How to get more readers and how to get your readers to comment on your blog is what you are asking yourself often if you have a blog. Both questions are closely connected with making your blog more popular and getting more blog traffic.
A lot of work goes into writing blog posts that people actually want to read, and perhaps more importantly, cite in their own work. The best in the world have an active comments section and catchy post titles. Do you want to be the guru or the guilty pleasure?
Here are ten tips to becoming more popular in the blogosphere:
Make yourself known: You are more than likely a member of blogs that you read for enjoyment. Make some relevant comments and you will attract readers who want to add YOUR blog to their daily online diet.
Be Vulnerable: Do not be afraid to admit your shortcomings to the world. This adds a level of ‘humanity’ to your posts, giving your readers something to sympathize with. It also encourages comments because many readers feel compelled to come up with solutions.
Invite comments: Ask for feedback on ideas that you’re pondering. Do a roll call to see who is reading your work. You want your readers to be active and involved with the ideas that you are talking about. They have similar interests as you do, and might have great insights.
Encourage others to share among themselves: This relates to step #3. You want your readers to be offering something relevant to you and to the others around you. Encourage your readers to talk with one another. You might learn something that you didn’t know.
Make awesome titles: Offer something that sparks your reader’s curiosity. Instead of ’5 ways to lose weight,’ try out ‘How I lost a pound a day for 5 months.’ Be fun with your title, thinking about the ones that attract your attention. Your originality brings in the viewers to your site.
Appeal to the right brain instead of the left: Use pictures to demonstrate your points. This sets the emotional side of your brain in motion, rather than the one which has to translate words into meanings. People are also attracted to pretty things.
Write about your passions: It is quite obvious to others if you’re writing about something you know nothing about. The way to set yourself apart from the others and be seen as an expert is by writing about things that you know. The more you know, the more you can share. The more you can share, the more value you have to your readers.
Make your blog readable: A garish striped background with black frames is distracting. Readers need to be focused on the text, rather than on how loud your background is. Use bulleted lists and make your points concisely.
Have contests: Don’t be afraid to have contests for your readers. See who can comment the most on your blog in a month. Who can draw the best picture of a llama? The contest makes no difference as long as they are compelling and. Your readers want to be engaged, and you want to get the page views.
Write just enough to keep the reader’s attention: Have you read blog posts that feel like you’re walking a desert road? Split your text up if you find that you’re going too long. If your post is too short, try ‘expanding the lens’ to make it more general.
People want to read your blog because you offer some enrichment to their lives. You have informative posts for the readers. You might write some great humor. You could share common interests. All of these are valid reasons for reading others’ blogs. How do you make others desire your blog?
I need your comments here. Which of the above 10 tips are you already implementing?
Which of the ten tips to make your blog more popular is the most appealing to you and one that you are most likely to implement first?
What is working for you the most in attracting more readers?
Make sure you bookmark this post on Digg or any other site of your choice and tweet it so others can find it and contribute their comments and views.
James Adams is a staff writer at Cartridge Save where he reviews popular items like the HP 343 ink cartridge and helps to maintain their design and marketing blog.
John Chow’s Last Dot Com Pho in Vancouver took place on August, 28, 2010. It was an event that was marked by high attendance and relaxed, cheerful spirit.
Michael Kwan was kind enough to take a video of John Chow and me rubbing shoulders and having a chat.
The video is a good example of how people are interacting during the lunch meetings. You’ll also learn something new about John’s iPad vest pocket and what to watch out for when you have your business cards printed by Print 24.
As is the case almost every week, I was able to meet, exchange business cards and interact with a few new people in addition to getting to know better the people that I’ve met before.
Last Saturday was a very memorable event because John Chow is moving out of Vancouver before the end of August to the Emerald city, Seattle.
John Chow is a prominent A blogger who knows how to make money online, and plenty of it too.
