I found this via Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation blog – Tom Johnson (i’d rather be writing, a blog on technical writing) posts about 20 great tips for making your blog more user friendly and stickier. Oriented mostly towards Wordpress with links to specific WP plugins, but well worth the read overall even if that isn’t your blog platform of choice.

And it’s a list, so perfect linkbait! Happy to send a link his way.

Some of Tom’s top 20, with my comments in italics:

1. Pick a topic for your blog
seattleduck fails miserably here. some day I’ll pick a consistent topic, perhaps, or more likely keep this as my playground on the web.

2. Encourage comments
comment rss feeds are a must (just added them), and also the use of a subscription via email is a great one if you expect a lot of participation in your comment streams.

3. Make it easy to subscribe
Easy here – use Feedburner, use email subscriptions (via Feedburner!), and prominently display your RSS button. Big, and up top. I can’t stand it when blogs bury their RSS button or link four screens down on their sidebar like an afterthought.

4. Include an About page
100% agree, and include a photo of yourself if possible. I am violating that rule at the moment, in large part because I don’t have a headshot or action shot photo of myself I actually like. Vanity wins out, as usual.

6. Keep your posts short and to the point
I disagree – to the point, yes, short not necessarily. If your content is strong, people will read through it (eventually). Get your point across at the beginning, yes, but don’t be afraid to expound in more detail below. Like Tom’s looong Top 20 list here. :)

8. Link abundantly
Link out, and the world will link back. Somewhat counterintuitive to traditional online marketers, but in the blogosphere the more traffic you send AWAY from your site, the more traffic you’ll get sent back in return. It’s a big happy love link fest, in effect.

10. Archive by topic
Or just display a list of categories with post count in your sidebar.

12. Allow users to contact you offline
Yeah, you may worry about spam, but you never know what opportunities you may miss. I can’t tell you how many times I have reconnected with old friends and met new colleagues by simply posting my email address or contact form to this blog.

17. Get your own URL and match it to your blog’s title
I agree, and I don’t. I am a model of indecision on this. A snappy URL that maps to your blog title is helpful (I dislike reading a blog that doesn’t remotely share a name with its URL – makes me think I hit a spam site), but in the world of RSS, cross-linking, and aggregators, your specific URL isn’t as critical as it was back in the late 1990’s. Still, not a bad idea to do this, and it takes very little effort.

20. Post often
Again, yes and no. I subscribe to some bloggers who post very infrequently but with depth, detail, and great authority on their subject matter. By and large though these are the exceptions rather than the rule. Keeping up a steady diet of good posts is perhaps the best way to keep your blog in your readers’ RSS aggregators over the long haul.