I just want to spoon with my honey

Originally uploaded by Tupper26

The importance of good content for your blog can’t be overstated. When I first began blogging, my blog was a place for me to journal my thoughts. Whether I’d worked my way out of a tough tech issue, was trying to noodle through a challenging client situation or just wanted to evangelize my feelings about a product, service or industry reaction, my blog was a good place for me to channel that content.

It still is. But I’m learning along the way about the importance of stickiness. Sticky content, according to Wikipedia, “refers to content published on a website, which has the purpose of getting a user to return to that particular website or hold their attention and get them to spend longer periods of time at that site. Webmasters use this method to build up a community of returning visitors to a website.”

Here are 5 tips about how to improve the stickiness of your blog:

1. Check your stats. Depending upon how you’re blogging, there are many available methods for viewing your blog’s performance. Google Analytics has a plugin for WordPress, which you may want to check out. Just looking at the stats category on the WordPress plugins site returns more than 5 pages of options.

2. Watch your comments. Comments give you an idea of what the most interesting or controversial topics have been on your blog. Write with your viewers in mind! Don’t forget, also, that with the explosion in social media right now, your comments may not appear on your blog, but instead you may find colleagues and readers posting comments and feedback to you on Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk or others.

3. Keep it eye-catching. Use color and images to enhance your entries. Flickr is a great resource for images. Make sure the images you are using have a Creative Commons license that makes them acceptable for your use, and always attribute images with credit and a link back to their creator.

4. Watch your time. There are times of day and days of week that your blog may seem to get more traffic. If that’s the case, make sure your posting fresh content at a time when you know your blog will likely have more visitors.

5. Create a conversation, not a monologue. Comment to other bloggers and colleagues on entries that are interesting to you. Leave comments in their blog and/or at Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, etc.  Update — ShamansTears of Digital Street wrote a great entry on The One-Minute Manager Approach to Being a Comment Master.  This post has great suggestions — give it a read!

Just like painting a room in your home helps spruce things up and makes your living environment more appealing, making your blog attractive and compelling helps create additional traffic for your web presence. That’s one more tool in your internet marketing arsenal.

About the author:  At Your Service Cincinnati principal Nora Rubinoff’s core virtual assistant services include social media management, WordPress support, online reputation management, project management, customer relationship management, customized e-mail marketing campaigns and productivity enhancement. Nora is a Mac and PC specialist. Nora is enthusiastic about architecting solutions that enable clients to make more out of their business day. Nora is a recipient of the Karen S. House Award for Regional Collaboration as well as the Women of Excellence Award, several state and local government proclamations and holds the IVAA EthicsCheck™ certification. Nora is a past board member for IVAA and serves on several community advisory boards. Read more from this author

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