There are thousands of websites containing articles on how to become a better blogger or simply how to blog. Enter any of these websites and you will find numerous articles on interlinking, connecting with other bloggers, increasing page rank, getting traffic, exploiting social media, and blah, blah, blah. Where the heck is “CONTENT”? If content is king, as each bloggers say, why are these websites full of everything except content.

And frankly, people don’t visit your blog post because it is linked with other sites or because it has more keywords. They visit your blog just for two reasons. First, because they are your friends or you just know them. They come because you have maintained a personal relation with them in some or the other way.

And second, they visit your website to read your articles. They come because they think you know much about the topic and they want to learn from you. Or maybe your articles are simple entertaining and they like it.

You can definitely pull them a long way by involving personally in your blog. This can be done by replying to every comment or emailing them.

However, they are the ones who have already visited your blog and like you because of your personal touch. But what about the people who are directed to your website through search engines? They want information. They want quality content. They want something that hooks them, entertains them, and give them a reason to search for other articles on your blog.

The rule to get more visitors is simple. You have to write excellent articles. Period.

However, what is the difference between a simple article and an excellent one? How can an article be effective? Here are 10 Habits of Highly Effective People:

1. They Don’t Make Grammatical Mistakes:
   If you fail to use correct grammar in your article, it’s no more effective. People quickly understand you are an amateur or a novice. You lose the authority and significance. The readers no longer believe that you have more knowledge than them.
2. They Don’t Use Jargon:
   Everyone wants to astound their readers. I like doing it. But that doesn’t mean you do it by using words that few understand. They aren’t holding an Oxford dictionary while reading your article. Keep it simple, always.
3. They are personal:
   Personal doesn’t mean you ask your reader to post their girlfriend’s number in the comments. It means having a personal touch. Share your personal experience; show your self in the article.
4. They are humorous:
   The best way to attract, retain, and mesmerize your readers is to add humor to your posts. I am sure most of the people like to smile, so they will visit your posts regularly. Use sarcasm, irony, satire, jokes, or funny examples to create humor.
5. Use Stories and Examples:
   Theory is quite boring. Blogger who keep posting theories need to understand that their readers aren’t attending a high school. They need information with fun and clear understanding. Provide examples and stories, which will help them comprehend the message.
6. They are easily readable:
   Make sure the readers read your full article. Most of the readers don’t because you scare them away with the quantity of your post. They just skim through the post and try to grasp the message. I know they can understand much, but that’s what they do and you know it. However, you still keep writing 2000 words article. Keep it short.
7. They provoke action:
   Have you ever written an article which asks the reader to do something immediately after finishing the article? You didn’t? D o it. It’s very effective.
8. They initiate interaction:
   A good article attracts lots of comments. However, they are many blogs that doesn’t get a single comment. Here is a simple tip: Ask your readers something like feedback, suggestion, or a direct question.
9. They are full of information:
   Write informative articles. Let them clearly how something works. Provide tutorials about something in some easy steps. Define a very difficult process in simple terms. Give them precious information.
10. They are well designed and organized:
    As mentioned earlier, most of the readers just go through the main topics and sub topics. Great, now you know their secret. Provide them what they want. Write the article in pointer format with titles and sub-titles in large fonts.

No, I am not as perfect and effective as Stephen Covey. But I guess together we can be better. Let me know other elements of a good article.

Comments to a blog post are no less than oxygen to our life. The magnitude of engagement of readers is known very well through comments. Along with revealing famousness of the blog, comments are useful to share information, feedback, and experiences.

It surely adds traffic to your blog, but we aren’t looking at that aspect here. It is helpful in many other ways to a blogger and the readers as well. Maybe I will write a post about the usefulness of comments very soon.

However, let me reveal 9 ways to boost the number of comments on your blog.

