Make it Easy for your Blog Readers

I registered on a scuba diving forum this week. The process was reasonably slick, but when I went to investigate some of the posts, I was quickly mired in a sea of disclaimers and rules. There was a separate set of rules for each section of the forum!

• “Only post in the Nitrox section if you are nitrox qualified”
• “Do not post advice in this section unless you are an instructor”
• “Diving is dangerous – we have no responsibility……blah, blah, blah”

After half an hour of wandering around the site, I didn’t post anything for fear of offending or getting something wrong.

I had an RSS feed arrive today from one of my favorite blogs – you probably read it too. I was a bit disappointed that the post was another “rules” post. There were four bullet points in the middle. Three of them started with the word “Don’t.” So i decided to post a comment, which went into the approval queue, which drew my attention to a link to read the blog’s “Comment policy.” This was a ten minute read! I couldn’t believe how many things would get your comment disapproved, and to my dismay, I found that one of them was not using the http:// in the website field. I hadn’t, so my pithy comment is now toast. Amongst all the rules and regulations on this mega page, the phrase “Ultimately, I decide what will or won’t make it past approval is my choice alone” appeared (in different forms) a total of four times. Fair enough, but that’s all that was needed, once!

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You know I rail against too many rules and regulations. To me Web 2.0 is about stripping them out, letting us make the web what we want it to be, not how someone else decides it should be.

The danger for a blogger in becoming too prescriptive is that you can end up making it hard for your readers. The web is so vast, that we don’t need to waste any time on complication. If something slows us up in our constant warp around the web, we bin it and move on. Another reader lost. Here are my thoughts on making it easy for me on your site, and they may apply to others:

• You don’t need a comment policy – we’re grown ups, we know you have the right to remove comments for whatever reason you choose.
• Show me your RSS feed. If I come there once and like what I read, I’ll subscribe. If I can’t find the feed in a nanosecond, I’m gone!
• Make your site subscription easy for me, just first name and email please. And then just the one welcome email, please. I can only handle so many free gifts. Oh and you don’t need to use my name in every sentence, just once, at the beginning will do fine. I do know the email is auto generated, you know!
• Help me out with navigation. I want to know what other people read a lot on your site, and I want to be able to look at categories that reflect topics I may want to know more about.
• Tell me lots of stuff about you in your about page. I’m really interested in who you are, and I’m way more likely to engage with you and your blog if I feel I know you.

Easy, isn’t it? Write me great stuff, make it easy for me to access it, and easy for me to comment, and I’ll keep loving you, I’ll keep coming back, and I’ll tell the world!

Does your site make it easy for me? Post a comment and I’ll have a look and post one back and let you know!