As you all know, a blog is an online journal where you can write your thoughts, opinions about certain topics, in my case: blogging about blogging. Blogging has evolved over time and you can now see huge projects like techcrunch that are actually blogs.

What’s so great about blogging, you may ask. Well, the great thing is that you can get a response from your readers on your articles, that is called feedback. Really, everyone has an opinion and you’ll see how great you feel when someone posts a comment on your article. In blogging, connecting with your readers is essential if you want to “stand out of the crowd” and do something special. Maybe that is why in the last few years the “blogoshpere” has grown so much, it came with something special.

But how can you connect with your readers?

- Write something controversial

You will see that this helps a lot. Not only that your readers will want to comment, but you will also receive inbound links from other sites that liked what you wrote. Controversial topics are not so hard to find, just watch the news and be sure to be between the firsts who write about that. Write your own opinions about that controversial story and you will see that some blog readers will agree with you and some won’t, the deal being that almost everyone will leave a comment!

- Ask a question

This is an old trick, you could have guessed it already. After writing an article, at the end of it put a question like “What’s your opinion about that?” or “Have you ever done that?”. Blog readers love to interact with the author and they will appreciate that you like to have a close connection with them. But be careful! Don’t do this at the end of every single post, it doesn’t look good.

- Create something especially for them

This will help you a lot, really! AutoUnleashed is a successful auto blog ran by a problogger that I personally know, a blog that also treats its readers very well. Guess what the one behind AutoUnleashed made for the readers? A page where they can show their beauties, just like a hall of fame. This was a very good example of what you should do, it depends on your blog’s topic. Just be imaginative!

- Respond to your readers’ comments

Always respond to your readers’ comments! Have you ever been a blog reader? If you ask me, the answer is affirmative. Before starting this blog, I used to read tens of blogs per day and also comment on them a lot. Guess what? I always returned on a page I commented, looking for a reply. I know, this may be hard if you receive so many comments in a day that you don’t even have time to read them all. But if you want to do something good, you must “sacrifice” your time.

- Blog’s structure and “helping texts”

“Ok, I read your story, I liked it, and now I would like to leave a comment. I am not familiar with your blog interface, so I don’t really know how to do that.” Trust me, this scenario is true, I’ve seen it at some of my friends. You know, 99% of the blogs have this structure: at the end of a post is written a code that shows how many comments were written (”x Comments”). Near that you should write something like “x Comments - What do you have to say?” or “x Comments - Click here to add one”, x being the comments number of the respective article.

These being said, I wish you good luck with your blog and I’m looking forward to receiving feedback from you. I hope these blogging tips were really useful and will help you get to know your readers better and even connect with them.

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This is an entry for Blogsessive’s Group Writing Project & Contest. Supported by U Printing - Business Cards and Blog Design Studio.

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