increases blog participation.

By having blog participation it encourages new visitors to stay because, the blog looks ‘alive’ – which allows you to build a loyal readership base and this is what the actually difference between a successful blog and an unsuccessful one actually is. This is because, those blogs which are earning their owners a lot of money per month and have a high readership base are the ones which are encouraging blog participation from their readers who leave comments on posts, take polls and tell people about the blog.

Remember when you are getting someone to participate with your blog – they are spending their time in doing so. This means they’re likely to come back to see if anyone has responded to their comments, to see what the poll results were etc. This means that they are connected to your blog (and you) and thus this creates a community which encourages new users to stay!

So how can you encourage people to increase their blog participation on your blog?

#1. Ask Them To Participate

This might sound too simple but most importantly it works. By asking your readers a question and asking them to post their responses in the comments section encourages your readers to participate.

Tip: Some of your readers initially may feel shy in doing this – especially if they haven’t commented before – so you should do this regularly in your blog posts to encourage the users to participate.

#2. Be Consistent

Again this is another really simple tip but again, most importantly it works. By having a consistent writing style i.e. asking your readers a question during your post, posting on regular intervals, posting on consistently similar topics – e.g. If you’ve got a Sports blog don’t throw in random Tech news this means that users are encouraged to participate naturally due to human nature. You may not agree with me on this, but if you’re regularly posting on certain days/times, having a consistent writing style and keeping to the same topics you are encouraging people to throw in their 2 cents by doing what you are doing (although if you’ve not already done so you should adopt #1).

#3. Hold A Contest

Some of you might think this is ‘bribing’ people to participate but, I hold the opinion that it isn’t because, when people have the chance to get something for nothing its human nature to participate!

Even a $10 gift card or an advertising spot of your blog will encourage your readers to participate. In fact you can increase your readership by holding a contest (I’ll discuss this in a later post) and you can select a winner by selecting a random comment, a random rss reader or a combination etc.

Tip: If you’re going to hold a contest actually follow through with it and have a specific time frame and give the prize to the winner.

#4. Streamline The Participation Process

So many people make it hard for people to participate it is unbelievable. After all you want them to participate. Whilst you don’t want to attract spammers, you want to streamline the process of participation by taking the bare minimum of information in order to participate.

Tip: I highly recommended that you allow for ‘anonymous’ comments.  This is because some people are more willing to participate – especially if it is on something controversial – if they’re personal identity can be kept a secret.

#5. Have A Top Commentators List

This is something that I will be integrating into the new blog design and many of the blogging platforms being used have plugins available to have a Top Commentators List on your blog. This then allows them to gain a ‘reward’ for commenting (aka. participating) on your blog especially if they’re linking to their site in the process as they can get some traffic and/or SEO juice.

#6. Hold A Poll!

This is another simple way to increase blog participation but it works! By holding a poll you encourage users to interact by casting their vote (use a poll plugin for this) and it also encourages them to come back and find out the result of the poll. Consequently, the may also express their comments in the poll results if the result is what they voted for or not.

Tip: Have a specific deadline for the poll and a specific date that the results will be released. This will encourage users to remember the date and revisit the blog when the information is posted.

#7. Have Commenting Guidelines With Are Simple & Importantly Enforced

Not that you don’t want to encourage participation but you need to have a comment guideline to risk offending or loosing your readership base. Simply saying that you won’t accept abusive comments, comments that are hateful or will result in violence and spam will ensure that your readership base remains intact and facilitates its growth.

Whilst you may think that these are too simplistic and won’t work, I can assure you that they do. This is because, not only have I seen them work on other blogs, I have used the methods myself and encouraged others to do so and seen them work. As a result, this will provide you with a regular readership base to your blog and this can help you create a foundation for the blog to continue to grow – as once you make people feel part of the ‘community’ they are more likely to return to your blog and participate.

P.S. If you have used any of these methods and/or have any ways that you think can increase blog participation you can leave them in the comments below