Blog Profit Camp is a course by John Chow which recently come out. Blog Profit Camp has since closed out to new students but will reopen in near future. I’m taking the course myself and so far it has been very good.
You don’t need to rush to buy it right now because you may want to read my review of it first.
I won’t be writing the review until I have gone through the whole course personally. I have done the book review the same way, only after reading it.
As pointed out in my post Succeed Online Networking At Internet Marketing Events, attending live events and networking with like minded people who are at different levels in their online business is one of the key activities that will help you succeed and make money online.
It’s been great learning from John Chow because of his experience and business acumen.
But there are also other people who bring a lot to the learning table at Dot Com Pho.
Everybody has something unique to contribute.
Take for example Ed Lau, who is not only very opinionated but has some great skills. One of them is photography. He takes great professional pictures. He can also design logos.
Another person you can learn a great deal from is Michael Kwan. He is a very high quality professional writer who does not only great reviews but can help you with any writing tasks like press releases.
Michael Kwan and Ed Lau
Ariane Colenbrander, Bonnie Sainsbury and Ed Lau
There are plenty of people who go to live internet marketing events who have great skills which you can learn from them.
You can also hire them to do a particular job that you don’t have the skills for and that you don’t have the time or desire to learn.
A particularly skilled person when it comes to You Tube is Josh Rimer. He’s a comedian too and is already getting closer to his goal of being famous online.
There are other remarkable people that I’ve met at small local internet marketing events like the Dot Com Pho. I’ll be mentioning them in my future posts.
John Chow will be missed in Vancouver by all the people who have ever had the honor of meeting him.
He’ll be missed at his Dot Com Pho lunch meetings in Vancouver which will just not be the same without him.
But life will go on and John has promised to visit from time to time, maybe even once a month. We shall see.
If you want to succeed online, I urge you to not just work behind your computer.
Do get out to some live internet marketing events as often as you possibly can and do some vigorous networking.
Please do realize that I’m not just talking about the big internet marketing events and gatherings with hundreds of people in attendance.
Find out if there are any small local events like Dot Com Pho in your area. I’m sure there is something like that going on.
Even if you have to travel to the neighboring city, it will be worth doing every so often.
What to do next?
Comment about this post in the comment section.
What do you think of John Chow moving out of Vancouver?
Will you miss him here or are you looking forward to welcoming him in Seattle?
Have you been attending any live internet marketing events?
Have you found a small local internet marketing regular event that you’ve attended or plan to go to?
After you place your comment, do share this post by tweeting and social bookmarking it.
To buy a Mac and use it for Windows 7 in addition to using it as the original Apple machine with Snow Leopard seems like a great idea. In fact if it really works it will give you all the advantages of both systems on one computer. When you see the commercials it is very tempting to just go ahead an buy a Mac and forget about the PC.
Watch this example of Windows on a Mac Apple Commercial:
But what does really happen when you do buy the Mac and want to use it with Windows 7 ?
Keep on reading and find out what I’ve learned after buying a brand new Mac.
What Really Happens With Windows 7 On A Mac
Doing a lot of research and talking with several representatives of the Apple brand including the Apple’s own store in Downtown Vancouver I was repeatedly told that there were no problems or issues with installing and running Windows 7 on the new Mac computers.
They run just like a PC they all said. Well, perhaps some models do and perhaps with some Windows, like Windows XP and Windows Vista.
In fact I have done as much research as possible and even included videos of how the Boot Camp enables a Mac to run Windows XP on my blog. I embedded the videos on my blog from You Tube since they were made by a guy who had Windows on his Mac.
I want you to know that I did everything imaginable I could to make sure that I wasn’t going to make a dumb uninformed decision. Here is a list of 3 stores I went to (in each store I talked to more than one sales representative or associate or whatever they call themselves at different times or in the case of the downtown store I talked to more than one person during the one visit):
The Apple store inside the Oakridge Mall in Vancouver, 4 visits, The Simply Computing store inside the Semiahmoo Mall in White Rock, 5 visits. These two stores are just sellers not Apple’s own stores. And finally, the Apple Store, yes the Apple’s own store inside the Pacific Mall in downtown Vancouver, 1 visit. That is a total of 10 store visits.
