12 Ways Bloggers Can Avoid the Oysters Fate in Alice in Wonderland

The animal kingdom doesn’t have much of a survival rate — if you happen to leap from the jaws of one predator in one piece, chances are you’ll land in another’s.

The blogger kingdom is no different — if a blogger happens to survive the impatient reader successfully, chances are they’ll be gobbled up and forgotten about by the next one faster than the Walrus gobbled up all those Oysters in Alice in Wonderland.

I’d like to explore a few ways bloggers can attract and keep the attention of readers, thereby avoiding the whole being gobbled up like those poor little oysters.

As you become more and more saturated by the world of blogging and everything that brings it to life, it’s easy to slip up and forget what you’re readers are actually lo0king for.

Here are a few basic reminders.

1. Provide Your Reader With Solutions

Identifying the problems your reader faces and creating a post or series of posts that address that problem with possible solutions is a great way to attract attention. Once you have their attention, remember that you need to give them the goods fast … or else you’ll be gobbled up and the reader will find the solutions they need from another blogger.

2. Make It Easy for Readers to Discover Related Content

As with solutions, readers want to be able to find other solutions should the content not address their specific problem. How many times have you searched for solutions regarding the theme or plugins used on your blog, only to find the blogger provides solutions … just not the one you’re experiencing? Providing the reader with additional or further reading material that closely relates to their interest is a great way to provide value to your reader and keep them on your blog.

3. Place Links Where Readers Will See Them

Readers often skim through content for header tags, bold or italic text, colored font, and other styled text that might be beneficial — this includes links.

Depending on your style and stance when it comes to your approach to blogging, you might consider implementing links throughout your content. Whether or not these are deep-links to your older content or contextual ads you’ll be paid for is up to you — but it’s important they provide value.

Because readers tend to be easily distracted, deep-linking within your content can prove to be a great way of increasing your pageviews.

4. Write Content Readers Will Be Able to Skim If They Want

This goes with number one up there — readers want their information fast. Creating content your readers can skim is a good way to enable them to achieve the information as fast as they can skim.

You can achieve this either by writing your posts naturally, then breaking them apart as you edit, or developing a style of blogging that results in easily skimable content. Using header tags, bold and italics, and color can also help create a more skimable post for your readers.

Number one rule here is to forget about SEO and cut to the point — keep the intro and conclusion to a minimum (if any), leave out most commentary, and keep your ocntent focused on addressing your reader’s problem.

5. Write Well, But Let Your Voice Guide Your Style

Unlike traditional journalism, blogging has become the medium in which the writers not only voice their opinion, they shout it! Blogging is all about uniqueness — both in content and in voice. The more unique you are as a blogger, and the more you think outside the box, the better the chances you have of attracting a reader and keeping them interested.

They key here is to be yourself.

The phrase “content is king” has widely become a cliche — there’s just so much that goes into publishing a blog.

6. Use A Blog Theme That Pleases Your Reader’s Eye

Like magazines, readers expect the look and feel of a blog to be pleasing to the eye — this is where a lot of themes fail. Finding that theme that jumps from the crowd with visual style and a level of simplicity is the challenge every blogger faces. You’ll find many options available, including both premium and free themes, but it’s up to you to decide what the readers in your niche will be most attracted to and what style of theme will best suit the type of content on your blog — you probably won’t want a theme designed for photography for your blog about web coding.

Like a blogger’s voice, the theme they chose for their blog must be unique in order to please the reader. Customize the theme to include your own header, side bar, CSS, and other attributes.

7. Practice Solid Post and Page Structure

A messy blog doesn’t do anyone good — readers won’t be able to find the content they’re interested in and the blogger won’t be able to organize said content. In addition to finding a unique theme, bloggers also need to pay special attention to their page and post layout.

The structure should provide the reader with the information they’re after, whether visiting an about page, contact page, or post, and it should be easy on the eyes. To do this, consider revising the CSS if necessary — alter the font family, size, and color if needed.

8. Make It Easy to Connect

Readers will often be interested in contacting you for help depending on what you’re publishing — make this easy on them with a simple contact page, a link to that page on the about page, and even a few options, including social profile and contact links, in the sidebar.

Again, if you don’t you’ll be gobbled up and the reader will move on to the next blog.

9. Create An Inviting Comments Section

Readers are depending more and more on the comments sections of blogs due to the quality of content usually found from those with similar problems, suggestions, and solutions. Keep your comments section friendly with simple design (keep this in mind when picking a theme). Also, consider making use of a few plugins that add value to the comments section.

10. Show Your Readers What’s Popular

Readers will often make use of your popular post section in your side bar or navigation area to get an idea of what your blog is all about and how they might benefit from it — without this feature readers approach the blog differently — most likely checking out your recent posts and making their decision then and there.

What’s the problem with this?

Your most recent content probably won’t feature your best content, whereas a popular feature would.

In addition to the points above, a reader might also return to a blog for personal reasons that have little to do with your posts or design.

11. Get Real And Reveal Yourself For Who You Are

Though there are probably endless ways to try to get someone to like you, the best way is to simply be yourself. Being yourself requires you to shed any mask you might have been wearing in order to shield your readers from knowing much detail about you.

Blogging is about transparency and discussion — if you can reveal yourself for who you are, the reader can’t really ask much more of you. They’ll either like you or not — and you can avoid the latter by remembering to present yourself truthfully and keep you goal in mind.

12. Provide Value Again And Again – Your Readers Will Respect You

You can become an authority in any niche by creating a lot of content for the niche to digest — and at some point you might even start leading the discussion.

Doing this will lead your readers to take you more seriously, respect your opinion and thoughts, and look to you for solutions, thoughts, and other content.

Provide solutions and discussions long enough and your readership will grow and look forward to your content.

Overall, there’s a lot more than merely “content is king” when it comes to finding readers and keeping their attention — and these are just points to consider.

Focus on what your readers are looking for and how your content can provide what they’re looking for. Discover this and you’ll be creating the content readers want, which will ultimately help you avoid the oysters fate!

What other ways are you keeping your readers interested?