How to Encourage a Blogger

You are amazing! Yesterday, for the second time in just 3 weeks, we shattered our record for most visits to the blog. The numbers on “bad” days are now more than we used to get on pretty good ones. For that, we say a sincere “thank you.”

Your visits are so encouraging, but I’d like to share with you some other ways to encourage your friends who blog.

Since blogging is a very crowded space, it is hard to get noticed. And it can be highly frustrating, as well. There are now some 42million blogs just using WordPress alone (!), so getting “heard” is very hard.

How can you encourage those who are striving to use this medium for good? Here are 5 ways that are simple and don’t take much time, but that I promise will put some wind in the sails of your blogging friends.

1. Comment. You do not have to comment on every post you read, but every so often a simple “good job” or “that was truly helpful” helps spur on a blogger. Commenting is free and lets the writer know that you are really taking to heart what is being said. 99% of blogs have a place to comment and most do not ask you to register. You can be  a “guest” and still leave a kind word.

2. Converse. This is taking commenting to another level, and it is what makes blogging truly “social.” When you leave a comment, share your own story, a link to a helpful resource, or some of your own thoughts. Reply to other commenters. This is where a blog begins to become a community, and even if you do not want to have your own website or blog, you can still be part of the conversation. Add value to the discussion in your comments. Even if you disagree, bloggers appreciate these types of comments, because they provide healthy discussion about the topic.

3. Subscribe. If you are not familiar with blogs, the word “subscribe” sounds like “spend money.” But subscribing to a blog is free, and it ensures that you will see every post that is written. You can subscribe in one of two ways. If you prefer to read blogs through an rss feed, here is how you do that for our blog. Today, though, more people seem to be subscribing via email. Here is the link to do that for our site, and our emails come out around 3PM Central Time. When bloggers see these subscription numbers growing, it makes a world of difference!

4. Share. Email a favorite post to a friend. Tweet it on Twitter. Like or share it on Facebook. These social interactions are how posts “go viral,” and they are the lifeblood of building a larger readership for your friends who blog. We can only know so many people, but you know more…who know more…who know more… and so on. On our site, you can do these things with the bar on the left-hand side of each post. (And a huge “thank you” to those of you who have done this many times. Yesterday’s post has already been “liked” over 1,000 times on Facebook!!!)

These first four ways to encourage, as you have noticed are all free. They may take a couple of seconds of your time, but they are truly big encouragements for those who blog. But there is one more that I’d like to share.

5. Support. Very few of your friends want to blog “full time,” but many would still like to make a little bit of money for their time and effort. Some have ads on their site. Click them. They get a (very) small “kick back” from those clicks. If they support products that you are interested in, use their links. They get very generous commissions for this. If the site, like ours, has a “support us” or “help us” page, take a moment to see how you can show your support. You may not be able to provide much, but every little bit helps and provides some added encouragement. As I said, very few are wanting to blog full-time (81% of bloggers will never make more than $100 in the lifetime of the blog), but it does take time and effort.

If you will notice, these aren’t very different from how you encourage nearly anyone, but because a computer screen is “cold” and inhuman, we can forget that a person put his/her heart into writing the words, and then had the fortitude to put it out for all the world to see.

Every time you come by the blog and/or do any of these five things, trust me: you are an encouragement to those who blog.

Thank  you.

QUESTION: What are some other ways to encourage bloggers? You can start your encouraging by leaving a comment below.

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Photo credit: Eric Gelinas on Creative Commons

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