How to develop stickyness to your blog
Let’s talk about “stickyness” today.
What is it and how can it be created on your blog.
A blogs success is in keeping it’s readers come back - everytime! You can buy traffic, run competitions, give away stuff or run a link-give-away offer even to get traffic. But they will never give you loyal readers.
Loyal readers come back to you all the time, they love your blog, they love your writing, they love you - as a blogger.
Personally, i prefer a handful of loyal readers to a large volume of one-time visitors.And to create loyal readers,you need stickyness to your blog.
Stickyness means the ability of your blog to keep pulling people in, when they are detached or within the loop - at your wish.
Let’s see how we can create loyal readers to your blog.This will deal mainly about keeping the quality in your articles,how to keep them genuine and addictive to readers.
- Stick to your topics, keep them focussed.
Do you have a long category list? Even worse, does it get lengthier with each new post?
I must then warn you that your blog is at risk.Risk of losing your readers(who you managed to get with much pain!)
You know that there are already plenty of blogs out there, there is no reason someone must read your blog to get updated on technology. If you don’t blog it there’s 99% chance that somebody else will.
So, keep the number of topics focussed and less.You don’t want to write about all the technology advancements in the world - probably Nano-technology or Bio-Technology. That makes it easier for your reader to remember you,your blog and relate it to the topics you write.
So stick to the topics, keep them concentrated, keep them updated but never deviate from them. Every time you are tempted to deviate from the topics - just read your archives and you’ll be busy posting updations.
Deviating from your topic means only one thing - decrease in number of repeated visitors - directly proportional!
Keep interacting
The blogosphere is all about crowds - talking - chats - speakers - shouts and the like. Folksonomy as it’s called.Your blog readers are a pool of think-tanks, get them talking.You never know, some one out there might correct you on a point. But let it be a dialogue, knowledge sharing is mutually beneficial isn’t it? in this case, it’s a 3D thing - you - your
reader- and other readers. All of the three entities are involced and benefitted. So leave room for your visitors to think and respond to you.Interact with them, if possible, through your blog and not elsewhere. Avoid(where ever possible) email chat/IM chats but encourage people to use your contact form - they are likely to move to an archive page once the form is submitted, but in an IM chat, they are not even on your site 
Read/reply to comments
Okay, you’ve left room for interaction in the form of comments and there are lot of them.It’s not time for celebration yet.They are all questions to be answered.Unless you take care of them at the right time, they become liabilities. Now you can guess what a visitor will do and what impression he gets of the blogger when his questions are unanswered.So make a habit of commenting as well as replying to them. You can answer them all together once in a while rather than answering them one by one.This will save time as well as keep you focussed.
Ask questions
You can’t go on preaching about things all the time. Well, you may be a master of “AdSense Monetization” or “Online money making” thingy but, how can you give answers when you don’t have questions? People have questions in their mind when they visit your site,and before they leave, it’s your duty to answer them.So asking them questions, is one way of making your life easy.Ask questions, to which you yourself have an inclination to.Thereby, you are showing your visitor that you value them, you want to know their opinion.So, when writing articles it’s a good point to leave a question cleverly embedded in it. It will keep the cycle vicious.
Disagree
Disagreeing is yet another way to express your thoughts on a particular topic. Suppose you read that article on online money making at a blog, but you think otherwise.Let your thoughts flow to your posts - let others(blogger) know that he missed thinking from your perspective or what he said was absolutely wrong. Disagreeing won’t be seen as a negative thing, instead it’s an opportunity to prove that you think or not.You can disagree only if you think.So please do it to your visitors or another blogger who wrote an article on the same topic you are interested in.It shows that you are genuine and your ideas are free.Your visitors will love it.
Don’t get corrupted
When there is a flurry of information, it’s easy to get mislead, and it can get you thinking wrong even.Your readers may not enjoy it at all.Sometimes it even leads to you disagreeing or thinking otherwise about a topic you might have already blogged about.Remember, there are archives in your blog, they are read by your visitors if not you - so don’t get corrupted by wrong information that you gathered yesterday.Keep yourself focussed on the topics you are interested, filter away the wrong ones and make your articles crisp and clear.
Be Consistent
By consistency I mean, maintaining a regularity in posting cycles, and post amounts in the blog.It’s good to develop a habit of posting according to a schedule.That way, people knows what to expect and what they need to dodge. Suppose you post articles on weekdays based on topics and at the weekend you regularly open a game - people who are interested in the game will not miss fridays on your blog.
These are points i gathered from my experience - none of them fabricated. Everybody seems to be trying hard to get more and more visitors, but in the hurry we tend to forget this important point. I did and i payed the price. Hope it helps all the young bloggers out there, not to lose their hard earned traffic.
