Ever stop to think about who is reading your blog? No one knows your readers better than you, so what are you doing about it?

Your blog should really evolve right along side you. A few things to consider as you learn more about your readers are:

• Is it easy for readers to contact you? Can you make it easier?
• Is it easy for readers to find you on other networks, like on Twitter?
• Is it easy for you readers to find some of your more popular articles?
• Do you offer anything worth promoting to your sidebar or home page?
• Are people using your search and are they finding what they’re looking for?
• Can people easily subscribe to your RSS feed?

Keeping your content fresh can go beyond just posting regularly. Keeping your blog fresh as a whole is an easy way to keep people interested. Just remember not to go overboard.

How Have I Put This Into Action?

First of all I acknowledged the fact that certain posts perform better on some days than others due to trending topics on Twitter and in social media. So I added a ‘Popular Posts’ section in my sidebar that shows the most popular posts over the past 2 days. This is just an easy way to take advantage of the spikes of traffic I get from social media by taking full advantage of a topics popularity within a time frame.

I also added buttons that link directly to the WordPress plugins I created from the sidebar because I recognize that this is one of the main reasons people visit my site and I want an easy way for them to find what they’re looking for.

Speaking of my plugins, my Socialize plugin allows me to selectively add social bookmarking buttons to my posts. After awhile it’s pretty easy to see which button are being used more than others and with my plugin I can easily go in and remove unneeded buttons. This is just to increase the overall user experience as well as to encourage more shares on the services that are already doing well.

And finally, I use the feedback of my readers through comments and on Twitter to come up with new topic ideas. It’s probably my main source of inspiration aside from my spontaneous brain bursts.

How Can You Put This Into Action?

Ask you readers! Seriously. If you can’t figure out what needs to be done through previous interactions with your reader base why not formulate a post asking for ideas and direction. Don’t just let your blog become a place to spill your thoughts, let your readers milk your brain for all it’s worth … maybe that’s where the gold is.

- Photo by Diogo Martins.

Probably one of the easiest ways to network on Twitter is to answer questions asked by your followers. It is also a great way to find new people to follow as well. There is a solid list of sites that help facilitate Q&A on Twitter outside of who you are following. By reaching outside your network, you are exposing yourself to a new audience and in turn increase your chances of getting more like-minded followers.

Now I still prefer the old fashioned method of finding questions on Twitter by just using the standard Twitter Search. All you need to do is include a question mark and your topic. I also include an operator that removes all links as I find they are usually just titles of blog posts and not real questions.

There is also a growing list of sites you can use that might make finding and answering questions a bit easier. I sometimes find these sites to be a bit limited in what they offer simply because they restrict their Twitter Search API calls to phrases like “Does anyone know” and “why does” rather than scanning for all legitimate questions. However, I will leave judgements about quality up to you.

I hope I have successfully overwhelmed you with Twitter Q&A sites. Each site works a little differently, whether it is just the look and feel or the functionality altogether. I’m not convinced yet that Twitter could replace Yahoo Answer or LinkedIn Answers, but Twitter seems to be in a league of it’s own, delivering unparalleled real time results. This especially holds true when asking questions via Twitter at an event.

Nevertheless, continue to provide value to your community and watch your relationships grow stronger in time.

- Post header photo by Jilligan86

One problem I see in social media is the lack of transparency behind our thoughts and ideas. It’s completely understandable because we are dealing with small amounts of information of which we need to extrapolate the entire message. You can’t properly gauge the tone of someones voice or even measure their response by any reasonable standard. So instead, we jump to conclusions and get defensive when someone disagrees with us.

We are all guilty of this including myself.

This is why it is extremely important to be receptive to all the information coming at you and try your best to understand it. Some platforms work better than others because of the tone they set and the amount of conversation actually happening. For example; video sites like UStream and Viddler are much more transparent than Twitter because you get a sense of tone and enough time to explain yourself.

Social media is a melting pot of personality!

What one person sees as an aggressive remark could simply be a light-hearted opinion to another. We all come from different background and we all have our own ideas as to what is socially responsible. However, if we are going to be putting ourselves out there we need to just put on a happy face and do our best to follow along. I mean, just by putting ourselves out there we are subjecting ourselves to the random judgments and opinions of others, so is there ever a “wrong answer”? Everything is open for debate in this space, as it should be.

We are all just trying to communicate and there is no wrong way of going about it. So instead of pointing out each others wrongdoings, lets work harder to learn and grow together. That’s why I am in this space and that’s why I am reaching out to you.

- Photo by kcdsTM

To get the best out of a community you need to stick out from the crowd in some way. Most good communities have some form of recognition for their more active users. You’ll see a lot of this on most popular ning sites.

Here is a list of things you can do in these communities to help stick out:

Post Something Useful

Every time I join a community this is the first thing I do. It is important that you post something that is relevant to the site as well as resourceful for it’s members. When I write these posts I like to also be as transparent as possible. Letting people know my intentions with the post helps them connect with my thought process behind it.

There have also been times when I felt it was appropriate to just repost something from my personal blog that is relevant to the community. I only do this in closed communities where Google won’t run across the duplicate content. I always link back to the original source as to not mislead anyone and to avoid people second guessing the posts origins.

This approach has worked well for me across all of my networks. The better the post, the better it works.

Get The Creator’s Attention

Reaching out to the owner of the community is a great way to get the inside scoop of its functions. Most communities have a page you can leave a comment on … or you could always find them on Twitter. Once you’re in the creator’s scope of vision you are more likely to get your posts, videos or profile featured on the front page.

Be Very Active

Another approach you could take is to participate in small amounts across the whole network:

• Comment on a couple of existing posts
• Post some relevant videos from youtube
• Participate in forum discussions
• etc…

Most communities will have some sort of ranking system for it’s members to encourage their participation. The higher your rank, the more exposure you get.

Offer To Help With The Development of the Community

I’ve done this a few times where I offer to organize some sort of activity for the community. It could also be as easy as just spreading the word to your Twitter friends. People usually remember the person that brought them into the community.

Conclusion

The goal is to get noticed through quality resourceful interaction with the community. Not all communities are created equal and certain approaches work better at different times. Be sure to set goals for yourself in your social media endeavours and learn to recognize a bad egg when you find one.

- Photo by Boston Public Library