Blogging Pointers

Intro - - Welcome, this is part three of the multi-part series The Bloggers Guide to Time Saving Techniques. This series covers the ever important topic of time management and how it directly relates to your success as a blogger. I will be covering some key issues many bloggers, myself included, have battled with in the past and how you can overcome them with a few simple tricks to managing your time more efficiently.

Interacting with your readers plays a very important role in building relationships through your blog. Developing strong relationships with your readers is also the best way to gain return traffic, you become a trusted source of information and sometimes even a friend. The higher the amount of return traffic you can receive the less amount of time you need spend on marketing your blog, because eventually word of mouth is all you will need, to maintain your success.

Tip #1

When you reach a level where you have attained a fair amount of readers, you will probably find yourself receiving a lot of emails and comments requiring a response. Many bloggers can spend several hours a day responding to emails and comments and still never find the bottom of the list, this can be very time consuming. One great way to slow down the amount of incoming messages, is to simply outline your time and email restrictions on the “About Me” page of your blog. Let your readers know up front that it may take a while to respond due to high levels of incoming mail, let them know if you can’t currently review all site submissions or products, people are pretty forgiving if you are upfront and honest. This little tip will surely buy you some time, should you not get to all of the emails or respond to everyone you hoped to that day. If you are unsure about how to write a contact page you might take a look at Random Blog Tip - Contact Options by Pro Blogger and while you are there take a look at his Contact page as he uses some of these techniques on his.

Tip #2

Keep those return emails short and sweet. You don’t need to write a one thousand word response to be considered friendly or helpful. A simple “Hi (name), Thanks for the email. The answer to your question is blah blah blah.” Something simple like this is more than enough to satisfy your average reader, and of course writing shorter responses cuts down your time and labor.

Tip #3

Create an FAQ page linked from every page in your navigation menu. An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page can cut down on a lot of emails. Be sure to take some time every so often to update the page with new commonly asked questions as you receive them. Make sure your answers are well written and detailed to leave your readers with no room for wonder.

Tip #4

Consider setting up a user poll or survey on your blog. This will give you an opportunity to better understand what your users want or like/dislike about your site. With this information you put these suggestions into place before you receive a barrage of emails asking for it.

Tip #5

Quick responses in the comments. A very short, quick response to comments can cut back on a lot of emails and please your readers at the same time. By responding to comments you create a sense of community or caring with your readers letting them know that you are involved every day and you do appreciate them, at the same time you have cut back questions and essentially created more time for other projects.

Tip #6

I find many people logging on to the web server several times a day to check for emails. Rather than going this far simply use a program such as Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook and import your emails that way. With this system in place you will be notified every time you get mail and you can read and respond from the comfort of your own computer, without having to log on.

In conclusion, your reader interaction is a big part of what makes blogging so great. These tips are not written to take away from this, but rather to more efficiently handle the interaction while at the same time still providing a great user experience.

Here are the links to the other parts of this series:

• Part 1 - The Bloggers Guide To Time Saving Techniques
• Part 2 - Sensible Posting - Writing for the Future
• Part 3 - 6 Time Saving Tips for Interacting With Your Readers
• Part 4 - One Blog to Another - Multiple Blog Management Syndrome
• Part 5 - Productive Content Research for Bloggers

As I publish each part in the series, I will be linking the above list to their respective pages. This series will be featuring one new article per day for the next four days.

blogging, interacting with readers, successful blogging, blog, pro blogger