Blogging Tips – Exclusive

Where do you go to find good blogging tips? Maybe to a friend or colleague who happens to be an expert blogger. Or you might try investing in an eBook or a blogging training course.

Exclusive

Over the years, I’ve certainly picked up good ideas from all of those. However, there’s another great source of blogging wisdom you might want to consider.

Best blogging tips

But be warned. He’s got unusual, not to say the ridiculous, name…Yes, indeed, I’m talking about Bobo the Fluffy Bunny. If you’re looking for insights into how to write successful blogs, I can honestly say that two of the best blogging tips I know can be learned from this guy. Before you start thinking I’m going mad, let me explain.

Favorite toy

When I was a toddler, my favorite cuddly toy was a fluffy bunny. And yes, you’ve guessed it, his name was Bobo. Although I don’t remember much about it, my parents tell me I used to take Bobo with me on all my travels. What’s more, as I carried him around, I’d hold long conversations with him.

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Real dialogue

The only problem with this is that Bobo was an inanimate object, and any discussions I had with him would have been very one-sided. Closer to a monolog, you might say.

Now that sort of thing is fine when you’re two years old. But as you mature, you realize that the best conversations are those where there is real dialogue.

I was reminiscing about this a few days ago when it suddenly struck me that there’s an important lesson here for all bloggers.

Interact with your readers

There’s no question it’s a good idea to hold a conversation with your readers. But it needs to be genuine dialogue.

If you want to engage your readers, they have to feel genuinely interested in interacting with them when you communicate with them, rather than just talking to them. How do you do this? Well, there are many ways.

Hot topics

You can put questions to them, throw out challenges, or invite them to give their opinion on the hot topics of the day. When you do any of those things, you are taking the first step in opening up a dialogue with your readers, and that’s a great strategy for any blogger.

But there’s also a second step you must take. You need to demonstrate that when a reader responds to your overtures, you are willing to listen and indeed come back to them, where appropriate, with suitable answers.

Only when you do this, do you achieve a genuine two-way flow of information and show that your blog is not simply a one-sided rant.

Second lesson

OK, so that’s the first lesson that Bobo can teach us. Now I come to the second one. And this is just as important. Apparently, when I had a conversation with this toy rabbit all those years ago, grownups would stop in their tracks to listen. The reason being: they found it quite funny.

I’m not sure whether to be proud of my childhood comedy skills or embarrassed, but one thing I can say is that I was doing something – with a little help from Bobo – that all bloggers should strive to do. I was being entertained.

Blogging success

As a blogger, it’s great to have a conversation with your readers. If you do that, you are, in my opinion, well on your way to blogging success. But to be truly successful, the conversation you are having needs to engage and interest your audience.

It would help if you were entertaining or, at the very least interesting. Otherwise, what’s in it for the reader? Why should they bother to read on? So there you have it. Two important blogging tips that can be usefully applied to the next blog you write. I’d love to take credit for this wisdom, but the truth is I owe it all to a fluffy, cuddly bunny called Bobo.

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Alcohol scholar. Bacon fan. Internetaholic. Beer geek. Thinker. Coffee advocate. Reader. Have a strong interest in consulting about teddy bears in Nigeria. Spent 2001-2004 promoting glue in Pensacola, FL. My current pet project is testing the market for salsa in Las Vegas, NV. In 2008 I was getting to know birdhouses worldwide. Spent 2002-2008 buying and selling easy-bake-ovens in Bethesda, MD. Spent 2002-2009 marketing country music in the financial sector.