How to get me to read your blog post

I subscribe to a lot of blogs.   A LOT.  And, to be honest, I simply don’t have the time (or patience) to read everything.  I don’t know who would, without spending 100% of their life on the computer.  So there are some posts that I skip.  And some that I don’t.  I thought I would share some things that I look for when scanning through my reader and what generally catches my eye, versus what I generally mark as read and move past.  WIthout further ado, here’s how to get me to read your blog post:

• Publish full feeds.  I cannot stress this enough.  When I’m crunched for time, the blogs that publish partial feeds are the first ones I skip (and that’s if I’ve even subscribed to them in the first place).  If you don’t care enough to put up the full feed, I don’t care enough to click through to read the post.  Simple enough.
• Avoid long chunks of text.  This means long paragraphs that aren’t broken up.  I’ve been known to do this myself, so I apologize.  But when flipping through reader, trying to get things read, I tend to skip over the posts that are just large blocks of text because, quite frankly, they take the longest time to read.
• Don’t post about sports.  Or music.  I don’t care.  I’m not a sports fan.  And I’m not a music fan.  So post your fantasy football picks and your favorite You Tube videos all you want, but I’m gonna pass.  It’s just not my cup of tea.
• Don’t start off a post by warning me that this is a long post.  Because I will glance at the clock and say to myself, “Oy, I don’t have time for a long post.”  And I will skip it.  And then I’ll go back a week later and mark it as read because I still don’t have and now the post is hopelessly outdated.
• Include pictures.  I love to read posts that have lots of pictures.  The pictures are not only interesting to look at but break up the monotony of the text.
• Post little snippets.  Not every post has to be a super-long narrative.  A small conversation from the day, a picture you took, a thought that made you stop and think again… I love these.  They’re interesting, quick to read and then I can move on to the next post.  I often don’t follow this one.  I’m sorry.
• Vary the tone of your posts.  You may be going through a rough time, but if EVERY post is depressing then I’m going to want to skip over them.  I’ve tried to be particularly mindful of this and that’s why after a couple of “woe is me” posts, I’ll try to post something light.  If I see the fifth whiny post in a row from someone I subscribe to, that post gets put on the chopping block.  And if it keeps up, I unsubscribe altogether.
• Don’t post a lot about an issue that I am opposed to.  This is particularly true during election season.  Now, this isn’t something that a lot of people can (or should) help.  But the fact of the matter is, if I subscribe to a blog and then they start ranting about liberals or how McCain is the Second Coming?  I’m not going to read it.  NOPE.  I guess this is why I’ve TRIED (not always successfully) to tone down my own political posts.  Because I know half of everyone wouldn’t want to read that.
• Don’t just put out posts full of links to your other blog gigs.  If I open up a blog and see that the latest post is full of links to their paying gigs and nothing else?  I skip it.  If I want to read their other blogs, I’m already subscribed to them and hence already know about the posts over there.  A better way to promote your other gigs is to throw a line or two in at the bottom of a regular post with a link.  I’m far more likely to actually read that.
• Keep review posts to a review blog.  Even if you aren’t a member of BlogHerAds and don’t need to separate the two.  Because when a blog I subscribe to publishes a review for something I don’t care about (or worse, that smacks of “pay per post” type deals), I skip the post.  Again, like I said above, put a link in a regular post to your review blog.  If it’s something I’m interested in learning about or if there’s an associated giveaway, I’ll go check it out.   I do subscribe to some review blogs and some of the posts I read and some I don’t.  But I like to know, going in, that that’s what I’m going to find.

That pretty much covers it for me.  So I want to turn the question on you guys.  What posts do you generally skip when you’re trying to burn through your readers?  What makes you more likely to read a blog post?  Do you have any hot-button issues (like the full feeds thing is for me)?

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