2 Quick, Easy Ways to Stunt the Growth of Your Blog
Developing a sense of community among your readers not only helps your readership grow faster, but it also keeps people coming back more often. I realize, though, that some of you would rather only your mother read your blog (and through a feed reader no less), so for those readers I’m excited to present two quick, easy ways to make sure your blog grows very slowly.
Don’t Respond to Comments
This one works great! Nothing makes your readers feel completely rejected like you ignoring their comments to your posts. Let the peons discuss the topic amongst themselves while you attend to much more important things. Guys like Patrick, Aaron, Mark and Ben clearly have nothing better to do because they carry on a veritable conversation with their readers in the comments! Sheesh.
Don’t Allow Readers to “Subscribe to Comments”
Sometimes a conversation on your blog can last for days. You definitely don’t want that. It just eats up your bandwidth and makes people come back way too often. For that reason, definitely don’t use the subscribe to comments plugin. Nothing encourages someone to come back and use more of your precious server capacity than making it super easy for them to follow the conversation from wherever they are. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to monitor the comments on a particular blog post but always forgot because they didn’t allow me to subscribe. That always really frustrated me until I realized that they didn’t want me coming back. Mission accomplished!
Never believe those people who tell you that keeping your blog a secret is hard. Just follow some basic, easy tips like these, and your blog will remain readerless for years.
You can do it!
Photo by Red Label. Some rights reserved.
Patrick Altoft
January 13, 2008 at
11:55 am
Adding the subscribe to comments plugin has certainly improved the number of comments on blogstorm.
Aiden
January 19, 2008 at
2:07 pm
I love the sarcasm. These are definitely rules that all bloggers should avoid. Another one I would like to add would be avoiding those Social Networking plugins. A lot of people use things like Digg and Stumbleupon. I even like the Facebook option to show specific people when they have the chance.
Aiden
Http://www.MyCollegeWallet.com
Chris
January 24, 2008 at
7:44 am
Yeah the subscribe to comments plugin makes bigger difference than anything else
Shane
January 24, 2008 at
10:00 am
I definitely think that Subscribe to Comments should be a standard plugin that you actually have to turn off if you don’t want it, rather than one that you have to find and install yourself.
Alex Liu
January 27, 2008 at
6:20 am
Oh no. I did the first one but not the second one which is the plugin. Thanks. I have it and will add it immediately!
Alex Liu
How to Become A Millionaire
http://secretsofunlimitedwealth.com
Kelly
April 24, 2008 at
2:06 am
Definitely agree with your tips…Having comment responded by the blog owner makes reader feel welcome and encourage them to return. Honestly speaking, I never subscribed to comment but I rarely forget to check the pages where I leave my comments. I’m thinking to start use it now…
Ilia
May 3, 2008 at
1:49 pm
I’m surprised comment subscription does not come as standard. Must have plugin!
Shane
May 3, 2008 at
1:53 pm
Me too, Ilia. I’m so used to seeing it on blogs now that it really frustrates me when it’s not there.