My Top Ten Tips For SL Bloggers Who Want More Traffic

Every Friday on New World Notes, I highlight posts across the vast Second Life blogger network.  I love promoting talented SL bloggers with interesting things to express, but for every post I feature, there are usually many more that I liked, but ultimately passed on for various reasons.  That in mind, here's ten tips for crafting posts that are more likely to grab my attention-- and more readers in general. 

Tip the First: Make Post Titles Concise, Clear, and Keyword Heavy.
The title is almost as important as the actual post. If it's vague, obscure, or too-clever, a reader is apt to skip it.  Be sure to add proper nouns, especially variations of "Second Life", because your post will gain a higher Google rank.

Tip the Second: Include full SL name bylines!
I can't count the number of Second Life blogs where only the avatar's first name is listed-- or sometimes, no SL name is given at all.  Full Resident names are important for proper attribution, and just as important, promoting your blog.

Tip the Third:  Pictures Please!
Whenever possible, include at least one SL screenshot with each post, an image that visually conveys the post's core idea or theme.   Images immediately make a post more appealing-- and distinguishes it as SL specific.  (And also puts it in Google's Images stream.)

Tip the Fourth: Cover Current Events and Personal Insights.
Posts with a tie-in to ongoing, in-the-news controversies, personalities, or events, either from SL or real life, are more likely to be read.  The same goes for personal insights and reportage that are unique to you-- not a raw diary, but a narrative that conveys what you learned or what your experiences tell you about a larger story or theme.

Tip the Fifth:  Look For News Residents Can Use.
Clear and detailed personal advice on a myriad of topics are always valuable.

Tip the Sixth: Include SLURLS and Other Internal Resources
Another regular frustration of mine: SL bloggers who mention a place they visited, without including a SLURL for readers to immediately go there themselves.  Since they're not like a traditional web link, SLURLs should also be easy to spot.  Put them in bold, <in brackets>, IN CAPS, or find another prominent means.

Tip the Seventh: The Ideal Post is 250-500 Words Long.
Not a universal rule, but generally speaking, this is roughly the ideal length for a blog post.  Longer posts rarely generate a large audience, unless they are crafted to perfection.   In fact, the longer a post is, the smaller its readership will usually be.  A related sub-tip, which will keep posts short:  never publish raw unedited SL chat transcripts.

Tip the Eighth:  Find the Nutgraf!
Nut graf is writer jargon for an opening paragraph that communicates the gist and importance of the post, the thing you most want your readers to come away with.

Tip the Ninth:  Get An RSS Feed-- An Get In Touch With Me!
If you haven't added your blog's feed to this Open Forum, please do so in Comments below.  And always feel free to contact me as "Hamlet Au" in-world or via e-mail, hamlet at secondlife dot com.

Tip the Tenth:  Top Ten Lists Are Always Popular
Ten, five, three, or some other semi-arbitrary number-- top favorite SL sites, SL games, fashion, avatars, whatever.

I don't claim to be an expert-- a lot of this advice I learned myself through trial-and-error over the years, especially from writing for Om Malik, and I don't always follow them myself. 

I put it to my fellow SL bloggers-- what tips have I missed?

Comments

[Nika Dreamscape]

Hi Hamlet,

Thanks for the tips, this was an interesting read. Another suggestion you might offer to people is to use social networks like plurk and twitter to let people know when they've made a post. I've picked up many new blogs to follow from seeing people post the link on Plurk. Where as otherwise, I may not have known they even had a blog.

Just one thing I'd like to comment on that I've noticed, lately. It seems like you tend to focus almost exclusively on the same ten or so blogs, and I find myself always reading a recap of the same posts I just saw hours ago. I'm pretty sure there are hundreds of SL blogs out there.. maybe broaden your horizons and try covering some different people now and then? I'm always looking for new blogs to subscribe to, and your NWN is a good resource to see what people are talking about.. maybe just not the same dozen people, now and then. ;)

Keep up the great work!

Nika Dreamscape

[Crap Marinerq]

Top Ten List?

Bah... who stoops to that level of... um...

Never mind.

[Hamlet Au]

I do read a lot of SL blogs, Nika, I have at least 150 in my RSS feed, including yours. I'd would love to highlight more of them, hence this advice.

[rikomatic]

Dammit, Ham, you're giving away all my secrets to blogging success -- Write clear, concise, timely, useful prose.

Great, now EVERYONE is going to do that.

[Sered Woollahra]

Tip the eleventh: take your time. After you've written something, save it as draft. Return a couple of minutes later and reread the whole thing. This leaves you room to correct grammatical or style errors, incoherence, confusion etcetera. And confused readers don't return!

I've noticed that whenever I publish a post immediately after writing it, it tends to be sloppy, incoherent or without a clear storyline, same words used twice in one sentence.. it's often a mess :-)

[Emerald Wynn]

Another PR tip: COMMENT on other blogs, particularly on the more widely read blogs. Don't mistake this tip as a suggestion to be insincere or a shameless blog plugger (oops, "blog plugger" sounds a little . . . wrong). Obviously only speak if you have something relevant to say.