• Encourage Discussion:
  Do this. At the end of every article, ask your readers to discuss the topic and share ideas on the post. Let me repeat, THIS ISN’T FOR TRAFFIC. This helps you tremendously to become a better blogger. People share new ways of writing. They let you know where you went wrong. Many of my readers have experienced what I haven’t. So I learn from them. You learn to look at an issue from numerous angles with the help of comments.
• Leave your Blog:
  And visit other blogs. Comment there. Don’t just sit back and wait for comments. They will come to you only if you do it to others. Get out of your blog and get involved.

• Interact with readers:
  Replying to the comments is the most important element of a blog, most often forgotten by bloggers. I would prefer talking to a streetlamp than to someone who ignores me. If some reader has asked a question, reply at any cost. If you don’t know the answer, don’t be ashamed to say that you don’t know much about it and you will get back to him/her after researching on it.
• Value added comments:
  Whenever you post a comment on other’s blog or reply a comment on your post, remember to provide some piece of information in it. A comment cannot be of 2-3 words. It has to be 2-3 sentences without grammar mistakes, with person’s name, a question (optional), and information.
• Connect with them everywhere:
  It isn’t important that your blog reader cannot be your chat friend or cannot contact you by email. In fact, you initiate contacting them through various sources. Let them feel a sense of belongingness and unity.
• Keep it simple:
  Commenting on you post shouldn’t be a tedious process. Don’t ask them to login or fill a captcha entry or fill some weird form just to leave a comment. This would avoid most people from commenting. If you are concerned about spasm, get a spam filter.
• Rewarding them:
  Reward your readers for commenting on your posts. You can opt to advertise their posts on your blog or provide page rank. You could also promote their twitter status. And there are various other options for rewarding them. If they get something, people will happily comment on your blog.
• Display your top Commenter:
  Create a separate tab on your blog that mentions 5 or 10 names of ‘top commenter’ on your blog. These names have a direct link to their blog. This will boost their ego and their page rank. They know it and hence they will comment more.
• Lastly, do something different:
  The above mentioned steps are generally adopted by many bloggers. However, to get a real boost in the number of comments on your blog, be creative and do something that no one has thought about. May be offering an ebook on blogging to the top commenter of the year. Or something like that. Make sure that it’s exciting.

That’s it. Let me know what the other ways to increase comments are.

There isn’t any low cost promotional technique on the web today, except social media channels, to promote, market and flourish your business by attracting huge traffic. Using all or most of these channels does ensure that readers visiting your website will revisit it over and over again.

It’s extremely significant if you have an online business or simply, presence. Maybe you know a couple of your colleagues who don’t use social media. I will tell you something about them. They fall under any of these 3 categories –

1. Not aware about social media and aren’t interested in it
2. Interested in using these channels but cannot use it due to lack of knowledge
3. Don’t know the significance of usage of social media

There isn’t any fourth category or reason why not to use social media. Huge corporations, individuals, communities, and almost everyone exhibits and enhances their online presence through these tools. So, let’s have a look at some of these.

1. Blogs
   A blog is a website owned and updated regularly by you. You can talk about one or multiple topics, ideas, news, entertainment, or just about anything you wish. Every entry is known as a post. However, unlike websites, it allows commenting. So, it’s a two way communication rather than one.This often works well for companies as it requires some basic familiarity and interest. Generally, people initiate industry specific blogs, like finance, law, etc.
2. Photo Sharing
   As the name suggests, this tool allows you to click, upload, and share images with users. There are many photo sharing services like Flickr, Shutterfly, Photobucket, Google’s Picasa. It’s quite easy to create an account and star uploading your photos. People watching your pics can comment or even reprocess you images, if you provide them with copyright license.
3. Video Sharing
   If you can share images and attract people, videos would be a brilliant allurement. Today, most of the mobile phones and digital cameras can record good-quality videos that can be uploaded on the web.Various video sharing websites like blip.tv or youtube.com are easy to access and open an account with. You can upload a video and receive a unique code or link, which helps you embed it on any sites. It works well when you add a short description about the video, which helps people to decide about viewing or not viewing the clip. And I don’t really think people will argue when I say video explains the message better than text.

