Real Words

If you’re a blogger whose page is suffering from low readership, repetitive posts, or a general lack of innovation, chances are that it also lacks collaborative strategies. Some bloggers may be hesitant to even explore the idea of collaboration, foreseeing a loss of readership if they point out a better blog. However, experience shows the opposite: readers enjoy being introduced to new bloggers, so they’ll keep coming back for more.

There are many ways to start adding more collaborative writing and sharing to your blog, and most of them are painless – maybe even fun. The following are some of the strategies of successful blogs that can be translated to your writing for increased readership and rave reviews.

Set Collaborative Readership Goals

Communicate with other bloggers about your collaborative writing and let them hold you accountable for reaching a specific readership goal. When you know that someone expects something of you, it’s easier to actually do it.

A group of personal finance bloggers, inspired by a single challenge posted on Financial Samurai, agreed to increase their Alexa readership ratings within six months. Some aimed to join the ranks of the top 200,000; others challenged themselves to reach the top 50,000. But all 49 personal finance bloggers who answered the challenge observed significant increases in readership due to the collaborative nature of the goals they had set for themselves. One blog even managed to increase its rating from #1,432,262 to #215,606.

How did they manage this?

1.     They started right away without procrastinating. They didn’t make excuses about needing to think it over or question the feasibility of the task. They just joined up.

2.     They tracked something tangible. Whether it’s page rankings, readership, number of Tweets, or any other popularity indicator, this is an important factor in goal-oriented blogger collaboration.

3.     A concrete and desirable goal was set. Without focus, collaboration loses some of its efficacy.

4.     Keeping it casual enabled these bloggers to just “let the magic happen” as members of the challenge group created blog badges and set up tracking pages for collaborative commentary.

5.     They promoted each other. Small increases in readership added up for everyone and created a more synergistic partnership among bloggers.

Start Blogging Collaboratively

There are many ways to incorporate collaborative writing into your blog, and there are also many reasons for doing so. It can help you realize something about your niche that inspires you to expand the scope of your blog; it can help you get past writer’s block; it can increase readership; it can diversify your content; and it can do so much more. Examples of collaborative blogging include guest blogging, blog swaps, joint posts, interviews, joint blogs, joining a blog network, chatting on IM or e-mail, and participating in discussion forums. Trying a blog swap (switching blogs for a day with another blogger) or joining up with another blogger to write interview posts about each other can liven up a boring blog.

There’s no way to lose with these helpful strategies, so show your savvy by making some immediate improvements to your blog with win-win collaboration.

This is a guest post by Lisa Shoreland. Lisa is currently a resident blogger at Go College, where recently she’s been researching merit based college grants as well as how to apply for scholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys creative writing, practicing martial arts, and taking weekend trips.