Turn your complaints into blog traffic!Actually it is better to get complaints than it is to hear the cliched deafening roar of silence.
NOT OFFERING EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION FOR RSS
Was at a marketing gurus site and thought great I will get their RSS delivered to my inbox.
Oh snap! There is no email option.
How is that for a marketing guru?
Snap to you buddy.
COMMENTS ONLY IF YOU LOG IN
This is nuts! Are your readers going to email you and ask you to change this?
That is the sound of deafening silence my friend.
Is it worth it to have a reader unsubscribe or not subscribe at all to your blog if they have to login every time just to comment?
You'd better hope to hear the wail of a bull horn over crickets any day.
You don't have to publish every single comment but you turn readers into advocates if they feel you are listening.
09/11/08: Here is a great comic I found on the Original Hadron Collider. Take a good look at the ONE comment that was made.
NOT HAVING A WAY TO GET IN TOUCH WITH YOU
What if I had a million dollars to give you and didn't have a way to send you an email to let you know about it? Ok I could call you but I don't have your number either.
Or...
Imagine trying to order something that you want or need badly from a company and there is no phone number to call.
SPAM is not the end of the world and I say that as a woman because in a perfect world women would get spam. Simply they don't.
There are ways around SPAM learn them. See above on comments too. Not enabling reader feedback will hurt you more than SPAM ever will.
Blog Tip: Turn your emails and comments into article ideas and never have 'bloggers block' again.
POP UPS AND OTHER MISCELLANEOUS B.S.
Unless you have one of those really cool expensive ads that zip pretty animations across your screen don't go there.
It is an interruption in the readers experience...and it's damned irritating!
You don't want readers to click "Skip This Ad" buttons. You want to capitalize on readers clicking things that count like RSS subscriptions and other types of services and programs that are win-win.
Checklist:
o Sign up with Feedburner or other email type aggregators and offer email subscriptions.
o Disable login for comments.
o Create a contact page or at least allow moderated comments. At the very least have your email segmented some how if you have bot phobia.
Your readers can figure out emailme @ mymail dot com. Not too professional but it's better than nothin'.
o For every pop-up ad you have replace it with a link, button, badge, video or ad in your post that proves itself. A Twitter button, affiliate link or free e-book is far more useful and far less irritating.
What are some other ideas or complaints that you can come up with?
Do you need help implementing these tactics? Contact me!
Comic from: ahajokes.com
What a great blog. I hope I can make a blog like this also. The content is well-written.
ReplyDeleteNice Post
ReplyDelete@nfl and @SEO thank you! :)
ReplyDeletegreat blog! one other way to irritate website users is by providing them bad navigation and un-intuitive track backs
ReplyDeleteThe login to comment thing is really fricking irritating. I'll just skip on to the next blog when they ask me to login just to comment. The other thing that I really don't get is when some people disable comments as you have mentioned here. I know a guy that did this. I was trying to comment and noticed comments were closed. When I asked him about it he said he was getting too much spam so that's why he did it. My opinion a blog isn't a blog without comments.Seriously what's the point if you don't allow comment?
ReplyDelete