It is surprising as I go through hat tips on various posts in my RSS reader that some blogs I end up on are lacking some things that I consider to be fundamentals to a blog. You know, those important things that all blogs should not be without, yet time and time again I run across blogs missing at least one or sometimes multiple things that are pretty crucial. And not only that, many of these things are crucial to the overall usability of a blog, which can be directly related to both your number of subscribers as well as how often those subscribers read your blog entries.

How does your blog stack up to the challenge of what all successful blogs should have?

Who are you?
Sure, you might consider yourself a celebrity in your field. But don’t always assume that people will know exactly who you are. So add a bio page to satisfy the curiosity of those who don’t know you (and some of those who do!) that tells a bit about yourself and more to the point - why people should pay attention to what you say. Just remember… there was a day when you had no idea who Larry & Sergey were and hadn’t even heard of Danny Sullivan.

Easy way to subscribe
Don’t make your potential RSS subscribers hunt around for your subscription link. Make it prominent and place it where people expect to find it… in your sidebar and preferably near the top. Don’t pop it in your footer (although feel free to add it there as a secondary location too) and definitely don’t put the feed link in its own page unless there is a very specific reason for it. And if you are feeling really helpful, pop up links to subscribe via the various blog services too.

Comments turned on
In my opinion, a blog isn’t really a blog if it doesn’t accept comments. This doesn’t mean you have to automatically approve them, that could potentially be blog suicide. But accept comments and try to approve them on a somewhat regular basis. Comments on a blog show future readers that others are reading your entries too and are finding them worthy enough to comment on, so you must be saying something worth reading.

Blogroll
True, not all blogs suit a blogroll, but the majority do and you should take advantage of this. Don’t look at it as simply losing visitors to other sites since they clicked on a blogroll link to leave. Consider the fact that many other blogs will reciprocate those blog roll links, meaning you are reaching additional visitors who may never have discovered your site otherwise.

Unique quality content
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve probably heard it a thousand times. Don’t be one of those blogs that rehashes what everyone else is saying. Include at least some of your own original thought because not only will readers enjoy it more, but you have just exponentially increased the number of links your blog will receive. Yes, some sites can get away with simply repeating what others are saying, but you have to be pretty good to retain the audience on a longterm basis, whether it is a high profile name in the industry or your ability to make unique or witty comments about those other blog posts you are linking to.

A Spell Checker
Nobody is the perfect speller, even on a good day. I consider myself a pretty good speller, but if I am going to misspell a word, this will probably be the entry I do it on! But if you know spelling isn’t a strong suit of yours, use a spell checker or a plugin that will alert you with a red underline or some other method when you spell something wrong (Firefox does this automatically). And a hint, when you use something that spell checks forms on the fly (and a blog entry field in your admin panel is considered a form box) and will alert you that the previous word you typed was wrong, you are much more likely to fix those mistakes and typos right then, and it will save you from having to try and remember to hit a spell check button before you hit the publish button. There are people out there who downright refuse to read blogs that often have spelling mistakes or typos - not to mention those grammar fanatics!

Stop the Presses!
If someone has a killer scoop or hot tip to share with you, have you given them a way to contact you? It can be something as simple as a “Contact Me” form, or you can go all out and provide a phone number as well… just be prepared someone might not think about time zones and call you at 3am! That said, if it is a scoop that gets your blog on the front page of Slashdot and gets you ten new clients, then that 3am rousing was probably worth it. Are you heavy into social media too? You can ask them to send you a message via your preferred instant messenger or even to tweet you on Twitter instead of email. Because yes, some of us follow Twitter, IM and Facebook even more closely than we do our emails… even with a Blackberry on the hip.

Use those categories
Don’t lump everything into only one or two generic categories… or worse, everything under “Uncategorized”. Instead, use a variety of categories and don’t just tag a post to one category if multiple categories are relevant. You want visitors to be able to find posts that are interesting to them, don’t force them to go wading through all your posts when they are only interested in a single area you blog about because if you don’t make it easy, you have to be pretty sure you are fantastic enough that your readers will go to all that trouble to find them. That said, be careful not to micromanage your categories either. If you only posted once each on Google AdWords, Analytics, Maps, GMail and Reader, did you really need to create individual categories for each? Nope, you probably put have put those five entries into one general Google category instead. Unless your blog is brand spanking new, have no more than 20-30% of your categories with only one or two posts in it. Do you have much more than that? Make it a goal in the next month to get more entries into those sparsely populated categories.

Make it searchable
No, I am not talking about making your blog indexable to Googlebot and Slurp (although if you are not doing that already, you probably have some issues to work out!) Rather, have a search box on your site so people can search for what they are looking for. Maybe they are ego surfing but maybe they read a post you wrote several months ago and want to re-read it. Especially if you are a prolific blogger, having a search will be extremely useful for your visitors.

Make it share-able
Can someone easily submit it to Digg or Stumble it? Or do you make them cut and paste your URL to do it without even giving them the convenience of a link to click to those places… because unfortunately, many people can’t be bothered to do that unless your blog entry happens to be particularly stellar or news breaking. Grab one of the (many… suggestions on your favorite ones?) Wordpress plugins that enable users to easily submit your entries to the many social media sites out there. Never underestimate the power of these to bring many new visitors to your site who just might become regular readers.

Whether you are a newer blogger or one who might not have quite moved with the changes, these tips can help make your blog successful. While not all might be relevant (perhaps you are an anti social media grump or are attempting to drive potential comments to another site) it is a good health check to look over your blog and see where you could improve.

So how does your blog stack up against the rest? Were you ten for ten or will you be working on some blog upgrades today This blog is 10/10, although sometimes I do have a delayed reaction to remembering to spell check!

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Written on February 14, 2008 at 3:35 am and filed under Blogging, Usability. You can make a comment, or trackback from your own site.