Making a sticky blog

photo credit: sergis blog

I can’t believe I was blogging for so long without linking back to John Chow. Well, today all this will change as John wrote a great post in the subject of making your blog more sticky. This is something I am thinking about for some time and John Chow’s post couldn’t happen at a better time.

Blog stickiness can be defined by two factors: how often people come back to your site and how long they stay onsite. Improving my blog’s stickiness is definitely one of my top priorities for the next few weeks and thus I find John’s post quite helpful.

Let’s check what John chow suggests to improve your blog’s stickiness and compare it to what I’ve did or not do on GregWolejko.com

Have a Unique Blog Design - although I like design of my blog, it is definitely not unique. This will change as soon as I will have time to finish my elements of blog design series.

Have Lots of Interlinking Pages - I think I’m doing all right in this department. I link back in my posts and have the “related posts” section. What John adds to the pack is “random post” feature. This sounds cool and I believe I will add it to my blog in the new version.

Encourage Comments - this needs a bit of work from my side. Still not satisfied with the number of comments and this definitely has to change. John suggests rewarding top commentators by adding their top list to the blog, but this is something I’m not sure about. Will have to think about it.

Make It Easy for Readers to Subscribe - I think this big blue RSS icon gives an ease of subscribing and hopefully this is enough. Is it?

Offer a Free Newsletter - this is not for me I think. Two reasons why: not enough readers and probably this feature is not interesting for my targeted readers.

Offer a Free eBook - what can I say… stay tuned Something will happen in the eBook department. This I know for sure.

Follow Me On Twitter - Twitter is a great tool for staying up to date with current events thus making it a perfect site for a blogger (specially a geeky blogger like me). If you don’t do this already follow me on Twitter.

Post More Often - 5 posts per week is quite enough I think. If anything I will reduce my posting frequency a bit. But I will have to figure this out on myself.

And this is it. Perfect timing for John Chow. Gave me inspiration for today’s post and also provided very useful things I need to focus on in the near future.