Is Your Low Social IQ Dooming Your Blog?

What’s wrong with my blog? That’s a very frustrating question that many bloggers ask. You’re passionate about your topic and you provide great advice to solve reader’s problems. You wrap up your posts with interesting questions, inviting readers to share their opinions in the comments. You offer clear calls to action.  Unfortunately, no one seems to be listening.  Post after post reveals no more than a handful...

4 Scientific Tips that Help You Get More Blog Comments

One of the most engaging features of the blogging platform is the commenting system. Many bloggers believe there is as much or even more value in the discussion than the posts they write themselves. Comments are a classic form of social proof for blogs, and blogs that attract lots of comments appear more authoritative. Comments are also a great way to facilitate user generated content that is perfect for SEO. Because of all this, comments can...

How to Beat “Invisible Content Syndrome”

If you had known how hard it would be when you first started your blog, would you have done it at all? You had a topic you cared about. You thought you had something to say. And you had $10 to register a domain name. But you’ve been writing (and writing and writing) and it’s all just words into the void. No readers. No tweets. No stumbles. No comments. Just … silence. I hate to break this to you, but you have Invisible Content Syndrome. Fortunately,...

Does Sex Matter When Scoring Online?

During one of our recent Third Tribe Q & A sessions, Chris Brogan made a comment about sex that really got my attention. I should probably clarify that I don’t mean sex as in “Are you getting any?” I mean sex as in male vs. female, and how that influences our behavior, our thinking, and the potential of our blogs. Assuming we all have equal opportunity from the start, is one sex more likely to succeed in blogging than the other? Do men...

4 Ways to Use Social Proof (Before Anyone Knows Who You Are)

Have you read the classic post from the Copyblogger archives explaining why you need to leverage social proof on your blog? If so, then I don’t need to convince you how important social proof is for online success. Social proof is pretty simple. It’s just the human instinct that if someone else is doing something (buying a product, reading a blog, jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge) then it’s probably a good thing to do. It’s not right and it’s...