Three Things That Can Make or Break Your Blog

According to Blogging Hints there are three things that can make or break your blog.  They are comments or lack there of, theme and posting frequency.  According to them a lot of comments is desirable because that helps to keep readers on your blog whereas a lack of comments will cause  a reader to move on.  Theme is important providing it is attractive with easy navigation to give a pleasant blogging experience.  Finally daily posting or posting every other day is a must.  This post will extend some of the initial ideas presented in the original short post.  Quite frankly I disagree that these three things can make or break your blog although they can have an effect.

• comments - I disagree with the author that the number of comments is important but I do agreee that comments are important.  Comments are important on two levels.  First they show interest in your posts but the most important thing they show when a reader goes through the comment section is interaction.  The reader should see responses from the blogger ideally with a two way dialogue that goes into greater detail.  This tells the reader that the blogger is interested in engaging in interaction so the reader is more apt to read further and possibly comment. 
• theme - The author mentions that it is better to create a theme with a plain white background avoiding dark backgrounds that can be hard to read as well as avoiding large files with longer loading times.  I personally think that any blog theme with respect to colour can work as long well as it is tastefully done.  Theme colours do make a difference and some do feel that plainer background are more attractive than extremely busy backgrounds but I see no reason to be confined to a white background only.  I author 6 blogs and this is the only one I use a plain white background on.  I've seen some blogs with dark backgrounds that are quite pleasant as well.  I do agree with the author that large files should be avoided.  Large files (eg. images) really is nothing to do with blog theme but more of a blog's elements.  Larger files should be optimized for use on blogs.  The reason for this is two fold.  First it makes larger files load faster for those on slow connections.  Second, search engines are now ranking the loading speed of your blog so faster loading blogs will rank higher in search results.  I also agree that easy navigation is a must.
• daily posting - The author specified daily or at least every other day which I think really means regular posting.  I agree with the author and actually lean towards a daily posting if at all possible.  However, my reason for recommending daily posting goes well beyond the reader.  While readers want and expect regularly updated posting, daily posting gets your blog indexed by the search engines.  More importantly regular posting with pinging gets your blog indexed.  So it is very important if you want your blog to succeed to keep the posts aka content coming on a regular basis but some bloggers have been able to establish successful blogs with only weekly posting.  If you go to weekly posting only it is extremely important to ping after each update.

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