I can't tell you how many new readers I've gained who commented, "I saw your [witty, compelling, heartfelt, insightful, controversial, insert adjective here] comment on so-and-so's blog and am so glad I swung by here to check out yours."

** waves up at Nika, whom I know through Ali Chenaux, whom I know because she followed my comment on her blog over to mine and liked it -- see how it works?! Kevin Bacon is somewhere in that six degrees too!**

And while insight and useful info always can be a great draw when expressed correctly, there's nothing wrong with getting your goof on occasionally -- if you've mastered the fine art of goof. Jerry Seinfeld, for instance, captivated TV viewers across the globe with his "show about nothing."

[GoSpeed Racer]

I can vouch for Sered's approach. I make so many typos and grammatical mistakes my first time around. My ideas come out, then I have to finesse.

[Daila Holder]

I think I am actually guilty of all of those offensives. I write long wordy posts and hardly ever use pictures. Yet the key to my blog is that it is my blog. I highly enjoy having readers, but it is not my sole purpose for blogging. I don't blog just to cater to readers. I blog because I have a topic on my mind, and I hope that people read it and get something out of it. If someone reads a post and says "Oh that would have been so much better, if it had a picture", then ultimately I failed with whatever message I was trying to send.

[Gogo]

Great tips, Hamlet! I'll try to implement some for my blog. I get away with breaking most of these rules, but not the important ones, like including pictures!! For a fashion blog, pics and slurls are super important. I hardly ever read anything longer than a paragraph or two, but when I see a picture that entices me, I'm more likely to tp wherever the slurl leads.

[Hamlet Au]

Good points, Gogo, a post's word length is less important for fashion blogs, which are a different genre. I thought your lighting tips post was great and hit all the above. Where'd it go? The link seems broken now.

[Gogo]

Hamlet, I've recently moved from wordpress to typepad, so all my links are broken. I don't know how to do the CNAME forwarding thing with my domain :( The link for the lighting tutorial is here:

http://juicybomb.typepad.com/blog/2008/09/gogos-lighting.html

[Harper Ganesvoort]

There's at least a few of these that I can profit from; but I find I can't control article length and get across what I feel I should -- depending on the post, of course. I do try to be deliberate and factual, and clear where facts leave off and opinion begins; but if it's going to take 750 or 1,000 words to get something out of my craw and explain the reasons for it, well....

I'll admit I can probably improve my titles -- though I like things like the recent "I'm Sari -- So Sari." (Sorry about that "sari.") But I'll work on this (grin). Other things, we'll see what I can work in.

BTW, I added my URL and feed URL to the Open Forum you noted above.

[ArminasX]

Tip the Twelveth (are we on 12 yet?) is to post on a regular basis. If you are posting daily - post daily. If you are posting weekly, do it! If you deviate from your schedule you will be dropped by some readers who think you faded and have better things to do with their time than wait for you to return. Blogging is a committment, and you must keep it up. (and please don't try to do it daily; it's really hard to do that!)

[Doubledown Tandino]

I actually want to put my #1 up on the list. Although Hamlet's top 10 are excellent, I feel my #1 works better than anything... and that is.....

Get your readers to refer readers to refer readers to refer readers to refer readers.
When other people are spreading the word about getting people to read your blog, that works better than anything.... now, given, lets hope your blog follows all 10 steps once the referrals show up :O)

[Dyami Jameson]

Thanks for some much needed reminders Hamlet, and others too. Most of these I practice already, but in other areas I could use more work. I'm going to have to refer back to this post from time to time for a checkup.

[Jaymin Carthage]

I find that saying something less than 100% stellar about OpenSim triples my hits.

[Tina]

And as I write in Swedish EVERY ONE loves my blogg.. hmm shoud I write THAT in Swedish?:-))

Och eftersom jag skriver på Svenska så älskar ALLA min Blogg!

Good adwices but never forgett to make the blogg yours! With a peronal touch!

Have great day! /Tina

PS: its a Google translator placed at it so its possible to read it in your own language to! HUGS!

[rikomatic]

Hamlet, do you have an opinion on the use of tags versus categories? You have very specific categories that you use, and seem quite good about using them. Does this help your hit count? Or just aggregate stuff for later use?

[Harper Ganesvoort]

In my opinion (if I can jump in here, and your mileage may vary), both tags and categories are vital. Categories serve as the more rigid organizational structure of your blog, like the Dewey Decimal Classification at your library, and you should follow those criteria as closely as possible, opening as few categories as needed and growing it very slowly. Tags, on the other hand, the tags can be more free-form, a sort of "brainstorm" method. You can follow your tagging "system" as rigidly or as flexibly as you wish.

I tend to be fairly rigid about the tags, but I have only 37 categories, and I stay pretty tight within them. (Some of them may really be blogroll categories, since WordPress restructured how they handle blogrolls. Probably closer to 20 working article categories, and I use only a subset of that on a regular basis.)

And I get hits from WordPress.com's tag surfer function off of my tags, so that helps as well.

[Second Life Writer]

these are some great tips. I will definately follow some of them. the 10th tip is the best because yes top 10 lists do work well. I am impressed with how many comments you got on this post. I enjoy your blog as well.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

I usually write 250-500 words on comments, not on articles...

Ah well. Now I know what I was doing wrong :)