This is a question I get asked a lot and to be honest, it’s an area where I know the answer, but have trouble practicing what I preach. Having a huge blog following hasn’t been a big goal of mine, though it probably should be, so I haven’t focused on it too much yet.

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to a blog that intrigued me today, so I clicked on the link to see the whole story. The title of the post was “My Son is Gay,” and it had a picture of an adorable child dressed up in a orange wig, pink dress, tights, a scarf, pink boots, and a zebra skin purse. Along with it my friend had posted an attention-getting quote from the blog post. Here’s the post if you want to read it and here is the picture.

Source: http://nerdyapplebottom.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/dsc_0007-e1288401371463.jpg

There are more than 6,000 comments on the post as I write this (Note: I had to edit this from 4,000 to 6,000 in the time it took me to write this post.). One of the comments was from Good Morning America asking her to contact them as soon as possible for a story.

I browsed through some of her other posts to see what her typical comments were like, wondering if this was unusually high for her and if not, how I’d never even heard of her before today. That’s a lot of comments! Two days ago, her post had 3 comments, most of her previous posts had about 3-4 as well. Wow!

This got me thinking about the question I hear so often, “How do I get more blog readers?” This is like the Fairy Tale ending in response to that question.

Here’s some of my typical advice for someone trying to get more readers to their blog.

• Write quality content.
• Write content that is intriguing, controversial, or really makes someone think.
• Write content that people want to share with others.
• Write about topics that excite YOU. (If it doesn’t excite you, don’t expect it to excite anyone else.)
• Write consistently. Every day is best, weekly is my minimum suggestion, but the key is consistency.
• Comment on other blogs.
• Link to other blogs.
• Use at least one attention-getting picture in every post.
• Use Facebook and Twitter to share links to your blog posts.
• Add your blog website to all of your social profiles.
• Make sure your website has a link to your blog (and vic versa for that matter).
• Add your blog url to your signature file.
• Use tags, keywords, custom title tags, and meta descriptions to increase the chances that your blog will get found on a google search.
• Organize your blog site so that it is easy to navigate.
• Use a theme, color scheme, and font that is easy on the eyes.
• If you must include music (not my personal recommendation), don’t play the music automatically and if you insist on doing this, make the music player very easy to find.
• Include your contact information on your blog (even if it’s just a form). You don’t really want Good Morning America to walk away from your blog because the only way to reach you is by leaving a comment, do you?

Notice that the first three were about content. You’ve probably heard the phrase “Content is King,” and it is true. Name one blog that is wildly successful that has boring and badly written content. The blog that this lady wrote took bravery. If you read the post she wrote before this, she says she is wavering on whether to write the upcoming post at all. It took stepping out and letting herself be vulnerable. She did get some negative comments, but I’d guess 99% where positive. She’ll also probably get several blogs like this one that make a commentary on her post and send their readers to her blog.

I mentioned the picture of the little boy, because it’s a really eye-catching picture and it’s part of the reason I clicked through the link that my friend posted. The phrase “My Son is Gay” is somewhat un-exciting, until you see the visual. The two together make you want to read more. You can use your own pictures, find free ones in Flickr’s Creative Commons photos, or pay a small fee for photos at sites like iStockphoto.

One thing that she also did, that I haven’t thought to include in my list of recommendations until now, is to include quoteable content. Including short quotes within your post that could stand alone and still tell the story are great for when people want to tweet, Facebeook, or blog about your post. In Public Relations, we call these sound bites. TV and radio love sound bites, because they can play just a small portion of an interview to get people interested in tuning in for the whole story later.

I’d like to challenge all of us to write a post this week that is intriguing, even brave if you will, that would make someone want to leave a comment and then share with their friends or write a blog post based on your original post, that includes soundbites short enough for Twitter, and that excites YOU! Let’s stop boring blogs today.

Leave me a comment with a link to your post. I’d love to see what you come up with!

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