How to Make Your Blog Reader-Friendly

"Whaddya mean, ‘reader-friendly’? It’s in English, what more do you want?"

Let’s start with why we blog (well, why most of us do, anyway): We want to establish a rapport with our readers, and we want to interact with them. The genesis for this post was Brajana’s article on tips to improve blog usability at Mend Pet. She makes several excellent points, so by all means follow the link!

I read a lot of blogs–over 100, almost evenly split between WoW and non-WoW. Many of the non-WoW blogs are "professional blogs," that is, written by people whose livelihood is blogging. Still, I’d like to see some of the items I mention below on their blogs.

So what do I mean by "reader-friendly"? You may recall I posted last month a "Friday Five" article on reader-friendly WordPress plugins. I identified add-ons I use to improve the interaction between myself and my readers. However, there are other things you can do to facilitate that interaction, without addons.

• Make your RSS feed button PROMINENT. Definitely put it "above the fold" but preferably right at the top of your blog. And for heaven’s sake, if you have more than one "Subscribe" button, be sure they all point to the same place! A lot of bloggers have a FeedBurner button, but their theme also has a "Subscribe to RSS" link that points to their default feed–which pretty much defeats the purpose of using FeedBurner. (Yes, you’ll need to edit your theme to remove or change those additional links, but it’s a pretty simple task. Let me know if you need help!)
• Speaking of RSS feeds, give your subscribers a FULL RSS feed! Believe me, I’m not the only person who follows a hundred or more blogs each day. Even the most successful professional bloggers provide full feeds, and count on reader interaction to prompt click-throughs on their ads. (If you don’t have ads, then why insist readers click through to your blog?)
• Provide your readers with a way to communicate with you. There are a number of reasons a reader may want to write to you, other than by commenting on a post. I use a Contact Page, but just an email address or link is helpful. If you don’t want a clickable link for all the world’s spammers to use,¹ there is at least one website that will turn your email into an image.²

And yes, there are even more steps you can take with add-ons to make your blog more reader-friendly:

• Let your readers edit their comments. Sure, we ought to spell-check our comments before hitting "Submit," but who among us hasn’t read a comment we posted and said, "Oops!"? Or had a second (or third!) thought we wanted to add? I don’t know about you, but I hate commenting two or three times when one would suffice. (Sure, I ought to be more organized in my thinking, too, but hey…I have a hundred more blogs to read!) For self-hosted WordPress bloggers, I recommend WP Ajax Edit Comments. There are others out there (although I’m not sure what’s available for wordpress.com or blogspot.com).
• Speaking of comments, include a Subscribe to Comments link for each article. I do it through Mark Jaquith’s Subscribe To Comments. Once again, though, other solutions are available. This really encourages readers to follow a conversation. I find it especially handy for sites like Tami Moore‘s Blue Moon and Choose, where I interact not only with the author, but with other readers as well. And isn’t that what we REALLY want to do?

What tools and techniques do you use to keep your readers active and engaged with you and your blog? Share with all of us in the comments.