Make readers feel comfortable in your Blog space
Your reasons for starting a Blog will most definitely be different than mine, it’s natural as we are all unique. But! Were coming from the same place, be it you, me or Matt for instance. Were either doing it for fun (a very rare thing, so don’t fool yourself) or were doing it for fame & fortune. I’d say 99% of us fall into the latter category without even knowing it. At the end of it all thought I think our readers are what we should be concerned about. It’s them for who we keep blogging, although we might tell ourselves different…
Here are a few things you can do to make your Blog, Reader-friendly:
About page: Liz summed it up quite well at SOB.com. I really enjoy reading the About page of bloggers and I’m sure it’s the same for others. It gives you a small idea of the human behind the font. I’m not saying give the readers your life story, no; give them a short read about you. I’ve decided that About page will be updated more frequently from now on.
Archives: A not-so-looked-at part of many blogs is the Archive section, again here too plugins can make your life easier. Archives are a nicely sorted area of your blog that contains links to all your posts; it’s a very good area for readers to quickly find your past posts. I often use a Blogs Archive page to find a post I’m looking for.
Comments: Readers for the most part don’t like to and are lazy to Comment. Here’s where you come in! Make their life easier and you’ll be rewarded with Comments galore. I like reading Comments on my posts, be it positive or otherwise. Comments let you have a conversation with your readers, it’s the only way you can hear their view point about what you write.
Comment Editing: A feature sorely lacking on my own blog, I am sure readers would appreciate being able to correct mistakes made by them. Digg.com has a similar feature. Here’s a plugin that let’s you allow Comment Editing for your readers.
Search: Erin & SeanRox have both mentioned this about my Sidebar, which I have taken some time to re-do, it’s not complete yet but it’s getting there. New readers who visit your blog would like to Search for past information, the related posts plugin gives them a quick view of preview posts, but having a ready/available and easy to spot Search box is a big help.
Subscribe: RSS/Atom et al. You know its part of mostly everyone’s list of web apps, an RSS feed reader of some sort. I think FeedBurner makes it very easy for you to run all your feeds via it and allow users to even Subscribe to your RSS feed via e-mail. Yvonne pointed out the importance of having a clean sidebar before and she’s right, make that RSS button nice and prominent so that new readers and visitors will have a look at it immediately on entering your site.
Readability: It’s tricky to put this aspect of your Blog into words, hah, how’s that for an odd statement in a blog post 
For me it simply means don’t dumb down your writing and don’t over-do it. Neither get you good results and will definitely put off your readers. I write as though it was me reading my Blog, casually. Sure it depends on what topic you write about, but remember it’s your readers who are important.
If you have any more tips making your readers at ease, the comments are open for you!
Good related reading: Commenting: Common Sense and Respect
Originally posted at TechZOnline.net
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