Every blogger has a similar goal: to interest someone. Whatever niche we chose, no matter how often we post, we try to find a way to interest those people out there in cyber space. After a while, when your blog is out of its infancy, the shiny extior of the blog has worn off. Your blog is no longer a hot commidty if the novelty of whatever you are writing about wears off within a couple of months. So the question is, how do we keep things interesting?

• Don’t lose your passion
  If you lose the passion that started your blog, then your blog will lose whatever excitement it has. Niches are so sucessful because people are interested in what is within that niche. If you lose interest, how is your audience supposed to follow what your writing? You need to have passion in order to keep your readers focused on your blog.
• Channel your passion
  I love what I do. I love being a student, I love writing. I have the passion, but if I were just to ramble, you would be lost. The key is to take the passion that you have and channel it into something productive. Don’t rush a post, put time into it to sculpt your vision. Make the ideas you see in your mind take shape to something beautiful. Your post is your art. You want it meusem worthy, not just worthy to hang on the refridgerator.
• Make something new
  People read newspapers for news. People read journals for reasearch. Why are people reading your blog? Regardless of the purpose you see your blog as having, coming out with a unique idea, perspective, or bit of news makes you stand out. Why do some small-time bloggers spend their money to go to blogging conferences? Not every blogger has a list of sponsers or the disposible income to attend conferences on a whim. So when you do spend the money to go somewhere or do something, why not blog about it? Lets say you have a blog about flowers and you go to an exotic flower show. When people search for information about this show, don’t you want your posts to show up? Put new information, new ideas, new thoughts into the world and you will stay interesting.
• Think about your reader
  Everyone says you should know your reader. Know what they like and dislike so that you know what you have to do to appeal to them. You have passion, and so do they. Appeal to them in any way you know how. If your readers are a particular group (i.e. stay at home moms interested in all natural cooking) then put yourself in thier place and think about what they would like to see and read.
• Have fun with this
  Finally, have fun with what you are writing. For a lucky few, blogging is thier job. For many of us it is our hobby turned second job. Realize this and have fun with what you do. Love what you do, enjoy it, and see your blog as a way to enrich your life.

People read this blog for SEO advices, Marketing advices, Web Design Resources, Ways to make money online etc etc. One thing that I realized that I don’t mention enough is great post. So I went on a streak of writing about post titles, core of blogging. My last post was answering the question, Why do some people always write magnificent post titles? From that post, a regular user of Balkhis, Hugo Santos raised a question how do you know which title really works.

As I promised on that post, that I will do some research on Balkhis post structures, and use my experience to come up with some headline formulas that work. Well here it is.

First of all Hugo, the answer to your question is experience. Each blog have different type of users therefore different titles work. So the results will vary. But there are some obvious headlines that always work. I mean you will always see these on digg’s front page or what not. So let me share a few that I think works almost all the time.

[Number] ways to do something something

A lot of people use the common number 101, 5, 10. I prefer to go a little off the chart and do 9 and others. Because I think 5, 10 are overrated.

- 113 ways to make money online
- 99 ways to say Sorry
- 101 ways to save electricity

How Did I [or] How I …

People love success stories, so if you accomplished something than share it because you will attract users left and right.

- How did I increase my search engine traffic by 258% in less than a month
- How I Increased my subscribers to over 1800 in ten months

[Number] Interesting Facts that you must know about [XXXX]

People love facts. They would open this post regardless. So you would be doing yourself 50% of a favor by using this headline. The other half is by writing a good post, so the user stays.

-9 Interesting Facts that you must know about Barrack Obama
-11 Interesting Facts that you must know about cell phones

You don’t have to be a [blank] to [do something]

- You don’t have to be an expert to make money online
- You don’t have to be an electrician to change your own circuit

Now these are just some ideas. These headline formulas are guaranteed to work. I mean over the years that I have been online, I have seen these work. Heck I have used some of these as well. If you are interested in knowing what posts work on Balkhis.

Check out the Case Study that I did, Which Blog Posts gets the most traffic?

If you have any more suggestions feel free to add it in the bottom. Remember headline alone just do 50% of the job. Make sure you write good content.

Ever seen top bloggers? Does it seem like that they always write great post titles? Damn I used to think this too. A person asked me after I wrote my post about Keywords and their importance in titles. The question was you always suggest that we need to write good titles. But how do we do that. How do some bloggers always write great post titles. How do you always write great post titles?

First I am flattered by the compliment. I know if you look over in my archives and check one of the earlier months, my titles weren’t as good as it was for the past 4 months or so. In this post I will tell you why some people always write magnificent post titles?

Why do you need to write great post titles?

Some of you might ask why are great post titles necessary? Remember when I wrote a guide to use digg for bloggers. Well the success with social media networks and search engines are greatly relied on great titles. You know all top bloggers get their traffic from social media and search engines. It is directly related to social media and indirectly related to search engines. When you have great post titles, you get tons of traffic from social media. More people visit your post, the more you are likely to get a backlink and the backlinks help you rank high in Search Engines.

Why do some people always write great post titles?

