Gaining More Business Connections Through Your Blog II

2. Humanize Your Blog
Remember, it’s a blog not a white paper, and a key differentiator is personality. Show your first-time visitors who you are (literally and figuratively).

Include a photo of yourself on every page, and if it’s a group written blog, include photos of each author. Make links to your bio easy to find. And infuse your writing with personality and voice. (If your writing sounds like someone could be saying it to you face-to-face, you have a strong sense of “voice” in your posts)

It also doesn’t hurt to mix in a video post now and again, or to make a video post available on every page, as I do over there on the right hand side.

3. Add Context to Your Blog
Sure, you’ll give first-time visitors an idea of what the blog is about via the title or tagline, but how else can you help them go deeper? Remember that your likelihood of a first-time visitor coming back goes up the more content they consume on that first visit. The “one and done” visitors are probably going to drink your beer and run over your mailbox on the way out, never to return again.

So, make sure first-time visitors can access other content that may be of interest, convincing them that perhaps they should make a return trip. That’s why I recommend the “Similar Posts” plug-in below, and why I suggest you list recent posts and popular posts prominently on both the right side and bottom of every page.

Also, don’t be afraid to link to other posts or resources from within your posts. Not in an obnoxious way, but if you’ve written other stuff that expands on the subject at hand, link away. (Incidentally, these internal links are also a SEO positive)

4. Add Calls to Action to Your Blog
Other than hopefully come back again, what do you want your first-time readers to do? You MUST ask and answer this question, and develop appropriate calls to action accordingly.

If your blog is consistent enough that you believe RSS subscription is realistic, make sure visitors can easily subscribe to your RSS feed. (As mentioned in my post about blog success metrics, if you cover a very wide topical area, subscriptions are less likely).

Most blogs aren’t visually aggressive enough in the promotion of RSS, and very few do a good job at emphasizing the opportunity to subscribe via email (as 40% of C&C subscribers do).

Also, while I think it’s somewhat less likely that a first-time visitor will tweet or Digg or Stumble your work (I’d love to see a study on that), you should make that process as easy as possible as well. I’m a big fan of the “Sexy Bookmarks” plug-in you’ll see below, because it makes the sharing buttons large and interactive.

If you have complementary resources like an Ebook, email newsletter, events or otherwise, make sure those are easy for first-time visitors to find as well. Jacob Morgan does a nice job with this, promoting his book, events, and other resources on the right side of his excellent blog.

Pay attention to your statistics with regard to calls to actions. You should know if first-time visitors are disproportionately likely to visit your Ebook page, for example. One of the data points I track closely is the number of people who visit my speaking page, where they entered the site, and if they were first-time visitors or long-time readers of the blog.

Tags: Blog, email, RSS, Search Engine Optimized, SEO, seo blog, seo costa rica, Subscription business model, White paper