How to keep your visitors feel at home

Generating traffic to your blog in itself is a big task, then how do you manage to make the visitors stay? Do you take special care in it? I hope you do, because it is another important factor many of us comfortably ignore.

There are of course numerous ways to increase traffic. SEO, Social Media, etc. But unfortunately there aren’t any time tested scientific practices devised so far to keep your visitors stay at the blog. Of course, there are the trial and error methods and your intuitions that might work out but is there a guarantee? Is there a fool proof method?

All I can do is to put myself in the visitors shoe and start counting.

- Provide the content that your blog says it would give.
One thing that puts me off when following comments on this blog is when the link itself would look something like “Make money online”, and when I visit the blog all I see is a poor guy who is still trying hard. Sympathy apart, the blog doesn’t convince me to subscribe to it or identify with it’s thought. I was promised something but I didn’t get it finally.

This is one situation you want to avoid in your blog. Promise only the things that you can deliver and stick to it.

- Be friendly
Another factor I like about blogs is that many of them are written by humble people who have a desire to achieve. Whenever I come across a blog that has a very friendly author, despite of the blogs subscriber count, which could be low, I’ll immediately subscribe to it. I hope this happens with everybody. Everyone likes a friend not a guy whom you cannot identify with.

- Market yourself but visitors aren’t fools
Man, how I hate those marketers? Excessive marketing right at your face is something that I try to dodge whenever I can. Though there are many around who have self proclaimed “titles” and guru status. A little bit of showing off is alright but too much loud marketing make you look like a loser at the end of it. 

- Respect them
This is one factor I noticed on many professional bloggers sites. They are all ready to talk to you and share knowledge. They realize that you’ve come to learn something from them, so they are willing to give it. I enjoy it and tend to develop a linking to such bloggers. But there are some whom you never get to talk and who does not value your comments. God bless those guys!

- Communicate with them
Have you noticed, the most popular bloggers are very good communicators. Even though they are busy, the find time out to talk to you provided you have some valid point. I agree that this is not possible always,but anyone who are open to communicate are popular guys. They are ready for dialogues which I appreciate much.

What are the other things that interests you in a blog? After the first visit, what other factors make you stick around in a blog? What factors help you develop a linking to the author? I’m curious to know.