Christian Tietze | May 23rd, 2007 at 5:53 am #
Thanks for your advice. I don’t really know what happened to your blog in the past but I think you can manage the current problems well. At least you’re able to help other beginning bloggers–like me–which is something really good.
Keep up your efforts!
Romantic Ideas | May 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 am #
Hi, I have a quick question, hope you can help!
I’m working hard to post every day at my blog, http://www.romancetracker.com, and am pleased to see that my Google search hits are growing every day.
Unfortunately, I have discovered a site that takes every post I write, every day, and reproduces it exactly, word for word! They have even stolen the categories I put the posts under! That site is http://www.101lovetips.com.
What should I do? The site that is stealing from me has no contact information on it at all. I hate to think that their thievery is affecting my Google ranking, and besides, I don’t want them re-publishing my original writing!
Thanks . . .
Success Online | May 23rd, 2007 at 8:45 pm #
Fantastic pointers. Your really touching on some very important areas that are key ingredients for becoming a huge “success online”. Not the short burst popularity contest in highschool but someone of consistency and reliability.
Can your readers rely on you?
Stephen
Mani Karthik (Post Author) | May 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 pm #
Hi Stephen, I write from my experience blogging on Daily dose of Internet , believe me it’s very easy that way.
Cheers!
Mani
Kevin | May 24th, 2007 at 2:27 am #
another great post mani. i think its really important to interact with your readers at every opportunity
Mike | May 24th, 2007 at 7:34 am #
Responding personally to comments is one of the most important parts of running a blog. If the comments keep stacking up and you ignore them, people stop commenting and eventually drift away.
Blogging is a two way thing.
TechZilo | May 24th, 2007 at 9:04 am #
Great post - previously, I had known only about having more links towards the end of the post.
Could you write a post on how to INCREASE comments in blogs with low comments?
Sue Olson | May 24th, 2007 at 9:09 pm #
What does it mean when you say ‘detached or in the loop’? I have been wodnering about the loop and am just now brave enough to ask. Hope I don’t look too silly!
Mani Karthik (Post Author) | May 24th, 2007 at 11:15 pm #
Hi Sue, Good question.
When they have subscribed to your feed - They are in the loop.
1- Getting them to visit the site when they have access to the full feeds is one bottleneck.
2 - Getting them to visit the site even when they are not subscribed/subscribed to partial feeds is yet another hurdle.
Points 1 and 2 means “in the loop” and “detached” respectively.
Cheers!
Mani
bluelunareagle | May 26th, 2007 at 8:18 pm #
Hi! Enjoyed and found this all helpful. I have a blog at countdowntopublication.blogspot.com
Enjoying it though it takes a lot of time and the technology and getting mass traffic is all a bit overwhelming! Still, like most bloggers, I blog my socks off and love it. Good luck with all your blogs and come see mine NOW. I am being a bit unintentionally mystical and have somehow not put my real name on the blog so shall not divulge it now, but use my blog tag Bluelunareagle. Tchau, amigos!
Jon | May 27th, 2007 at 4:38 pm #
Very good - enjoyed reading that, so many thanks! I tend to get quite a bit of traffic from sites where I have commented, or posted a picture. I guess participating on other’s sites is important and lets people know who you are.
Daniel | June 3rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm #
Interesting posting. Thanks a lof for the useful advice. Since August 2006, I didn’t miss any daily posting on my weblog http://melancholia.typepad.com.
I just wonder if posting on a daily basis is an absolute condition to be considered as a “real” blogger. Does anyone have an opinion about this?
Best regards,
Daniel
syahid ali | July 1st, 2007 at 11:36 am #
disagree with all the things above. joking!
Sam | February 1st, 2008 at 6:54 am #
Such an informative post - thank you. One way of achieiving stickyness is through hard work and trying to help your readers as we can see your efforts and appreciate what you do, hence forming a relationship and building a form of private equity with us.
swiftmed | February 13th, 2008 at 3:29 pm #
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Janko | April 18th, 2008 at 4:24 am #
This is a great, great post! It sure will help me focus on important things! There are a lot of blogs that offers a plenty of advices, but this one amazed me!
Thanks!
Ravi Kumar | May 2nd, 2008 at 12:20 am #
hi
i want to develop my own blogging site can u help me
Flimjo | June 5th, 2008 at 3:47 pm #
The things I try when I blog are the following: the topic of the blog post in the title and in the first paragraph, short paragraphs, frequent bold headers, and short blog posts. People have ADD in today’s world because of all the distractions around us. You need to capture their attention right away. I also find that responding to EVERY commentator brings them back again and again.