Blogsessive Debate: What makes us loyal readers?
June 18th, 2008 / Blogging Tips, General Blogging
Today I’m starting a little experiment in which I would love to include you, Blogsessive’s readers and subscribers. I’ve always said that experience is the best teacher, so lets share a bit of our experience and try to create useful topics and guides out of our knowledge.
Since this is a community debate, the topic I have in mind is:
What makes you come back every day (or almost) to your favorite blogs/bloggers?
What makes us loyal readers?
What makes us loyal readers?
Is it the uniqueness of content, the author’s writing style, the design?
I’m looking forward to reading your answers in the comments section, after which, I’ll summarize the whole debate into one post that could make a useful guide for start-up bloggers and why not, even more experience blog owners.
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Hey,
For me it’s definitely the useful content first. The blog helps you out and offers a lot of unique resources.
Then I’m coming back in the following cases:
-The blog offers news on a regular basis
-I like the blogowner and want to read his articles and discuss
A few things for me.
First and foremost – good content. If the content isn’t relevant or has too much personal stuff (some is okay) I’ll get rid of the feed in a hurry.
Second – article design. Web design catches me when I’m searching for blogs, but after I’ve subscribed, I really don’t care much about the design because I use a feedreader to read the articles. However, the better designed an article is (headlines, subheads, blockquotes, etc.) the more I’ll read.
Third – Full RSS posts, not teasers. I would much rather be able to read the full post in a reader than have to click through to get to the rest of the post.
That’s about it for me!
Since I’m a designer myself, design is usually the hook. So well designed blogs have a better chance of being noticed by me.
Then comes the content: if I spot articles relevant to what I do or what I’m interested in, I will subscribe.
It makes a huge difference if I know who the author is, what he stands for, if I like his writing style. If it one of those “make money blogs” written by “some guy”, I will usually say pass. Or best case scenario, I will read the article that drew me in and then leave.
After I subscribe, the design still plays a huge part, because a good article styling (like Ryan mentioned) will get me to come back to the site almost every time. Especially long articles. I don’t like to read articles in my RSS reader, but I will if design is poor. For example, I always read your posts on site, never in Bloglines.
So all in all… design + content + style make up for a great blog, if you ask me. But I’m sure you knew that already.
Wow! This must be the longest comment ever. Peace!
I think i’m just going to reinforce what adrian said.
1. A respectful blog should have a unique design, that wraps itself beautifully on the content. The main things that attract me to this blog, are the header, which is a beautiful combination between 2 colors that have love for each other (they go together nicely), the logo is quite nice too, i’m not a big fan of the character from the header, but it’s just my opinion. I love the top of the sidebar, the one with the subscriptions via email or rss, now that’s beautiful. The only thing i don’t like from the overall design is the other sidebar elements, that bottom gradient goes really bad, and the border of the last element appears to be thicker, because of the bottom border. Overall, it’s a nice design with nice colors. One more thing, i’m a fan of Verdana, because it’s a perfect readable font, it has 1:1 proportions, unlike arial or some other fonts that seem to pe expanded upwards. I’d recommend using verdana, but that’s just my taste.
2. The content. The content on this blog is awesome. You have mad skills at blogging, and you gained my respect. That’s why i come back here. Mostly for the content.
So based on the 80/20 rule. I’d say content is the main importance of a blog. It has to be top quality, somewhat unique and to the point. Design may not be as important as the content, but it really has an impact on the users. I mean if you have quality content and a great design, there’s no way people won’t come back to read more. The only thing needed is advertising, and that comes in time.
So, bottom-top: content is important and the design is important too. I just love watching beautiful sites with great content.
For me it comes down to primarily two ingredients:
Firstly, I am always looking for uniqueness of content. For example, there are many self improvement blogs out there that all they do is list after list after list. This gets tiresome for me (personally) – so I appreciate ones that have a more essay style in their writings.
The second ingredient, is resonance. Just as each individual is unique, certain content is going to speak to them more than others. So, when I find something that resonates with me as a result of my unique identity, I’m more apt to subscribe and be a loyal reader.
I know this is probably selfish, but for me it’s the ‘WIIFM Factor’ -What’s In It For Me.
It could be the content, it could be the networking possibilities, it could be traffic generation, it could be the writers style entertains me.
Each blog is different, but if I am going to become a loyal reader then it needs to be providing me with a benefit.
I must admit I’m a little surprise because the people who have commented before me care so much for the unique design.
As far as I’m concerned, the design counts for nothing. Ok, the theme is the first thing I see when visiting a blog, but after reading a couple of posts I decide if I add the blog to my feed reader. Then, it’s just the way he writes.
The most important thing is that the blog owner comes with ideas that I didn’t think of. I would like to learn something from every post I read and sometimes remember what I’ve read months ago.
phase 1. The design catches my attention
phase 2. I browse through the headlines
phase 3. I read a couple of articles
phase 4. I subscribe to the RSS feed
phase 5. I drink my morning coffee reading great stuff every morning
As for the content, I don’t expect bloggers to have excellent articles all the time, or to have 10 posts a week, but I love it when they do
So … keep up the great work!
Interestingly, content is king doesn’t really seem to work for everyone
Yes, design does matter to me as well, in one aspect: if it glittery and hard to read, I might not stick around, but I don’t get hooked by great designs.
What I need to come back to a blog is 1. great content (read new, interesting, funny, inspirational here) and 2. great conversation. I don’t like blogs where owners let readers talk among themselves and never get involved in the after-posting conversation.
Thanks everyone for you comments so far. Very interesting, since most of them define a pattern.
I find Alina Popescu’s statement interesting, that content is not the king for everyone, while Florin disagrees.
Well, that is arguable and I’ll share my views on the matter when I’ll summarize our little debate.
Tom also touched a sensitive point: the ROI, since time is still an asset that is invested.
With so many great comments this post would be so fun to write. Can’t wait.
Anyone else would like to join?
Well, I was just pointing out that a lot of people take into account the look and feel of the site. If they totally dislike it, would they still stick around to see the content? It’s an issue we should keep in mind, especially since we tend to worry about posts and their quality when launching, reading, analyzing, managing a blog, and then consider the look. Which might prove to be a wrong strategy.
hi!
i find your blog recently but i m also trying to catch up with the past posts.
i like your site for different reasons. the most important thing for me is the content, i find it useful and interesting. more reasons: there are new posts quite often, and i like also the design, makes it easy to read. i have read the comments and about the little debate design or content…. for me its the content the most important but if the design was awful, or difficult to read i m not so sure if i will visit your blog so often…
Ok, let me make it clear that I am new reader at Blogsessive.
If you ask me what made me comeback to this blog again, I would first say that its because of the quality of the content here. The posts here just rock and am just loving em.
Also not to forget the design of this blog! Man I must say, its so catchy that any reader or a visitor reading posts here would never leave it until he/she has finished reading it.
Well, what else…I am getting addicted to this blog minute by minute…
Keep it going Alex… There are more and more newbies waiting out there just for you….
for me, it’s all about the helping content.