I’m generally a creative, think-outside-the-box type of guy. Being a successful internet marketer or webmaster has everything to do with thinking outside of the box to further your success, but as a blogger; it can also get you in some trouble with your readers and ruin the very public image you’re trying so hard to create.

Sometime during your quest to become the next [1] John Cow or [2] BootMoney, you’ll undoubtedly lose your focus on the real reason you’ve started blogging in the first place. If you have the competitive core I was born with, you’ll probably start thinking of some creative ideas to get some traffic and rank on sites such as [3] Alexa and [4] Technorati.

I want to go over a few tricks I’ve learned and leave you with a thing or two to consider before the next time you hit that ‘Publish’ button.

Organize a plan to nurture your readers

I started my blog for a few reasons. I want to market myself, help others, and learn from the community that surrounds me. I want to share what I’ve learned and document the process for others along the way. I don’t have any plans to monetize the site right now since I have a few Adsense campaigns running to pay for most of the bills here.

If my readers don’t care for the content I publish, why should I publish it to begin with? I’ve found that a lot of bloggers are publishing for self-gratifying reasons. It’s almost as if they’re getting off by poorly regurgitating useless information. I’m not sure what most of these bloggers think this is doing for themselves, but I have realized most of them don’t stay around longer than a month or two at the most.

You see, after the publisher has gotten a rise out of confirming that you can, in fact, publish information on the internet– he/she gets bored and never logs back in. Blogging isn’t something that will grant you overnight fame and prosperity. Your visitors and potential readers will be able to tell if you’re serious within a few seconds of your blog loading. Don’t fool yourself.

Automation Makes Interaction That Much Easier

What is interaction anyway? It boils down to you communicating to your readers and allowing them to open the same line of communication with you.

[5] CommentRelish by [6] Justin Shattuck is a must have.

From [6] Justin Shattuck:

Comment relish is a Wordpress plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment, ETC.).

This is one of my most prized Wordpress plugins. You would be surprised at how many relationship-building doors this plugin opens up when configured correctly. But, I know bloggers realize the value of this plugin, because I get e-mails every other day asking how it was done or what it was called once they receive an e-mail for dropping off their first comment.

Do not use apostrophe’s or any character that isn’t alpha-numeric in your reply. Apostrophe’s are cancelled for php reasons and leave a trailing slash (/) in the e-mail. The trick with this plugin is to make it seem as personal as possible so the commentator feels special! Test the e-mail on yourself before finalizing your reply letter. Here is what mine looks like:

%AUTHOR%,
I noticed you have left your first comment recently. Thank you for taking the time to contribute to the discussion! I just wanted to extend a personal invitation from me to you, to stay around for a while and join us in the community.

If you have any questions, or if there is anything I can do for you, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me.

Contact me on AIM: meridiancrest
Contact me via e-mail: halcyon5@gmail.com
Updates via RSS: http://www.meridiancrest.com/feed

Computer generated technical stuff for your reference:
You commented on %ARTICLE%. Your comment ID is %COMMENT_ID%.

Stay blogging,
Scot Smith
www.meridiancrest.com

[7] DoFollow by Kimmo is another great plugin that encourages participation and rewards contributions to your community.
DoFollow removes the rel=’nofollow’ on your commentator’s URL’s so a bit of PR and link-love can be transferred to them in exchange for a comment. If you’re really uptight about this, as I know some people are; simply moderate comments or first-time comments. If something crazy slips through, you can always hit delete.

[8] MyAvatars by Matt makes blogging readers feel at home on your blog.
This plugin displays a user’s [9] MBL avatar beside their post to extend their brand universally across blogs they comment on. I’ve added this plugin to comments here because I like seeing who I am replying to, and I’m sure others do as well. It creates a sense of comfort for your readers, and if they see that one of their friends is commenting just from skimming your post, they may read it and comment as well.

[10] Subscribe to comments by Mark Jaquith brings your commentators back, again.
This plugin is a double-edged sword. I generally don’t care to subscribe to comments on other blogs because I don’t have time to find out what every commentator thinks on every single issue. So, I will read the story, read a few of the comments if I see someone I know commenting, and then I will leave my thoughts if neccessary. I don’t exactly care to see what others have to say on the issue.

Sometimes a story gets my interest and if it isn’t on my list of daily reads I will subscribe to keep track of it. But, there is nothing I hate worse than realizing the “Subscribe to comments” box was checked after I’ve already submitted my comment. Now I’ve got to go back and unsubscribe and it usually puts that particular blogger on my ‘do not comment ever again’ list. Be careful when you use this plugin, if someone wishes to subscribe to your comments they will. Don’t force it down their throat.

[11] Get Recent Comments by Krischan is the plugin I use to give trackbacks and recent commentators a URL on my sidebar until they’re bumped off.
If you haven’t left a comment on my blog yet, this is an easy way to gain an authority point with technorati and Google crawls my page before your link is removed most of the time. I favor this over the Top Commentator’s plugin most sites have been using because it stops a lot of silly, frank replies like, “I agree”, and keeps outbound links fresh for my readers. I’m not saying this is the way to go for everyone, but I like it this way.

So, what happens when you realize blogging is just as much about your readers as it is about yourself? Well, more people read your blog, of course: