Focusing on appreciating your current readers more than prospective readers is good
24. Mar, 2007 
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On your blog, you may be tempted to focus on marketing a lot. Marketing your blog to new readers is a good thing. Keeping your current readers happy is an even better thing. You should focus more on interacting with the people you already know and on developing more bonds with your current readers. Otherwise, what good is it to bring in new readers when you do not appreciate your current readers?
Try not to prefer prospective readers over your current loyal readers
You can apply this practice to almost everything, specially to your contests. If you hold contests to give some prize to new commentors or new community members, try holding more contests to reward people who have already been commenting on your site. You can reward new people to participate more on your site, as it is a good thing. You should also reward the readers and commentors you already have, since doing that is an even better thing. That is why the RAW Prizes on this site as going to be awarded to everyone, and not just new commentors. The amount of participation also does not matter; if you are a visitor, you will hopefully win. 
Try not to prefer new prospective readers over previous readers. Also, try not to always prefer previous visitors over new prospective visitors. Focus on both, and make sure that your current blog readers know that you appreciate their presence on your site. Do the same with with your daily interaction with blog readers. If you respond at great length to new comments, try to do the same to comments left by readers who are not new to your site. If you do something special for new visitors, try to do something special for old visitors to your site also. You should be nice to readers not to attract them to your site, but because of the feeling you get when being nice to people, and because of the concept of being nice to people.
If you spend some time on marketing, try to spend more time appreciating current readers
If you spend an hour daily marketing your blog or commenting on new sites, focus more than an hour on keeping your current readers happy and on commenting on the sites you already commented in the past. Try not to be like the typical banks where new prospective customers are given comfortable leather chairs to sit on while old and current customers are made to stand in lines in order to do normal banking transactions. Be someone who makes both new and current customers sit down, or if you must make someone stand up, have the new readers stand up while letting your current readers relax and feel happy around your site.
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Congratulations on your SOB recognition Bes & Ronald. Sound advice on this posting. Too often we forget about the people we already know – and who know us. You’ve given me food for thought!
Thank you Bob for taking the time to come here and comment. Also, thank you for congratulating us for the SOB recognition.
I am glad that you find this post useful. I am myself trying my best to come up with a system to keep in touch with all my current and past online contacts and blog readers on a regular basis. We will see what happens.
Thanks again Bob for the nice words, I am really grateful.
If you have any advice or suggestions about anything, please let me know.
Bob Glaza,
Thanks so much for stopping by and and for the congrats.
Bes,
This post hits close to home for me because I spend so much time trying to get inlinks and more feed subscribers that I forget I already have a loyal base.