How Hot Is Your Blog? Lukewarm? Cold?

Hot blog or a 'blog' of ice?


Have you ever wondered why your "just hot from the oven" blog is not that sizzling hot after all over a period of time?

If you're looking for ways to retain your readership, keep them coming back and gain more readers, maybe you need to step back and take another real, good look at your blog.

We know that building readership is a damn tough task, especially for nascent bloggers. Unless you have no compunction about taking the link farm route which is not advisable in the first place, what else can you do to improve your blog's standing or popularity?

I know what I'm saying is nothing fresh from the oven, it's just that Modern Life, a UK information blog about the World Wide Web, has this latest post: What's Wrong With My Blog?

Without further much ado, let's dig into all the reasons that Modern Life has listed for nascent bloggers. They tagline it as "A guide to common pitfalls, mistakes & faux pas in blogging."

Here's the list:

• Ensure you have enough content
  
• Clarify your blog's topic - diversify or focus on a niche if necessary
  
• Accept that some topics are just too marginal
• Controversy doesn't wash well
• Don't use a default theme if you can avoid it
• Consider your blog's brand
• Update often, but don't let quality suffer
• Ensure linkability
• Don't over-monetize
• Make sure your SEO is up to scratch
• Patience, patience, patience!

That's right. According to Modern Life, patience is "the most important piece of advice for new bloggers...It isn't going to happen overnight." To get to the details of the above list, you can visit their site and digest all you need to know.

However, I would like to add here that I may not agree to a couple of their wisdom thoughts but this I'll keep to myself. A thousand apologies!

Meanwhile, Problogger has picked up this one, too!

Over at Problogger, Darren Rowse has posted this question: What's Wrong With Your Blog? With reference links to a question that's not that new after all on his blog. If you check it out, there are tons of comments out there.

Being one of the top ranking blogs has its advantages. With due respect to Problogger, my honest take is that a top ranking blog can touch on any topic and the majority of the blogging world will rush in to make comments. Some constructive, some are just ingratiating themselves, others just spam and cleverly disguised. Go to any "big-time blogs" and you'll always see the usual suspects rushing in to supply their regular quotas of such comments.

Remember the days of the Cold War? It was a joke then among the publishing fraternity that when Soviet Union President Leonid Brezhnev coughed or when China's Mao Tse-tung coughed, the whole world shook!!!

I guess this analogy can apply to present-day so-called "big-time bloggers" as well. We all know who the rest are. So when they coughed (aka write a post of great relevancy or otherwise), the whole blogging world shook (aka the usual suspects and nascent bloggers start to flock at their gates).

Normally I don't drop by just to leave a comment unless it's a blog where I have developed a kind of rapport. But I do drop in, even at Darren's blog now and then, when I feel an urge to find out what's new over there. Same with the rest. Well, it all depends on the post topic, I guess.

Allow me to quote this comment coming from Mary-Helen Ward, an Australian woman who has a blog mainly about knitting. She posted her comment in Problogger's blog regarding the above topic:

I think that one of the downsides of blogs is the advent of celebrity bloggers. Within various parts of the blogosphere, a few bloggers who are mediocre writers with nothing much to say have somehow attracted huge followings, attracting hundreds of hits a day and adoring commenters. This hasn't happened to me (yet), so it may be that I am just jealous. :)"


If I'm a top problogger and write a post like this, can you imagine how many comments will appear here? Go figure.