Build a Better Blog: Your Readers

Back in April I did ProBlogger’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. Ok, by “did it” I mean I signed up and didn’t do ANY of the tasks on their assigned days. So sue me. In fact, I kept the emails highlightes as unread in my inbox, so that I could peruse them at my glorious leisure. I’m uh, still perusing.

One of the lessons was “Pay Special Attention to a Reader”.

The Task – Choose one (or more than one) of your current readers and do something out of the blue that acknowledges them, shows them that you see them as valuable and highlights them to your other readers.

Why This is Important

While many blog tips going around focus upon techniques to help make bloggers and their blogs more famous and well known one of the paradoxical keys to blogging success is that many bloggers who build great blogs actually go out of their way to make their readers more famous and well known.

I actually did this before the course began, by holding an anniversary contest at my site. I published the great works of my readers, then chose one out of the many to highlight and grant a prize to. This wasn’t a contest for drive-bys who are new and have no intention of sticking around. This was for my loyal readership.

After all, without our readers, we might just as well be LiveJournaling behind a locked account like a bunch of emo teenagers. If a blogger blogs and no one reads, did they really type a word?

All of my favorite bloggers (on the political side, anyway) have done this at some point. Not always with a contest, but certainly by pointing out the value of their individual readers to others. I wouldn’t go so far as Ann Althouse and actually marry a reader, but I also never say never!

Darren’s ProBlogger course was full of ideas like highlighting a reader, updating old links, writing reviews and of course – increasing traffic!

He kindly put it all into one tidy downloadable workbook for all us ADD bloggers, so that we could do that perusing thing and not get sidetracked by our email accounts. At twenty bucks it would be a bargain at double the price. But Darren knows that most bloggers aren’t wealthy, and that the current economy sucks. He didn’t feel the need to rape us over the price, which I think is great. Especially since he’s backing it up with a guarantee:

If you’re not satisfied with the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog work book after 31 Days Just let me know and I’ll refund your money – that’s how confident I am that this is a resource that will help you build a dramatically better blog.

I picked the workbook up so that I wouldn’t have to shuffle through my inbox to find something. I printed it out and took a highlighter to it, marking up the areas that I need the most work on. And slowly but surely, I am working on them.

If you’ve been blogging for a while and have hit a traffic plateau, Darren’s challenge might be just the thing you need to break out of it. Remember, a few extra readers every day really adds up after a while. You can get the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook here. Good luck, and let me know how it turns out!