How did you get to read this article?

• If you are new to this site and you care for your readers, then you have landed in the most appropriate place, because here “it’s all about the readers”.
• If you are new here, but you don’t give a damn about your readers, again this is a good place to see the importance of fulfilling the promises you make to readers, or to find out how it feels to be lost in the conversation. If you are not so convinced readers matter, then please take a look to see what this Readers Appreciation Project is all about. And be aware that traffic consists of readers, adding up one at a time.
• If you are a regular reader (thank you very much), then you know by now that this is the second article of the mini series Increasing Readership and Community, following up The Six Shapes And Colors Of Blog Readers.

Do you keep the dialogue alive?

Back on topic, let’s see if and how we can get the lurkers involve in the conversation and become loyal readers.

1. You can’t have them all. No matter how interesting and how intriguing your articles, if one is not interested in the topic, he/she won’t get caught in the conversation. They will always come and go, perhaps being misled to your site by a search engine ranking you earned for non-relevant keywords, or maybe following a link from another blog.
2. Let them know what it is about. If a visitor likes one of your articles and wants to know more, it is very probable that he/she will click on your About page, if there is one available, so make sure you make it clear (unless you decide to take it out and let the readers make an opinion from your content).
3. Make it interactive. Ask your readers for their opinions, organize contests and group writing projects. Take care though, with the contests: if your readership is very low (maybe less than 50 uniques per day) you may end up with no participants, unless you give really attractive prizes.
4. Be specific.
   • Instruct your readers exactly how they can comment on your blog. Let me give you this example: I once asked several StumbleUpon friends to leave some comments on an article I had sent them. Out of 20-40 people, only one understood that he was supposed to comment on my blog (and even he did not know how to do it, until I explained that there is a special comment box under the article). All others gave me their brilliant thoughts in the StumbleUpon message bar, so they are lost forever.
   • Let people know how they can find your blog again. Did it ever happen that you read some cool blog and when you wanted to visit it again after a while, you did not remember the name? Please take a look at this example: JohnTP has made it very clear how to subscribe to updates of his site. The subscribe box is above the fold, horizontally centered on page, and it contains the text “Enter your email”. If you still don’t get it, you can choose to click on “More info” and you’ll land on a more explicit page.
5. Make it flexible.
   • Give your readers more options of reading your articles. Watch your visitors’ behavior all the time and adjust your layout and your content according to your observations. One good tool comes with Google Analytics and it is called Site Overlay. It gives you the number of clicks for all links on each page. Let’s say that you display a list of recent posts just above the post content. You may notice many readers click again on the post name on the list, instead of scrolling down a bit to read the real content. If that is the case, you should take the list away, no matter how useful you think it is. If it gets your readers nervous, it can’t be that useful.
   • Adjust your speech. Some people say that there are no resistant listeners, but only inflexible speakers.
6. Write a series. Create expectations. However, don’t disregard first time visitors. Make sure that every post is an article in itself, don’t let people wonder where your story began. Link your older posts if necessary for a good understanding of the current article. Don’t leave the impression of a very exclusive club, because you’ll miss the chance of increasing your audience. Try to improve your copy-writing skills, and write copy that even grandma will love.
7. Be social. Open yourself an account with several social networking sites, and then try to spend at least 30 minutes a day in making friends and interacting in those communities. As many of your silent visitors may have their own blogs, it is worth spending some time on Technorati as well. Maki from DoshDosh did an interesting experiment regarding the traffic coming from Technorati. It seems that, besides the above considerations, Technorati-referred visitors are also good for enlarging your reader pool.
8. Use your MyBlogLog widget. Look who’s silently visiting your site. Then go visit their community, subscribe to it (if it makes sense for you), leave some comments there. Many chances are that those people come back to comment on your site.
9. Moderate your comments. Welcome first time commentors. Give them options to subscribe to comments. Did you ever try the sensation of wanting to follow a conversation you took part in, and not being able to remember how to find it again?
10. Are you an anti-social, shy bear? You can still have a lot of readers, but you’ll have to try harder with SEO and to write damn good stories to get and keep people on your site only from organic search. But you better turn your comments off, so people know from the very beginning that it’s not the dialogue you are after.
11. Measure your progress. Ask yourself these questions:
    • Where am I now?
    • Where do I want to be?
    • How do I get there?
    • Am I getting there?

    This cycle should be continuous. Otherwise, we would be just leaves in the wind, wouldn’t we? So believes Seth Godin, who reminds us of a good and often misused measurement tool. How many of you have set goals in Google Analytics?

If you have some good examples to illustrate the above points, I’ll be happy to collect them into a useful resource for all of us. Do you know a blog that’s excellent at making people stick to it and participate? Or maybe you have such a blog. Please send us your success story. There are many chances that it will end up published here.

Thank you all. Please stay tuned until next Tuesday, when we are going to get a closer look at the trolls and defend the spirit of our communities.

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