• They understand the concept of great headlines. A great headlines targets a specific audience and make an intriguing promise which makes the post to be irresistable. You need to understand who is your targeted audience. Because appealing to a mass audience won’t do you any good. You will see that most great headlines does not appeal to everyone.
• They know which headlines work. Aha! There is a key. You would only get this after a few months your blog is live. You would get an idea of which titles work. Which type of posts work. They see what other types of post work by looking at posts that make it on digg’s home page. Another great one to learn from is Yahoo’s headlines, they are also very catchy headlines. The concept here is that they know which headlines are proven to work. Like I know the ones that will work all the time. It means I know which posts people will respond to the most, and it has worked out very well for me on all the previous posts.
• They don’t fake headlines. They know why they write every single word. Their headlines are related to their context. They don’t try to lie just to get attention. That is why even if their headlines are not the greatest people love them. Their title is credible. So people love them.

So great headlines are an important part. People stress out about that. I am going to tell you that don’t compare yourself to experts. Because you might even be putting your self down. You don’t need to kill your motivation. So just go along with your titles. And see how it helps. Analyze your titles and write better titles. Just don’t get yourself down. Always think that if anyone can do it so can you.

Fake commenting is a habit that I see a lot of bloggers get into. Whether it is intentional or not. I don’t know. But I know that I have seen quite a few bloggers do it. I will not name anyone just so I don’t start a war of words.

What is Fake Commenting?

Spam commenting that authors often do. When they reply to each comment in a hope to start a long conversation. Or sometimes they comment with two different names.

My Question is be honest. How many of you have done that? Was it Intentional? When did you realize it?

Why Do people Fake Comment?

Often times when bloggers start their blog. They don’t receive a lot of comments. I mean I have some awesome posts that I have written in the past. Which receive excellent SE traffic, but still doesn’t have half as much comments as some of my popular posts. Often times bloggers feel discouraged. So they start running up their comment count.

Another Reason why bloggers fake comment is because they think it will make a good impression on readers. And it will make the reader comment. Which will increase the comment count even more. Your blog will look more lively.

Balkhis Answer

I will be honest and say yeah I did it. It was never intentional because I never commented from another person’s name. I would just reply to each comment even when I don’t really needed to. But I realized it when I first installed top commentator’s plugin. And saw that I was ranked at #1 and I had twice as high comments as my reader. I removed myself from the top commentator’s list. Then I realized. I don’t need to reply to each of my reader’s comment. Just reply to the one that I find necessary. Even though it is tempting. But you have to make a choice.

Alternatives to Fake Comment?

I mean fake commenting takes time. So what can you do in that time if you stop fake commenting. OO yea why don’t you use that time for something else.

• Write more posts. So for instance writing 7 posts a week. Make it 8 posts a week.
• Comment on other blogs. Get in their top commentator and take advantage.
• Join Forums, and be active there. Derive traffic from there.

Now tell me have you fake commented on your blog. Share your ideas. What did you do to avoid it?

Writing words to get more readers. What is the point when they don’t know who you are. Internet is all about marketing yourself. Once people know you, they know who they can associate the site / product with. So you need to make yourself known to others. Specially people who read your site. In this post I am talking about the about page of the blogs. People want to know why their blogs never get anywhere. That is because so many of those don’t even bother creating the write about page.

I did a small search by copying this whole paragraph below. It is the wordpress default about page text. About 173,000 blogs found. Now that shows how many people never bother updating that page.

This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.

173,000 Results found in Google

So How can you change it. I am sure most of you know it, but apparently about 173000 people don’t, so let me tell you how. Simply go to your wordpress admin panel. Hit Manage, and then go to Pages. Click on About and edit the text.

Now that is clear so let me tell you why you should have an about page.

Why an About Page

Having an about page let you engage with your readers. I know some bloggers write in a very vague style. Third Person. Why would you do that? It is your blog then own up to it. If you can’t own up to your words, then don’t write. I think about builds a connection between you and your readers. The connection that makes them trust you.

About page is usually the first page of the site that I visit. And I am sure most people do so also because About page is one of the highly visited page on Balkhis. So you want to set the good expression. So let your reader know some of the cool features they need to know about you. Cool articles, your income sources, etc etc. Anything you really want you can put it in your about page because you are directing the user into that direction. I want my readers to know about my web design firm that is why there is a link to Uzzz in my about page.

How to make an about page?

Pretty simple in wordpress. Click on the tab Write and select write page. Put together the information you want to put in there and then simply link to it from your home page. Another way you can do is when you start a blog write your first post or second post as in about you. I don’t know if there is any advantage of either one as long as you link the about page from the home page you should be fine.

How do you write an about page?

You can write it any way you like. I suggest you write it to make it personal. I chose to have it in third person. The reason for that is I didn’t write my own about page. I asked a teacher of mine to write it for me because it is better if someone else does it for you. But below are some features you need to have in your about page.

• Photo(s) – If your reader can stick a face to a blog it just makes the connection much stronger. They know how you look like. They know the person behind the blog. I absolutely dislike about pages without any image.
• Introduce yourself – Before you do anything, introduce yourself and give a little bit of your background. To show your expertise. It can show your credibility in the industry/niche you want to write in.
• Introduce your Blog – Explain the reasons the blog was formed, and what is the purpose. Introduce your ideals and so on.
• Contact Details – Make sure you leave some way that they can contact you. If you already don’t have a big button in your nav saying contact.

Now it doesn’t really have to be a 300 page book. Keep it simple and reasonable length. Make sure you make your about page prominent. Meaning link it somewhere where everyone can see it. Like mine on the top. Privacy is also an issue. While you are trying to be open. Don’t put your social security out there now. Use common sense.

What does your about page consist of? Let me know how you wrote yours.