3 Important Things That New Bloggers Neglect

Published by Ryan Paugh on January 11th, 2008 in Blogging | 18 Comments

Looking back over the last 6-8 months, I could've never predicted that my life would become so consumed by the world of blogging. Back in college I wanted nothing to do with them, yet here I am, roughly a year and a half out of school and I've collaborated to build a company founded in the world of online social media.

I've been blogging a lot lately. Not just writing, but scouring the Internet for young professionals who are passionately sharing their experiences through their blog. I've come across some great blogs, but some could be a lot better.

Here's a reality check for new bloggers: It's not always the writing that makes a blog suck. Functionality (or lack thereof) can kill it too.

Here are a few essential options for new bloggers that are easy to incorporate and enhance the power of your blog more than you know:

Optimize your RSS

Believe it or not, some great writers who have blogs don't publish their RSS feeds. What a waste. There's no better way to generate a consistent audience. And other than incorporating the standard feed icon on your sidebar, there are other ways you can use RSS to optimize your site.

A lot of readers are more interested in comments than your actual posts. Employee Evolution has a few readers that only show up when a heated debate is in our midst. Create subscription to your comments section and you'll get these people's attention whenever new discussions begin.

Also, there's nothing worse than having to play "Where's Waldo" to find your feed. Your RSS icon should be one of the most prominent clickable items on your page. If I can't see your feed, it's useless.

Implement a search tool

I love to link to other bloggers in my posts. And people love to be linked to.

The only problem is, sometimes I can't find a relevant topic with in a blogger's recent posts. To find what I'm looking for, I do a keyword search on their site to find exactly what it is I'm looking for. That is, as long as they have a search tool.

Archiving your posts and categorizing are only the first steps in making your old posts searchable. If a reader knows exactly what they're looking for, they don't want to comb through months of archived posts. They want to type in what they're looking for and get it on demand.

Every once in awhile, a media source will contact Employee Evolution about a post we wrote a long time ago. They didn't find that post through exploring our entire archive; reporters don't have time for that. They were either referred to it or found it through our search tool.

Contact info that's easy to find and easy to use

Unless you're playing the anonymity game, which is pointless, you should incorporate a way for people to contact you that's friendly and easy to use.

A lot of people incorporate contact forms to try and minimize spam. It's reasonable, as long as you're being responsive.

When I send an email via a contact form, I worry that I'm sending my message into a black hole. And when I don't get a response for days, it confirms my suspicions. The best and easiest way to get people to contact you is to just provide an email address.

And a little side note: the "yourname (at) yourblog (dot) com" thing is cute and I get that it cuts down on spam, but it does nothing for the person who is trying to contact you. If you're like me, you copy and paste people's emails straight from their blog right into an email. Call it laziness, but c'mon. If I don't like it, I'm sure there's someone a lot more professional than me having a serious hissy fit.