   However, don’t use high resolution video because every internet user might not have a high speed connection like you.

4. Personal Social Networking Sites
   These are sites where people can create their personal profile (image, likes & dislikes, description, etc) and socialize with other users of the website using messaging system, forums, friends, images, tagging, commenting, and blogging.This is an extremely popular and prominent method of networking hence we have witnessed emergence of many such sites lately. Facebook and MySpace are the two biggies of Social Networking website bunch. These are quite fruitful for you business because you can easily find people with similar interests without any cost.
5. Events
   Search on any of the search engines and I am sure you will get a couple of events (face to face) events in your locality, if it ain’t quite remote, this month. Social gathering and events are best place to expand your network and reach of your business. Here, you meet and talk to like minded people, who could eventually buy your product or help to improve your business.There are several events taking place every year on social media as well. Have a target to attend at least a couple of them to stay abreast with recent updates and news.
6. Email
   The reason to include this communication tool in social media list is – Email isn’t just used to market your products or sell the readers something directly. It involves building up a network (list), communicating with them regularly, and building a strong relationship with them. Then, it’s quite simple to sell them your service or product.if not trade, you can send images, videos, messages, and other stuff through email. However, unlike networking sites, the reach is quite narrow, limited to your list.
7. White Label Social Networks
   Though all the tools are logical, this channel makes proper sense. Several software companies have now established and developing ‘white label’ social networks for corporates that don’t opt to use MySpace and Facebook way.Few leaders like Small World Labs, open API, SDK, Sparta Social Network, and Onsite are all examples of white label. Recent research reveals that there are about 90-100 companies in this space.

   I guess some of these companies would prove to be very helpful and be successful in long term. Though MySpace and Facebook are crammed full with users, these sites don’t offer sophisticated promotional and communicational methods.

8. Wikis
   Wiki is a page of information that can be edited and added collaboratively. A very popular example is wikipedia, which is an extensive encyclopedia developed with the help of thousands of providers around the world.As soon as users get authorization (generally by owner), they are eligible to add, delete or modify information and pages in wikipedia. Creating pages is very useful as millions of people use it as a dependable source of information.
9. Podcasting
   This social media tool involves listening or watching the audio or video content that’s automatically downloaded when you subscribe to a website. This is very much like a radio where you can decide the time and date of listening to the content.Users can store content in their archives to later re-listen it. Blogs have helped my writes to take up journalism. Similarly, podcasting gave birth to many radio personalities.
10. Micro Blogs
    It is a combination of blogging and social networking sites. Here, registered users can publish short text about any topic or event on the website. A very popular micro blog is twitter.com. The message people update on such sites is actually called microposts. And when people use these posts to update their blog, it’s microblog.Twitter allows people to use just 140 characters to comment about a topic, hence merging microblog with SMS.
11. SMS
    SMS is Short Messaging Service. A user can send messages from hir or her mobile device to any other user on phone or to update anything on social networking sites. With the advancement in technology, you can use your mobile phone (especially SMS) to promote and market your business tremendously.Along with updating your social networking sites and sending promotional SMS’s, you can also subscribe to receive updates by your friends and followers. Inversely, you can too convince people to subscribe to your service of sending updates.
12. Collaborative Tools
    Tools that promote collaboration and interaction are probably the best social media channels available today. It helps to discuss, share, and work with people irrespective of time, space, boundaries, etc. Tools like chatting, blogging, social bookmarking, and commenting are few examples of collaborative tools. By using these tools appropriately you can share files, see each other, transfer data, text or sketch with people.However, successfully using these tools is more of a behavioral trait than technical. Trust is the bottom line.

It isn’t, at all, mandatory to involve the usage of social media tools to run a business. However, if you want it to be a success, you cannot afford to ignore them. Customers are technically advanced and socially active, more than companies and brands. You can reach all of them individually (face to face). There is only one resort to extend your reach – Use of Social Media Channels.