What a Class Clown Can Teach You About Blogging

I'll admit it. My high school years were some of the best years of my life - excluding the peer pressure, pimples, wild hairdos and Boy George. Classes were usually always fun or at least interesting. And on the occasion that I was subjected to a class that was "like" totally boring, the class clown always managed to save the day. These guys knew what their audience wanted and just how to provide it.

Class clowns electrified the atmosphere and excited the other students with some of the boldest and most daring antics you could imagine. Of course, the "regular" students would have never considered doing anything even remotely close to the mind games and pranks these cats loved playing. But it sure was fun and memorable to watch. Often you found yourself "anticipating" what the class clown had planned for the following day.

Well now that you're out of high school and light years away from any chance of being summoned to the principal's office it might not be a bad idea to incorporate the crazy antics of the class clown into your blogging.

Knowing What Your Readers Want

The class clown knew exactly how to stimulate his peers. They used timing, presentation, and the element of surprise to get the most out of their performances. In a room filled with bored classmates, the clown seized the opportunity to garner as much attention as he possibly could. The more attention he received the better his performances got.



Timing is Everything

As a blogger, do you know what time of day your blog receives the most hits or which days of the week your traffic is the highest? Check your stats. If you're not utilizing a program that monitors your sites statistics, get one. Analyze what your blog's peak times are. 

Do more people visit your blog in the morning or after lunch? 

Do you have more visitors on Tuesday afternoons as opposed to Saturday nights?  

Where are your visitors arriving from - search engines, direct links, forums or blogging directories and communities. 

After determining what your blog's peak days and hours are, use this information in your favor. Publish your posts during the hours you have the highest frequency of visitors. Save some of your more thought provoking posts for your highest peak days. And by all means, be consistent with the times you post.








First Impressions are Lasting

Visitors who arrive via organic traffic (something we all want) won't be familiar with your blog. Having a nice clean layout and great content will increase the likelihood of  these visitors returning. 

Your color scheme should make for easy viewing. Dark text on light backgrounds and light text on dark backgrounds is basically a given. Try to steer clear of too much red, yellow or green text. I don't know about you but those colors are definitely hard on my eyes. 


Then there's the widget thing. We all LOVE widgets! But there is a such thing as widget overkill. 

Unnecessary widgets on your home page may be costing you far more than you stand to earn from someone clicking. Research you affiliate based widgets. Determine which ones offer the highest compensation and use those.  Take the time to make sure items are aligned. Start cleaning up your sidebar by:

• Determining whether you have too many widgets - nobody likes clutter.
• Removing widgets that aren't really serving any purpose
  
• Utilizing a recent posts and popular posts widget - this highlights your best
  
• checking for dead links and removing - to prevent visitor frustration
  

Be Consistent With Your Blogging Frequency

Once visitors determine your blog is a place to find quality content and useful information your job is just beginning. If your post frequency has been daily, make sure to continue. 

One of the biggest turn offs for blog readers is eagerly anticipating a post from their favorite blog and landing on your page to find the same post from the day before. 

Everyone Loves Surprises

At some point in your blogging journey, you might want to consider starting a forum. These work well with larger blogs that have a substantial following. 

Give some thought to publishing an email newsletter. Newsletters generally consist of special posts you haven't published on your blog and other tidbits for newsletter reader's eyes only. If your blog is associated with an online business, offer special sales, coupons or other discounts. 


Blog contest and prize give-a-ways are also a lot of fun and a great way to increase reader participation. Be creative. Don't go broke with expensive prizes. Sometimes just knowing you've won regardless of how small the prize may be is rewarding enough.

Don't take it too far. No spit-ball throwing, pencil plucking, or fake flatulence! We're going to think like the clown....not be the clown. Remember timing, presentation and the element of surprise can all be utilized to help you seize your opportunity to establish a true presence in the blogosphere. Take it from me

...a former class clown!

Liked this post. Subscribe via email: