The Reader Appreciation Project

With the creation of over a million new blogs and websites every week, the online world has become the new shopping and fighting frontier for businesses and consumers. In addition to winning customers and loyal readers, businesses have to work to protect their work and to make sure their online work remains as legally safe as possible. Your blog is no exception to that legal principle.

If you blog regularly, chances are there will be a time when you may be sued or accused by someone of copyright infringement. You yourself may want to take legal action against someone else who may steal your work. If you simply take legal action or defend yourself against someone in court, chances are you will have a hard time to win if your blog already did not publicly have some legal notices and warnings in place. I started working on RA Project’s legal disclaimers and related policies last week, and decided to share with you what I have learned to always have on any successful and business blog, or any blog that makes you money in any manner or amount.

So just for you, here are 10 practical and legal notices you can immediately implement on your blog in order to start covering yourself legally for times when you may need to take any kind of legal action related to your blog. If you are serious about blogging, start implementing these 10 practical steps today to make sure your blog is legally taken seriously by others and by yourself. Remember: if you do not take your own blog or blogging legally seriously, why should I or others take it seriously? If I can recommend you to read only one RA Project article in the month of July, this article would be it.

10 Steps To Make Your Blog Legally Safer

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Every blog you visit has some things you like, and some things you do not like. Your own blog is also, fortunately or unfortunately, judged or viewed by others in a similar fashion. Everything on your blog usually comes off as a good or a bad thing for your blog readers. While you cannot cater a blog to everyone’s needs, you can try to have good things and avoid bad things that you think may affect all or almost every blog reader who comes across your blog.

Last week we covered the idea of things your blog should have. In addition to knowing the things you should have on your blog, you should realize the things you should avoid on your blog. It can be very hard to do and try new things on your blog, so in contract it may be very easy for you to try and avoid certain things in your daily blogging.

Today we shall go through 2 important things that you should try to avoid on your blog and in your blogging. Avoid these 2 things on a daily basis and in every blog post if you wish to have a blog that wins both loyal readers and customers.

5 Things Your Blog Should Avoid

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The next time you go out and get interested in buying a car, chances are you ask what kind of features it has. Your business and blog users are no different. They regularly try to figure out what is changing in the products and services that you offer. Customers want to know what kind of different new features any upgrades or add-ons may have, while potential customers and users try to figure out the specific things your overall core of business actually provides. Unless you provide all of such people with actual updates and notes, you may be losing business or loyalty in the long run.

Keeping your users up to date with the latest release note helps maintain customer loyalty and interest in an extremely powerful way. Your users regularly try to find out what is changing in the services and products they use. Corporate blogs of any kind, from Facebook to PlayStation to Microsoft, help loyal customers realize and relate to what is happening at such companies.

In order to make sure customers know constantly that you are there for them, you have to update your customers and users of all kinds with the different announcements and information that relate to them.

Ways to keep your users updated

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Every business should try to regularly review the different components it depends on and uses to figure out their place within the business. From different departments to actual products and services, a business can figure out the importance or shortage of different elements needed for both survival and prosperity. Your exact focus on anything in life in order to make money makes it the equivalent of a business for you. You should try to figure out the roles different elements play in any business for you.

Your blog should go under the same kind of review. Your blog, whether personal or business or both, probably exists to serve some kind of a need. Your blog can either make or break your business. By seeing the wrong tools or articles on your blog, people may avoid taking you seriously and may actually not do any business with you. With the good tools and content, your blog can help you and your business become better and generate more clients and readers. Therefore, you have to figure out the role your blog plays in your business if you want to improve both your business and your blog.

In order to figure out the role your blog may play in your business so that you can appreciate clients and your blog more, regardless of the size or type of business, you may start figuring out the types of roles a blog can play in any business.

5 Different Roles Blogs Can Play in Your Business

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Your blog content depends on a delivery venue. The computer screens and browsers that your clients use greatly affect the way your site performs and appears in the minds of the blog readers. The same way browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari and Firefox deliver your blog to your blog readers, there are several other methods your blog readers can use to get your blog content.

Majority of the blogs on the internet depend upon the trend of having a blog reader visit them. You can take a step further if you want to be very successful. You have to bring your blog to the blog readers. When you bring your blog to a blog reader, you are basically allowing that blog reader to view and benefit from your content at their own preferred venue and time. You also reduce the number of steps many blog readers have to take in order to get your blog content. The easier it is for your blog readers to get your content, the more loyal blog readers you will get for your blog.

In addition to the regular browser, you can deliver your blog to your readers and clients in many different ways, including the following 4 important and powerful ones.

