I’ll be sharing how to set things up to attract attention with a post and what to do with it once you’ve attracted readers. Okay, so I don’t make money from blogging, but to me, the Readers are friends and encourage me to continue writing. How do you think the amnesiac finished a book and has it on Amazon? I was in limbo before I started blogging and found the community here.

YOU NEED TO GRAB THE ATTENTION OF THE CASUAL READER (CR).

If you’ve been blogging a while and look around for how to bring people to your blog, then you’ve seen tips about catchy Post Titles. Yep, this is the big one for getting people to click on your post, to begin with.

• Don’t lie or bait and switch. In other words, your title should be true about the post. If not, people won’t come back.
• How do you create that attention grabber title? I’ll give you the three that work the best.
  • Use numbers if doing something like quotes.
  • Use the old ‘How to” if you are going to share a tip or advice.
  • Or use “What do you do …”

Do these work? Here are my top 10 most ‘Liked’ posts.

• About Me
• How to Survive the Blog Life.
• Blogging Personality: The Key to Success.
• A Blogging Tip.
• 10 Tips to Make Blogging Enjoyable. Traps to Avoid.
• 18 Quotes to Inspire Writers, Bloggers–Everyone.
• 1 Key to Help People Find Your Blog.
• 10 Fun (?) Facts About Me
• Don’t ALLOW people to control YOU.
• WE COLOR THE WORLD.

Anything I mentioned above stands out to you on that list? The question is, did I use those methods on purpose or not? The truth? I did it with only one, and that one I did use the numbering the way the tips I’ve read said to. I used 18 instead of using numbers such as 5, 10, 15, 20, and so on. What you see though is, that attention grabbers work. However, grabbing them doesn’t mean you keep them coming back.

YOU NEED TO KEEP THE CR’S ATTENTION.

To turn a visitor into a regular reader of your blog:

• Follow through on what your title promised.
• Make your post visually and mentally stimulating.
  • Get the readers eyes moving.
  • Mix up your post with Images scattered about and not always centered or all in a column along one side of the post.
  • Don’t have too many font sizes or colors. That gets annoying. If a list, like a list of quotes, perhaps alternate two colors, with odd being one color and even being the other.

YOU NEED TO PLAY THE NAME GAME

Sounds like I’m saying to spread gossip, right? No. What you need to do is make sure when you put an image in your post, you have filled in the Alt Text field for the image. Why? Do you notice that quite often people put images at the very top of a post? Have you ever noticed that I rarely put my images right at the very top? (WordPress has changed there Alt Text field to the top of the box since this image was captured. I’ll be updating it shortly._

There’s a reason I don’t. Search Engines crawl through your pages searching for key words a person is looking for. If you have an image taking up room at the top, and nothing in the Alt Text field, two things get messed up: the Search Engines may discover other more SEO friendly site pages and push you down the list during their hunt, and the other thing, nothing to do with Search Engines, is screen readers for the visually impaired don’t read that blank field and it throws them off a bit. Simply pick maybe the best five words to describe what the image is about in the context of the post. It doesn’t need to be complicated. It could be something like “Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge Image”. Also, be certain to include what the post is about in the first paragraph as well as anywhere appropriate.

LINK TO RELATED CONTENT YOU ALREADY HAVE.

If people visit you looking for one topic, add a link at the end of your post to previous content of a similar nature the reader may find interesting. One thing you can do with the old post is to change the name of it to something catchier and more attention-grabbing for the reader to click on. The thing is, your content may be great, it’s just your title is bad. (See Blog Tip: Links to Blogs and Articles-How to and WHY to find out to link.)

YOU NEED TO INVITE READERS TO FOLLOW YOUR BLOG.

Make it easy for a visitor to click follow. You can:

• Put a link to Bloglovin’ in your post and have people follow you that way. It’s not my preferred method but it is one.
• You can also include your Twitter handle with a link included for people to follow you on Twitter. I do this. (Wonder how to add it? See Blog Tip: Links to Blogs and Articles-How to and WHY
  
• You can also put a script in your post that when people click on it, they follow your blog. I do this.

I imagine you may be wondering what that script is I mentioned. Let’s see if I can put it in here and make it not work.

[ blog_subscription_form ]

Success! What you need to do is take all the bold you see and remove the space between the [ and the b and between the m and the ]. Place that in your post and it will appear as everything between my Book Cover below and my Twitter handle. There is no actual HTML scripting.

Check out 10 Tips to Make Blogging Enjoyable. Traps to Avoid or 18 Quotes to Inspire Writers, Bloggers–Everyone. You choose which your in the mood for today.

Much Respect

Ronovan

Click HERE to see my Historical Fiction novel on Amazon.

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