After being assured 10 times that there would be no problems whatsoever with using Windows 7 on any new Mac they were selling I decided to buy one.
The Black Screen Of Death On A Mac
Stuck In Windows 7 Installation Loop
I was really happy with my purchase and took the brand new Mac out of the box. I must say that the packaging they now have is superb. I also have to praise the people at the White Rock store because they were kind enough to install the extra memory which I bought for me and let me see that the computer was working with it.
After Taking the computer out of the box at home I was excited to see that I could make it run and get on the internet.
Everything seems to be working well in the Mac mode and so far I love it.
But I also need to be able to use the Windows 7 on it and that is a problem.
I purchased the Windows 7 Ultimate and also Windows Office and after thoroughly studying how to properly install the Windows using Boot Camp and printing out the instructions I proceeded with the installation following every step religiously.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly until I encountered the black screen. I let the computer be and went to bed hoping that in the morning I’d see the Windows 7 installed on my Mac.
That hope was frustrated and the black screen of death greeted me after I got up. Turning the computer off and on again got me to a screen with a headline saying “Windows Error Recovery”.
No matter which instructions on that screen I followed, and there are 3 safe modes and one saying “Start Windows Normally”, I always ended up at the same place in the loop: the black screen of death.
I decided to start the whole installation process over from the very beginning. I went to Boot Camp and erased the separation and everything related to Windows 7.
Starting everything over I made doubly sure I followed the instructions not only religiously but like a first class meticulous monk. After all I could have made some mistake, however small, the first time.
Well, I ended up staring at the black screen of death again on my shiny new Mac with no Windows 7 installed and a bit of disappointment and frustration creeping in.
I tried one more time with the black screen gaping at me again and the frustration and disappointment level rising.
I went to the PC store where I bought the Windows 7 and asked them to exchange it. They gave me another disk and also checked the one I brought on their computer to see if it was defective. It worked.
I did the installation process with another brand new disk with Windows 7 Ultimate on it. Black screen of death again resulted on the Mac. I repeated the process again like a fool doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I really wanted it to work. I spent a lot of time and money on this and all I was getting was a stupid black Mac computer screen of death.
When I purchased the Mac computer I also bought the extended warranty with Apple Care. Before I had the Windows 7 exchanged I described the installation problems to a person at Apple Care over the phone.
I was told that trying a different installation disk was a good idea and that they had no other suggestions other than that. Well, that idea with replacing the disk was mine. They didn’t help at all.
Apple Admits Problems With Installing Windows 7 On Their Macs
On Thursday, August 12, 2010 I called Apple Care again. When I called I was armed with an article which I found on Apple’s website. That article had been last edited on July 27, 2010. In it Apple admits that there are issues with installing Windows 7 on some models of Mac computers. In their post titled ominously Boot Camp: iMac Displays A Black Screen During Installation Of Windows 7 they point out to a solution which is quite complicated and which they do not perform for their customers.
Apple Care Adviser Denies Article Pertains To New Installations Of Windows 7
When I called Apple Care after reading the article about the black screen during installation of Windows 7 I was demanding that they give me a solution to the problem without me having to buy anything. I spent enough already. I was transferred to a personal adviser which they right then assigned to me.
The adviser told me that the article on Apple’s site is talking only about installing Windows upgrades and has nothing to do with new installations of Windows 7. I described to him exactly what installation problem I was having and he insisted that I do it again with him assisting me over the phone.
When the Windows 7 files loaded up he told me that now everything would be fine. I replied to him that everything he did with me so far was exactly what had happened before when I did it on my own and that I didn’t think that the result this time would be any different.
He seemed very sure that it would be different this time. Perhaps he believes to have some magical powers.
He gave me a number to call him if things go wrong and assured me that he would be there for at least another hour. I called less than 40 minutes later and he wasn’t answering the phone and didn’t reply to my voice message.
I called him the next day and heard a voice message that he’ll be back on Sunday. I left him another message just to make sure he gets back to me.
This is where things are right now.
UPDATE: August 16, 2010
Apple Care Adviser didn’t call me on Sunday, thus ignoring my 2 voice messages.
When I phoned the number he gave me he didn’t pick up the phone. The same thing happened on Monday, today.
I then called the regular Apple Care number and another adviser who called herself a Senior Adviser answered.
She proceeded with questioning me again as to where I got stuck in the Windows installation process. I told her and asked her why the previous adviser told me that the article on Apple’s site is not about new Windows 7 installation.
Apple Care Senior Adviser said that they are aware of what the article is about not denying it is the right article with a solution to the problem I’ve been having. Did they read the article after we talked on Thursday?
She couldn’t help me today because I don’t have a USB storage device or an SD card which are necessary to fix the problem.
So beware of anyone telling you that any new Mac will work with Windows 7 virtually out of the box after easy no problem installation in Boot Camp. It doesn’t.
Some Mac models have problems which Apple admits on their website in a hard to find article which talks about Mac Black Screen Installing Windows 7.
I found that the stores who sell Apple products are not well informed about installing Windows 7 on the machines they sell.
Perhaps they never do it because they charge $180 for it. How could anyone be willing to pay that much for what is supposed to be easy?
What they answer to your questions about it is not factual. It is what they believe, perhaps based on hearsay, experiences with older models, Apple’s commercials, but not on their own experience with installing Windows 7 on the new Macs.
Back to my trying to get help from Apple Care ordeal:
This new Apple Care Senior Adviser said she wouldn’t be able to help me till Thursday. Not that great. I expected her to say she could help as soon as I get the device.
I can’t stomach calling the general Apple Care number and be asked the same questions all over again by somebody else.
I’ll go and buy the device today.
Ouch, another $20 plus out of pocket in addition to the thousands already spent on the brand new Mac which was supposed to work like a charm. Not to mention the waste of time and gas.
I’ll keep you posted on whether things will work after that.
Update: August 17, 2010
Hurray, I was able to install Windows 7 on my new Mac without waiting for Apple Care help till Thursday.
It took buying a USB storage device and following the instructions given in the article on Apple’s site.
I’m quite sure that things will work fine now on my new Mac using Windows 7.
I want to add another word of praise for the Simply Computing store in White Rock whose manager Tony came forward and offered to waive the $180 installation charge and install the Windows 7 for me after I related to him the problems I had with getting any meaningful help from Apple Care before I talked to their Senior Adviser on Monday.
I sent Tony the link to the article on Apple’s site after talking to the guy at Apple Care who denied it had any bearing on new Windows 7 installations on my new Mac.
I’m glad I didn’t have to bother with having to take my computer back to the store.
If you read this far I admire your attention span.
I’m disappointed with Apple and how they lure people to purchase their products without making sure that they or their sellers inform the people about to buy them about any problems or issues, especially if they are asking specifically as I have done.
I’m disappointed with Apple Care, which is not free and in spite of that seemed ignorant about what problems there are with Apple products and how to fix them. I felt that I needed to educate them on where to find the solution to the Windows 7 installation problem.
They kept asking me the same questions instead getting to the root of the problem fast. They should have been able to help me right away.
Am I expecting too much when I insist that Apple speak the truth about their products and if there is a problem with them that they take care of their customers?
And I mean free care that doesn’t require their customers to spend any additional money and huge amount of time as I had to.
Have you encountered any problems with Apple products and Apple Care yourself ?
What do you think about the article on the Apple’s site ?
How could my first personal Apple Care Adviser tell me what he did?
Please leave me your comment and then bookmark and tweet the post for others to find it and express their views.
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Youtube