10 Ways to Make Your Blog More Social

Having a blog is relatively easy; all you need to do is create a custom domain name and start writing and publishing posts. The tricky part of blogging is getting people to not only read what you’re writing, but also to respond to it. It takes a lot of work to build your blog into a place where people feel comfortable coming and sharing their ideas and perceptions regarding a particular topic, and then go one step further by sharing your post with other people. So how do you create a blog that encourages people to be social? These 10 tips will help you establish a space where your readers want to both read and communicate:

1. Keep a consistent writing schedule. The first step to making your blog a social place is to write quality articles on a consistent basis. Keeping a sporadic blogging schedule discourages people from coming back regularly to read your posts. Your readers need to know that they can count on you to have new content up around the same time each week.
2. Respond to your commenters. It takes extra time and effort to comment on a blog post after reading it, which means that your commenters felt your post was worthy of both reading and responding to. Show your appreciation by taking the time to respond to these comments. Doing so helps foster a relationship with your readers and encourages them to keep coming back.
3. Allow guest posting. Letting other people guest post on your site is a great way to get people responding to the post and talking about your site. Guest posts also offer you more exposure because the writer will link over to your site from their own blog and they can showcase a variety of topics you might not have otherwise blogged about. This is a great way to get people talking about all sorts of different topics.
4. Guest post for others. Just like allowing guest posting on your site is beneficial to your blog, you should also guest post for other blogs. Include a link to your site in your guest post or your author bio so that the people who read the blog you’re posting for can find your site easily.
5. Make yourself useful. E-books, tutorial posts and posts full of handy information are all great ways to get people to read your content and share it with other people. The more useful your posts are, the more likely it is they’ll get passed around the blogging community.
6. Share your posts on social media. At this point, utilizing social media should be a no-brainer, but some people still haven’t taken advantage of marketing through their social media sites. Don’t be that person! Promote your posts on Twitter and Facebook. Consider creating a Facebook page for your blog. When someone comments or tweets about something you’ve written, respond to them. Social media is one of the handiest tools you can have in your arsenal when it comes to being social!
7. Avoid posts that are overly wordy. Don’t write posts that are just one big block of text, because the likelihood of someone reading it all the way through is slim to none. Instead, write posts that have bullet points or numbers so that people can scan through what you have to say and still hit all the important points. These types of posts are the posts that tend to get shared on other blogs and social media sites more often because they contain useful information that is easily readable.
8. Create posts that are visually appealing. Don’t neglect the power that pictures and carefully placed white space have on a blog post. Make sure that you utilize white space wisely as you write and that you insert appropriate pictures and graphics when you can – white space gives your readers a quick mental break from reading and the right graphics or pictures can create a lot of buzz and help reinforce a point you’re trying to make.
9. Vary the types of posts you create. Don’t confine yourself to writing the same types of posts every day – people will get bored! Instead try a list post one day and a v-log (a video blog of you talking) the next. Switching up the type of posts you publish keeps people interested and engaged.
10. Become a brand, not just a blog. Get a custom header with a logo designed and have a blog name that is memorable. Be sure to use your logo on your other social media sites in addition to your blog. Over time people will begin to recognize your logo as an extension of your blog, and having a snazzy blog name creates an impression with people. Making your blog into a brand takes your blog up a notch and helps you seem professional.

BONUS: Ask questions at the end of your posts. Asking questions forces the reader to think about what you’ve written and evaluate how they feel about the topic at hand. Plus, more often than not, people will respond to the question in the comments section.

Readers want to find blogs that they can comment on and be social with. After all, blogging is a social medium. By doing everything in your power to make your blog a more social place you can help skyrocket your blog to success.

Source: (http://www.longhornleads.com/blog/2012/10-ways-to-make-your-blog-more-social/).