4 Different Ways to Deliver Your Blog Content

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While it can be very easy to start a blog, it can be quite hard to maintain it. From writing blog posts, coming up with topics to write about and bringing in visitors to answering e-mails, replying to comments and keeping people interested in your blog, the entire concept of blogging can be the most time consuming online activity in your life. And that can be for a good reason too, because all the time and effort you put into your blog pays off in both the short and the long run. The one thing you have to realize through your entire blogging effort is consistency.

Being consistent in your blogging efforts basically means that you keep maintaining your entire blog and the elements related to it at least on an almost regular basis. For example, if your blog gives blog readers one new article in July, two articles in August, 20 articles in September and then 5 articles in October, people may simply lost interest in your blog because of the inconsistent scheduling of your blog posts. While consistency itself may have nothing to do with the quality of your blog and blogging efforts, blog readers do try to incorporate your blog and your ideas into their already active lives. Being consistent means your blog readers can find it easier to be interested in your blog in both the long and the short run.

In order to have a successful blog, you need to be consistent in your blogging efforts. The following list will help you focus on 5 things in your blogging efforts in order to be more consistent.

5 Things to Be Consistent About on Your Blog

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Probably not a day goes by where your blog does not end up making someone upset. Whether it is because of what you said or because of what your blog stands for, the idea of getting upset means that all of your blog reader and client base includes several people who are not completely satisfied with you. In order to build a good blog, you have to both get customers to become happy and customers to work with you in solving their problems. The only way to do the latter is to figure out what problems customers are having.

You may already be wondering why your clients get upset. In addition to working out different plans to see why some or several of your clients may be upset or not as active as other clients, you can create venues on your blog to allow clients and everyone else to vent and let you know the things that they do not like. Blogs that do not allow customers to vent are like shops which do not allow a customer to do anything other than to pay for a service.

The only successful way to keep a customer loyal and happy for the long run is to actually find out the problems a customer may be having so that you can solve them. And the best way to find out a problem is to have a customer vent to you directly.

3 Ways to Allow Customers to Vent

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Each and every guest blogger who writes for your blog also needs the same amount of attention that you give to all your blog readers and clients. A guest blogger and make or break your blog, depending on how much devotion they place on the importance of your blog in their blogging efforts. The same way a blog without comments can be like a lecture, as Chris Garrett says, a guest blog post without the full backing of the guest blogger can make your blog less valuable for your clients and readers.

Every commentor is a writer, and every writer is a commentor. A guest blogger is basically both: a writer who is commenting on your blog. A guest blogger also has the advantage of being a main commentor who attracts other commentors. I previously presented to you a list of 5 Ways to Appreciate Readers. Today we shall cover some ways you can appreciate guest bloggers on your blog.

In order to attract and maintain a healthy list of amazing guest bloggers, you have to start treating guest bloggers with respect. Here are 5 ways how you can do that.

5 Ways to Appreciate Bloggers

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Every week you spend hours reading posts and emails from people who are telling you what they want. Bloggers also do the same thing through their blog posts, telling you what they want from you. You, as a blog reader or commentor, have to tell the blogger what you want also. People cannot guess easily what you have in mind. Even if they assume something, they may not act upon it as they do not know whether or not their guess is correct. Tell other people, including bloggers, what you want if you want something.

There is a difference between telling someone what you want and demanding something from someone. Usually, people who tell someone what they want end up getting more things compared to people who expect or demand things. You have to work for something and you have to tell others what you are looking for. The simplest form of such work is to simply voice out your desire. On blogs, it is one of the crucial things in order to get something from a blog or a blogger.

The same way blog readers do not know what you want unless you tell them, bloggers do not know what you want unless you tell them. It is time to speak up.

Tell bloggers what you want!

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U-turns are usually the least liked signs some drivers want to see on a road. And there is a good reason for that. Many drivers prefer driving straight or making left and right turns. A u-turn usually tells a driver that they have come too far, and that they have to turn around their entire car. This kind of an experience exists in the online world too. U-turns are everywhere online, and your blog may be making your customers make unwanted u-turns.

In addition to making sure that your customers have a great time on your blog, you have to make sure that the different blog features you offer do not result in your customers wanting to literally back off simply because of feeling stuck. From bad blog design to inconsistent ways of incorporating new features into your blog, you may actually be forcing your customers into making u-turns on your blog. And you may thus be losing readers, customers and money because of such u-turns.

RA Project shows you 3 ways your customers may be making u-turns on your blog, and not liking you because of that.

3 Examples How Customers Make U-turns on Your Blog

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