Creating Barriers Between You and Your Readers

March 25, 2008 | By David Peralty | Filed Under Features

One of the mistakes that most bloggers make is their continual addition of barriers between them and their readership. They might not even realize they are doing it, but these barriers can mean the difference between a successful blog, and an “okay” blog.

Comments

The first barrier I want to talk about is comments, or rather the barriers that bloggers place on their comments. To combat spam, we have done a variety of things, but in doing so, we could be killing the potential conversation on our blog. Nothing stops conversation faster on a blog than closing the comments. WordPress makes it easy to close comments, and doing so will protect you from spam, but creating a community around your blog is one of the best ways to make it successful.

The next worse offense in my opinion is forcing registration to comment. While this also helps with stopping spam dead in its tracks, it also turns off readers who feel over-subscribed. I have accounts on so many blogs, sites, and services, and I feel like if I have to sign up for one more site, I will go crazy.

I know I am not alone as a friend of mine, Mark, has noted that he hasn’t commented on the Splashpress Media blog, Performancing, because of the registration requirement, despite him enjoying the blog, and wanting to join the conversation.

I think this is where OpenID could really shine, as we continue to try to find a happy medium between fighting spam and allowing legitimate users access.

The last comment related issue that I see many blogs adding are complex CAPTCHA’s. These word images are becoming so complex and difficult that I can barely read them. I’ve written about CAPTCHA recently on Devlounge. Please spend time finding something better than CAPTCHA. Knowledge tests are much more preferred, but keep it simple to allow international readers a chance to “break the code”. If you ask something like “Who is the current President?” You’ll be putting up a huge barrier to those that don’t know, don’t understand the question, and the answer changes over time, making it more complex.

Subscribing

The second barrier I see bloggers creating is with subscriptions. If I enjoy your blog, and I want to subscribe, then you are gaining access to a piece of my mindshare. If you publish partial feeds, I will no doubt unsubscribe. Even worse, if I can’t find the subscription link on your blog, then I will move on as well.

For me, the biggest reason for bloggers to publish easy to find, full feeds is that they will be gaining access to my daily mindshare and attention. I will be exposed to their writing each and every day. Isn’t that worth more than the few pennies you will never receive by me clicking through to your actual blog?

Advertising

I understand that blogs as a business need advertising to survive, grow and even prosper, but advertising can be a huge barrier to your users. If you lay on the advertising too heavily, some users will move on without really understanding your message, or reading your content. If you put all the advertising at the top, users will sometimes leave before your content even loads, and many will not scroll down to find your content, even after it loads.

If you use animated advertising, you might find yourself with a large distraction on your blog. Who can focus on content when they have a chance to win an iPod Touch if they just make the flash widget do more pushups?

Advertising can be helpful if used correctly, but it can also be a huge barrier if done incorrectly, and far too often bloggers are using it incorrectly.

Design and Typography

The final, and one of the largest barriers that bloggers put between themselves and their readers is their design and typography. If you have a poor design, especially one that has display errors based on the browser your audience uses, you could be putting up a huge barrier and not even realize it.

Just because you downloaded a WordPress theme, doesn’t mean it works in ever browser. There can be huge issues with typography. I’ve seen a blog that was very different based on if I was in Windows, Linux or OS X. It was completely unreadable in one operating system, while beautiful in the other, but because the font wasn’t installed by default on all of my computers, I was given a different experience on each computer.

Conclusion

There are many ways you can turn away users from your blog, and in this increasingly competitive world, standing out from the crowd and making as few mistakes as possible, is the smartest way to success. Keep the barriers as few as possible, and reap the rewards of a strong user base.


About the author: A Canadian problogger for over two years, David shares his insights from working on over 5000 posts. Currently employed as the Head of Marketing for Splashpress Media. Check out his personal blog at DavidCubed.com and his blog about his experiences at eXtra for Every Publisher.

© Copyright 2008 The Blog Herald | Submit post to Blogosphere News | More articles by David Peralty


Comments

10 Responses to “Creating Barriers Between You and Your Readers”

  1. Terry Finley on March 25th, 2008 8:58 pm

    I never thought of these
    hurting instead of helping.
    Thanks for the comments.

  2. Ronald @ RA Project on March 25th, 2008 9:05 pm

    David,

    Two articles in as many days discuss having full feeds. Any chance of Blog Herald trying this out? I’m sure your readers would love it.

  3. David Peralty on March 25th, 2008 11:14 pm

    We do have full feeds, though they are being cut off by the automatic truncation of our posts when being displayed on the front page. I agree that something should be done, and I am certain there is a plugin that can deal with this issue for us.

    I will look into it. :)

  4. David Peralty on March 25th, 2008 11:21 pm

    Update: This site should now be closer to full feeds though there are still some posts that are being truncated currently. When this blog upgrades to WordPress 2.5, truncated feeds due to the read more link should no longer be an issue.

  5. Ronald @ RA Project on March 25th, 2008 11:28 pm

    Thanks for responding David.

    Cheers to WP 2.5 then. And thanks for looking into it. There are several plugins that accomplish the full feed, but I’m aware of and respect your anti-plugin stance :)

  6. Jimmy on March 26th, 2008 1:31 am

    True. Thanks for an advice and your post.

  7. Grandy on March 26th, 2008 4:05 am

    I can think of a couple mistakes I might be making now. Thanks so much for the insight!

  8. Pat on March 26th, 2008 2:50 pm

    Thanks for the advice. Subscribing to comment is a pain, I agree. I have just removed that barrier from my blog.

  9. Dan on March 28th, 2008 1:36 am

    The captcha is annoying, and from what i understand its not that good either.

  10. Luke on March 28th, 2008 9:54 am

    I’m doing good on all these fronts. No ads, easy commenting. Full feeds with content in the public domain. Why do I have so few readers so far?

Leave a Reply




Contributors

Our Blog Metrics

EatonWeb Portal
Performancing Metrics

Recommended

Advertise Here
Chitika Referral
Performancing Hive
Social Media Marketi
Splashpress Media

Powered by WordPress | Designed by Brian Gardner
Copyright © 2003 - 2008 by The Blog Herald - All Rights Reserved