Tailoring Your Blog To Your Readers

Ever stop to think about who is reading your blog? No one knows your readers better than you, so what are you doing about it?

Your blog should really evolve right along side you. A few things to consider as you learn more about your readers are:

• Is it easy for readers to contact you? Can you make it easier?
• Is it easy for readers to find you on other networks, like on Twitter?
• Is it easy for you readers to find some of your more popular articles?
• Do you offer anything worth promoting to your sidebar or home page?
• Are people using your search and are they finding what they’re looking for?
• Can people easily subscribe to your RSS feed?

Keeping your content fresh can go beyond just posting regularly. Keeping your blog fresh as a whole is an easy way to keep people interested. Just remember not to go overboard.

How Have I Put This Into Action?

First of all I acknowledged the fact that certain posts perform better on some days than others due to trending topics on Twitter and in social media. So I added a ‘Popular Posts’ section in my sidebar that shows the most popular posts over the past 2 days. This is just an easy way to take advantage of the spikes of traffic I get from social media by taking full advantage of a topics popularity within a time frame.

I also added buttons that link directly to the WordPress plugins I created from the sidebar because I recognize that this is one of the main reasons people visit my site and I want an easy way for them to find what they’re looking for.

Speaking of my plugins, my Socialize plugin allows me to selectively add social bookmarking buttons to my posts. After awhile it’s pretty easy to see which button are being used more than others and with my plugin I can easily go in and remove unneeded buttons. This is just to increase the overall user experience as well as to encourage more shares on the services that are already doing well.

And finally, I use the feedback of my readers through comments and on Twitter to come up with new topic ideas. It’s probably my main source of inspiration aside from my spontaneous brain bursts.

How Can You Put This Into Action?

Ask you readers! Seriously. If you can’t figure out what needs to be done through previous interactions with your reader base why not formulate a post asking for ideas and direction. Don’t just let your blog become a place to spill your thoughts, let your readers milk your brain for all it’s worth … maybe that’s where the gold is.

– Photo by Diogo Martins.