Your Blog Contents Effects Readership Loyalty.
Till today, I still haven’t pick up the habit of subscribing to feeds. I don’t know why, but I feel I owe it to my friends that I visit their blogs physically everyday if not for anything that they wrote, but just to show I am still supporting their blogs and adding a hit or two to their daily stats. However, the blogs that I visit have been dwindling slowly. When before, I will click on every blog in my blog roll and I do have quite a long list built up over the years, I have stopped this time wasting practice because of one single reason. When I hover my mouse over that name, a thought automatically crosses my mind, what will that blog have for me today? If i can guess, then I by-pass that for another one. Sadly, most of the names in my blog roll are easily predictable. I can almost see what is in store if I go there and it takes out all the fun and excitement of visiting their blogs.
Updated Contents Does Not Mean Fresh Content
I think it should be safe to say that there a thousands or maybe even millions of blog surfers like me out there. If your blog has no fresh contents each day or each alternate days, or even once a week, all your loyal readers who found your blogs entertaining initially will get fed up and will eventually stop coming altogether.
Many thinks that as long as they update their blogs everyday, they are having fresh contents and their readers will be happy. It’s not the case. Blog surfers are not like babies. Babies will stop crying if you stick the same pacifier in their mouths each time they cry and you can use the same pacifier until it wears of. Maybe you should imagine blog surfers as babies that demands a new pacifier each time they cry. Then you will get a grasp of how you should deal with your blog contents and you will realise that it is not that easy to have fresh and entertaining contents everyday. Heck, it’s not even easy to stock up on pacifiers alone if you have such a difficult baby.
What Contents Are The Best Contents
I am no blog guru, so I take myself as an example, hoping that others feel the same way. For me, a blog that has unpredictable contents are the blogs that have the best contents. If you have a blog that tells jokes, I will know there will be another joke waiting for me if I visit today. If you have a blog that bashes the government, I know there will be another criticism of some kind waiting if I drop by. If you blog about your baby or your family, there is only so much I want to read about your family life.
I mean, I am only human, I get fed up reading jokes on the same vein, I get fed up reading about how badly the government is doing day in and day out and I get fed up reading how many times your baby poo-ed that day. If only they can post one or two unpredictable articles a week, I will be curious enough to check back at least once a week to see if they have something new. Of course, if I can’t foresee what you have everyday, I will be curious enough to check back everyday, then you can say, I am your loyal reader.
Having said that, I understand it is no easy task having fresh and unpredictable contents everyday, especially for personal blogs. That is the reason you see me changing my blogging ways every other few months in my personal blog. I used to blog conversation style, then I blog poetically, I switched to writing some dirty stories, then I turned serious for a month or so. It’s to keep that blog unpredictable. Niche blogs are much easier. As long as there are new developments in the field that they are blogging, there will be new and interesting articles for them to write.
