Have you ever come across a great blog and you’d like to give the blogger positive feedback or ask them a question but nowhere is their contact email available? This is the first of “5 Blog Annoyances” that I often run across. Their are many great blogs on the blogger network but the only reason I post that screenshot is that for some reason a high proportion of the blog annoyances listed below are in the blogger network. This is probably attributed to newbie bloggers who are looking for a free and easy way to start making a fortune or sharing their life with the world.
1. No Contact Email Address – It’s perfectly fine if you wish to blog anonymously and don’t expect any feedback or contact from those who find your blog. But when it’s obvious you want readers to comment or send you tips or advertise and you leave no contact information, then your blog is going nowhere fast.
2. Required Registration and no URL signature – Building a community and contact list is important for many big and small-time blogs and one of the most common ways of adding to your list is by requiring readers to register before commenting on a blog post. If it’s fast and easy than great! I’m all for it, but many times it is a slow, confusing and cumbersome process and you leave the blog before posting your comment. The other drawback is that these registration systems often times don’t allow you to enter the URL of your own blog or website which typically would highlight your name and link to your site which is great for building your own audience and simply letting other commenters know more about you.
I’ve been using a third-party commenting system on Charles & Hudson called Disqus for a couple years now and have found it much more user-friendly than the default Movable Type system. Since I’ve had success with it I’ve implemented it Wordpress which you can see on Dahlight. Disqus continues to roll-out new features and stays abreast of the always moving social media landscape and I highly recommend them for your blog.
3. No RSS or Twitter Feed – To be honest since I’ve been using Twitter I don’t check into my RSS reader as often as I should but I always want the option when visiting a blog to add their feed to my reader and any blogger should want to build their RSS subscriber base as much as they can. Use a service such as Feedburner to track your subscribers and allow them to subscribe using any time of reader. I now get a lot of my news from my various Twitter feeds which I’ve segmented using Seesmic and I love seeing blogs with Twitter accounts as I feel I can get a greater sense of what they are about beyond their regular or irregular posts.
4. No Content – In the early days C&H was guilty of basically being a link aggregator with no original content. We’d link to an interesting story inside a sentence or paragraph about it and leave it at that. Sometimes this works but in the long-run these posts had little SEO juice and didn’t create the depth I feel a blog should have to really connect with readers. Content is king so they say and original content stating your own opinions and viewpoints will always resonate with readers much more than a brief critique of others.
5. Too Many Ads – We all (almost all) want to make money blogging but throwing ads on your site when you’ve only got 1, 2 or 3 posts is an immediate turn off. Give your blog some time to gain traction and readership and make sure your first set of ads are not obtrusive or take away from your content.
These 5 blog annoyances are easily overcome and if remedied will make a world of difference to your readers.
