A blog’s success is measured by the number and loyalty of its readers. Not by how many visits it receives daily, not even the number of backlinks. In the end, the more time your visitors spend on your website, the more pages they visit and the more they come back or further recommend your blog are the real measuring tools of your blog’s perception. In this post I’m going to cover 5 important factors that can improve this perception.
While writing about topics of interest or optimizing your blog for better search results could be enough to generate visits, the readers’ interest has to be maintained through a perception improvement.
Readers tend to react better to bloggers to whom they can relate, to bloggers that have similar views, ideas, even lifestyle. That’s why it’s very important to find your voice and give everything you write a personal note.
With the abundance of information hitting our brains each minute, we have to filter everything right from the first contact. The first impression is vital. Take your time to rethink and possibly rewrite your headlines, maybe even reconsider your blog’s design & structure, the placement of different sections that could generate further traffic and more reading time.
Peoples tend to evaluate things based on the general impression left by the group that these things are part of. In our case, being part of a blogging network can, and in most cases will, result in a transfer of perception quality. Pick your alliances carefully and always aim for the winning situation, since this phenomenon can produce negative effects.
While we’re not proud of it, we tend to judge people based on stereotypes. We judge them by their culture, occupation, age, sex, religion, race and more. We’ve been fighting this mentality for a while now, and probably it’s going to take more. Whenever you give away personal information, keep in mind that some of these subjects can affect the way our blog will be perceived by the general audience.
Readers have sources they respect. Look for your target audience’s favorites and consider driving a marketing campaign through their blogs. Remember all those commercials where TV, movie or sports stars recommend different products? It’s basically the same thing, a transfer of perception and respect from your readers’ sources to your blog.
Do your best to keep on publishing good, original content, but always remember that your personality, tastes, habits, group affiliation play an important part when it comes to building a name for yourself and your blog.
Photo credits to Sigurd Decroos