How to Make your Blog More Enjoyable

27 Jun

Posted by Sunny as Blogging

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I know, I didn’t publish a post in the morning, I got tied up with my college classes, but I have it straight now. Enjoy reading the post below.

Blogs are all about information and sometimes reading a lot can get a bit tiring, but I hope you don’t get tired of my writing ;). Everyone needs a break from reading from time to time and I think bloggers should setup different sections to give their readers a break. I get tired of studying for my classes and I take a break after reading for only 10 minutes, but that’s my problem.

By giving your readers more to explore on your site, you will actually retain them on your site longer. You would be surprised how much your readers will enjoy your blog more if you make your blog more than just a place to read. Take a look below on some of the ways you can make your blog more enjoyable to your readers.

Add Games
Try putting some Flash games on your site. if you’re using WordPress, you can create individual pages for your game pages. You can embed free graphical Flash games from miniclip.com. I’m currently working on my game page, and as you can see I have hardly added any games, since I was concentrating on creating content. These games are no XBOX 360 games, but they are good enough for a blog.

Add Music
You can embed a Flash mp3 player from imeem.com and let your users listen to music. Your mp3s are stored on imeem’s servers so you don’t have to use your site’s bandwidth. Don’t be afraid of adding music; you’re readers won’t party to your music, but I’m sure they’ll at least enjoy it. I will soon add a page with my favorite music, I hope you enjoy rap music by Eminem.

Add Videos
Create a video page or video pages with favorite videos of your choice. YouTube, DailyMotion, MetaCafe are all great places to get original videos to embed on your site.

Add Polls
Adding polls is a great way to get feedback from your readers of what they think on a certain issue. I’m planning on using vizu.com to embed a poll on my site later on.

Add Fun Downloads
Create a page or pages full of downloads that you think your readers may have an interest in downloading. Add screen savers, wallpapers, freeware softwares, and anything else that your readers may have an interest in downloading.

No matter what, always keep your focus on your blog’s topic, as in keeping your main concentration on creating contextual content. When adding those components, which I mentioned above, make sure it relates to your site. I suggested adding the things above so your readers have more to explore on your site. Also, don’t create a category or categories for those components or put those components in blog posts; create separate WordPress pages for them and link to those pages from your navigation menu.

Tell me what you think. Do you think it’s a good idea to go further than adding just contextual content on a blog?

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15 Responses

DerekBeau

June 27th, 2007 at 5:48 pm

1

Just be careful not to add too much unrelated clutter when trying to spice up a website.

Polls are good because they allow users to easily voice their opinion and, if use correctly, can gather very valuable demographic data.
Brad

June 27th, 2007 at 8:22 pm

2

Lots of my readers LOVED the http://www.radioblogclub.com radio I had on my site. A few told me they would visit my site while at work just to listen to some music. It was actually a feature people came back for!

Had to remove it due to bandwidth issues though. It was too popular!
Bloggrrl

June 27th, 2007 at 10:14 pm

3

I love the game idea. I think it would definitely make your site more “sticky”. Before adding music, I would ask myself if my readers like the same sort of music that I am considering adding. After all, it’s all about the reader. Perhaps a poll?
Ken Xu

June 28th, 2007 at 12:35 am

4

Nice idea… I like the fun download idea. I wonder what can I add to my blog for download now…
nitesh bhasin

June 28th, 2007 at 12:36 am

5

dude i m sending u a screenshot of the PR 5 Proof of topoftube

i m not trying to make you feel embarrased it is just that this is very imp. for me and u r the only one i can turn to

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/3366/topoftubexk3.png
Charles Lau - Internet Business Review

June 28th, 2007 at 4:34 am

6

Blog is all about having fun… If we were to continuously write too serious things, we would be really tired ourselves and also our readers.
Vijay Teach Me

June 28th, 2007 at 9:00 am

7

Sunny that gave some ideas for my blog to be more light and have some fun aspect to it.

Vijay
Sunny

June 28th, 2007 at 3:11 pm

8

@DerekBeau: ur right, thats why I’m still wondering what else to put on this blog

@Brad: you could do it again using imeem.com, and you don’t have to worry about bandwidth issues

@Ken: try some free softwares

@nitesh bhasin: I apologize, i checked with adifferent PR checkers and it said PR5, there are several ways to manipulate the PageRank, such as editing the .htaccess or since the domain name is blogspot.com then that could be a possibility. I checked that page on Alexa and it doesn’t get that much traffic http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=http%3A%2F%2Ftopoftube.blogspot.com%2F&url=topoftube.blogspot.com/

@Charles: yeah blogging should be fun and less serious.

@Vijay: I hope it helps well
jarleh

June 28th, 2007 at 6:44 pm

9

I think it is important to add short posts and fun-stuff once in a while, no matter what the topic of the blog is. Thanks for the links.
Sunny

June 28th, 2007 at 8:46 pm

10

yeah, that’s why I have a random category
nitesh bhasin

June 29th, 2007 at 5:38 am

11

thanks for your comment

see it is not that it does get a lot of traffic or not it is just that with a better pr it is better search engine optimization(to my knowledge)

hence the day he posts something very recent or hot in news his traffic increases many folds

I thought the reason he had that rank was that he has listed his bog in many good directories and has linkbacks from similar genre sites

COuld that be the reason???

Thanks for help any way my day is incomplete without checking your site once atleast everyday

BTW if you like good indian music try getting your hand on “AWARAPAN ” music it released today only and i saw FDFS and few songs were really amazing and so was Hong Kong.
Maris

June 29th, 2007 at 10:22 am

12

I think it is bad idea, because I think readers must stick to the content not games or fun. Only the idea with polls is nice because you can ask questions related to the content which can be transferred to the article again.
Shams

June 29th, 2007 at 11:34 am

13

Nice ideas, specially I like the music option. Your blog site has improved tremendously. That`s great. Cheers!!!
Weekend Links 06/29

June 29th, 2007 at 1:22 pm

14

[…] Blogging with Desi Baba gives a few tips on how to make your blog more enjoyable. […]
JoLynn Braley

July 2nd, 2007 at 11:28 am

15

Hi Sunny,

I think that as long as the added content relates to your blog’s topic that it could work. I don’t know that games would work on my blog (health related), but I do like the idea of polls. I ran a poll awhile ago using survey gizmo, but you might be talking about instant polls.

Thanks for the ideas!