Do You Want To Know My Secret Voodoo Blogging Methods

Posted by Kelly Foxley on Oct 29, 2009 in Blog, Blogging, General Blogging, Website Design, Wordpress | 4 comments

I have a confession to make, my secret voodoo blogging methods aren’t going to send you unstoppable floods of traffic and make you rich, but they will give you a better blog. If you are looking for a system that will help you earn cash from blogging the you have a limited time to grab Bloggers Payback before the price goes up; you may already be too late!

Right, now that’s out of the way let’s get back to my not so secret voodoo blogging methods. The reason for this post is to reveal some fundamentals to blogging. You see, people jump into blogging and in the progress of creating their blog often skip the basics.

The tips I’m going to share will add that little something extra that a lot of people overlook… keep reading and all will become clear.

1. Tell Your Readers Who You Are

Seriously, this is such a small thing but it can have a big impact on how your readers interact with your blog. I am still surprised how many blogs I come across where the blog posts were written by ‘Admin‘.

You may write a killer post that compels your readers to start commenting, but instead of being able to address you in a conversational way they will probably stick to more generic responses. Just compare the following:

Scenario A

Hey, I really like your Secret Voodoo Blogging Method; you’ve shared some great tips.

Michael

Scenario B

Hey Kelly, I really like your Secret Voodoo Blogging Method; you’ve shared some great tips

Michael

Okay, not drastically different but now let’s follow Michael as he leaves your blog and starts chatting to a friend on Twitter.

Friend: ‘What have you been doing today?’

Michael: ‘Just reading a few blog posts, one of the posts blew me away!’

Friend: ‘Really, what was it about?’

Michael: ‘It was about some secret voodoo blogging methods that will seriously improve your blogging.’

Friend: ‘Sounds awesome, who wrote it!’

Now, if we return to scenario A for a minute, Michael will say something like ‘erm, not sure but here’s the link …’.

However, in scenario B Michael knows who the author is and he was so impressed he is just about ready to tell the world. His response will now more likely be, ‘Kelly wrote it, here’s the link … she knows her stuff!‘.

This small tip really helps with word-of-mouth and social media marketing where people like to talk about people!

Having your name displayed also makes it easier for people to contact you regarding joint ventures etc.

You can enhance this even further by adding some extra elements just like you will see on this blog.

Below this post you will see an author bio box (link removed as site no longer exists) that is being created using a free WordPress plugin.

If you would like a similar author bio box on your blog then you can get the plugin from the Devils Backyard and is called About The Author Box Plugin. The About The Author Box plugin also works for multi-author blogs making this a great plugin.

While you are at it you should head on over to Gravatar and sign-up for your free account. You will then be able to add a photo that will be used for your comments on other people’s blogs. Do that now, come back here and leave a comment (using the email you signed-up for your Gravatar) and your beautiful pic will be displayed next to your comment for all to see.

You can change your display name in WordPress under the Users tab where it says profile.

To enable Gravatar for your comments then you’ll need to enable Gravatar by going to the Discussions page under the WordPress Settings tab.

Let’s move on to the next tip…

2. Hide the date

Well, you may not want to hide the date of your blog posts but rather move it to below the content.

Why? Because people love fresh content!

Let’s say you have written the best ever post all about widgets but the post is now 3 years old.

When people do a search for widgets in Google they may come to your page see the date and hit the back button. You know it is the best ever timeless piece written about widgets but people love fresh and right now content.

Moving the date below the post will decrease the chances of this happening. People will no longer see the date until they scroll down the page and hopefully your content will have grabbed their attention by then.

You will have to play around with your blog theme to make this possible. We use Elegant Themes eNews Theme which allows us to hide the date with one click of a button in the theme admin area.

I’m glad you are still reading and have stuck with me this far, so let’s head on to the final tip.

3. Ask your readers to do something!

Do you want your readers to interact with your blog? Well, then you need to ask them to! When you write your next blog post be sure to end it with a call to action.

Conclude your blog post with a statement that is a good fit for your content.

Examples:

A blog post about social bookmarking:

Now you’ve discovered the power of social bookmarking why not test it out right now by clicking here and adding us to your bookmarks.

A blog post about RSS feeds:

Now you’ve walked through our tutorial for using RSS Readers to stay-up-to-date with the blogs you enjoy, click here to add ours.

A blog post about a product launch:

What I want you to do right now is click on the link and grab your copy of Blogging Payback before the price goes up!

You see, sometimes you really do need to tell people what to do to get the results you want.

I hope you have found this post useful, before you go, be sure to join me on Twitter as I’ve finally got myself an account!

Best wishes,

Kelly Foxley

2009-10-30 photo credit: revjim5000

P.s. We are now showing the date as it was required for an aggregation service we are using.