Image credit:DianthusMoon
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School of Rock Music
Even if your blog is about Music, it should not have an blog entry song to come along with. It is best you fix a player on the sidebars and let it be played manually on the reader's request. Automated music annoys and scare the sh*t out of me for those who starts with a metallica song!
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This is not a Art Gallery
Images are a good simulate for readers to continue reading lengthy post but too much of them will slow down the loading speed of your full article. Your reader might just source for another blog or another site.
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Dark Colour is nice but not as your Background
I love dark colour, but it is not the best combination to mix and match with text, so my recommendation is stick with a white background with black text.
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Font Size Varies
Using Small or big fonts will only frustrate your readers even more and put a stop to them returning back to see what you have installed for them to read, the fact is they either find it too small to read or else to large that it is confusing them. Try to pick a font size(12 to 14px) that is used by the majority.
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Navigation Unfriendly
Make sure your navigation structure links from one place to another. The Home page link is very important, if ever at anyone point your reader would want to navigate back, The home page button is done and should be big enough for your naked eyes to see.
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Navigation Bar or Ads that follow
While you scroll down your bar to read more of the contents the navigation bar or ads tends to follow and blocks your view from seeing the content till you close the bar or click on the ads. Such blogs are off my list straight away.
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Plastered Ads all around
Most of the readers finds it unacceptable to see ads coming from all corners. I always limit myself to 3 sets of advertising on a page and no more than than. I usually the contents and sidebar having the most ads, try not to plaster your ads all over your blog.
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Automated Talking Advertisements
You have a 300x250 ad which is animated and narrates by its own everything you load a page. It might not be a wise move to accept such advertisements that talk on your blog. Even if you have one, try to install or create a play button so that it will only be played manually by readers who wants to know what this is all about.
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Snap Preview Pop-ups
Snap Shots Previews are used widely by bloggers so that they can give a preview of how the other site look like but it is annoying to those who have accidentally scroll past a link only to see something pop up. I find Snap Shots are obtrusive.
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No About & Contact Page
Even if your blog is not some professional sites which have TOS, Disclosure Policy etc.. Please do have the 2 that is mention which is your About and Contact page. 'About Page' is to allow your readers to know who you are and 'Contact Page' is to allow your readers to contact you privately. I always feel annoyed when i want to contact owners privately without even a contact form.
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Posting Once Every 2 Months
Blogs that do not update frequently like daily or even weekly seems to annoy me as a reader so after a while i can't be bother with that blog and it's presences start to fade away over time. If you are unable to update daily with long Articles, try writing short entries and flip your pillar articles up and down on your blog. Try to blog consistently, schedule your timing and balance your work.
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Paying no attention to your readers
Your Readers left you a question which could well be your next blogging topic to answer his doubt, but you choose to ignore and not talk about this question on your blog, worst you do not even reply to his comments.
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Turning Off the Time Stamp on Posts
Turning off the time stamp on post could well annoy your readers, it is a very subjective matter and not all blogs are suitable for it but i guess the readers ultimately have a choice to decide which content is timeless and which are not.
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Using too Many exclamation marks and Dots
Most of the time we just write and write forgetting our , I feel that we should use only a maximum of 3 Dots (...) and 1 exclamation mark(!) to end a sentence and not "like this.................. " or "how about this!!!!!!!!!"
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Login to Comment or View Article
This annoying features only seems to happen on Wordpress bloggers, i don't freaking understand why i need to login to view or even comment on your blog, does it make sense in the first place? I don't think so, why not leave it for the public to view and comment freely, it's not like you have not installed any spam kit.
As you can see for yourself there are already 15 ways to annoy your readers which i am guilty of a few and I will promise to improve especially on my ads portions, I will remove kontera which feels similar to what snap shot previews is giving readers a hard time. Sometimes you just got to agree that no one is perfect.
Do you agree on my points or have something in mind you would like to share, i would love to hear from you on my comments.
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22 Responses to "15 Sure Fire Tips To Turn Readers Into Mobsters On Your Blog"
November 1, 2007 10:58 PM
Off topic posts.
Or too many topics.
Lack of focus.
Bad writing.
Too many memes.
No cornerstone posts or weak cornerstone posts.
Hey that sounds like my entire blog...lol
Too much white space also annoys me badly..
November 2, 2007 1:47 PM
My color scheme surely annoys you. And I've been meaning to add a contact page. I agree with you on most of these though. I despise the talking ads and music that auto plays.
November 3, 2007 9:48 AM
What struck me the most was putting up a contact form. I had thought about putting one on my blog but never got to it. I do need to put one on. How do I do this?
November 3, 2007 10:30 AM
Gerri, You can use zoho creator to create your own contact form.
Turtie, I guess you should set objective to be more focus on your work and its much easier to achieve your target over time.
November 7, 2007 10:58 AM
Thanks etienne, i am on blogger and have not found a good contact form till i saw yours. thanks!
December 2, 2008 7:38 PM
Thanks for this tips on blog making....
December 20, 2008 11:04 PM
thank for 15 tips you share on this post, that's great.
January 7, 2009 11:15 PM
Too much advertising also annoys me
February 3, 2009 2:25 AM
You make some excellent points about what to avoid as a blogger. I can't tell you how many sites I've visited where the blogger violates multiple items on this list!
February 14, 2009 10:32 AM
Well having a white background and black text only looks boring. It will bw better if we try to explore good combination of colors.
February 22, 2009 9:44 PM
Wow, useful list you have there mate! thank you, keep it up!
February 27, 2009 11:14 AM
I like this blog its really great information for building a blog. Very nice comments and suggestion guys. Thanks for sharing your ideas guys.
March 11, 2009 4:39 PM
hey! how to create a blog like this? it is more like a website not a blog., (^_^)
March 14, 2009 5:07 PM
This is a great one, keep posting this one.:)
March 16, 2009 5:38 PM
Wow! These tips would be helpful in my blogs. I'm going to use it in some of my music niche site.
April 11, 2009 5:48 AM
Went through the through the whole list... and it's nice to know I'm more or less on the good side of things for my visitors :)
May 22, 2009 4:27 PM
Some really nice tips there.. and some we don't give much importance to.
June 26, 2009 1:18 PM
This post is nice and i have read the whole post and i enjoy it and i have read all the comments here, this is great!
Cash advances
July 16, 2009 11:17 AM
very interesting topic thanks for sharing.
August 7, 2009 2:11 PM
very interesting topic... i learn a lot.. tnx for this posting..................
August 10, 2009 9:14 AM
tnx for the tips...... i like it......
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