Infinite Path

If you have been writing a blog for a while, you may be wondering how it is being received across the web. There are, of course, several obvious ways to find out how your opinions are being received, including reading any feedback on your blog and keeping a close eye on changes in traffic. However, how else can you make sure that you are providing your loyal followers with what they really want? The answer is not simple and, to do this properly, you would need to spend a considerable amount of time planning a complex strategy. However, luckily for you, there are several obvious and easy steps which can be followed to give you a brief idea of how well your blog is performing:

• Monitor how someone is viewing your blog: This is a simple yet potentially effective technique. Ask someone who is unfamiliar with your blog to take a quick look at it. Allow them to spend five minutes browsing your blog as if they had come across it on the web naturally. After this period of time has elapsed, ask them some basic questions. Target these questions to help you find out more information about specific parts of your blog that are worrying you. For instance, how easy did they find it to access related blog posts from your main page? Did they even think about doing this? How did they find the usability of your site? Did they find it easy to navigate or did they become frustrated trying to perform a simple action? This technique is not at all representative, since the opinions of one person may be the opposite of another. However, it does give you a quick idea about what needs to be improved and what already works. If you want to make this technique more representative, simply ask a few more people to do the same thing. Encourage honesty from the people you ask to take part. Make it clear that you won’t be offended by their input!
• Spend some time conducting research yourself: It may have been so long since you made your blog that it is now slightly out-of-date with regards to formatting and style. Dedicate an hour or two of your time to having a close look at other blogs which are ranking highly and performing well on the web. Is there a common style of formatting that they are using? After you have done this and provided yourself with a general idea of what works and what doesn’t work, take a fresh look at your website. This can be hard because you know your site like the back of your hand but try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never seen your site before.
• Write a blog post: Outline your concerns in a short blog post and encourage input from your readers. Ask them what they like and what they aren’t so keen on at the moment. If you have a particular area of concern, ask your readers how you could improve it to make their experience of your blog stress-free.
• Email your loyal followers: If you are able to find an email address (or several) used by your loyal followers, ask them individually for their opinions. Ask for active input from them and make them feel as if their opinions will make an actual difference to you in the long-run. This technique can be particularly useful if you know that one of your readers is involved in a profession which could work to your advantage. For example, is one of your readers a professional web designer? If so, ask them targeted questions about how you could improve the layout of your blog in order to attract more readers and keep the ones that you currently have, happy.
• Insert a poll on your blog: Inserting an obvious and easy-to-use poll on your blog will encourage input from visitors who do not usually come across your site. It is all very well encouraging debate and input from people who are familiar with your blog but new visitors may not feel comfortable providing you with personalised opinions. It is much easier for these people to spend a few seconds clicking on a poll anonymously. Make sure you do something with the results. It is all too common for blog authors to conduct polls, some on a large scale, and then ignore the results.