One of the harder aspects of blogging is feeling as though to get the attention you deserve, you have to please the masses.

In general, people who are visiting and commenting on your blog posts have to love all elements or they’re not going to come back.

At least, that’s probably what you’ve told yourself or you’ve read in 1,000 blog posts. Often times, it’s this thinking that has led a lot of bloggers to feeling as though they’re not adequate and will not receive success and attention their blog is worth getting.

Combine this factor with the fact that most people don’t realize what they’re getting into when they start a blog and it’s easy to see why a lot of blogs don’t make it past the three month mark.

Sure, some key elements about your blog need to be right in order to keep getting people’s attention. But it should quickly be learned that a single blogger can’t please the masses and most people will pick at everything about you, just for the sake of picking.

As an example, I submitted my blog to the website, Should Redesign? For me, this is just setting myself up to be disappointed. The concept is that people take a look at a screenshot of my website and then vote if this site should be redesigned or not. Great huh?

From the screen shot above, you can see that with 42 votes on my blog, 55% of the votes say that I’m Blogging That should be redesigned.

When I first looked at the results, I was a little upset. I think I’ve said enough times that I’m pretty passionate about my design and this was another case where I asked and shouldn’t have. But after thinking about the results for a while I came to the realization I’m sharing with you.

You cannot please the masses.

Nope, not everyone is going to love everything about your blog and in reality, that’s just fine! If you’re paying enough attention to the right elements, simple things will be over looked by your visitors if you capture their attention in other ways.

Design

OK, so let’s talk about it. While I look at the design of every single site I visit this rarely will keep me from coming back to a website. When you’re designing your blog or website, consider what it is you like and dislike about other sites and take that into consideration with your design. Here’s some things that I focus on:

Navigation: Can I easily get around the site, can I find what I’m looking for? Ensure that you have clear areas for navigation and keeping people from one page to the next. This isn’t just about design but about your site’s bounce rate too. Of course you want people to visit as many pages as possible while on your site so take the necessary steps to make navigating and searching easy.

Features: What do you want me to see when I visit your website? You’ll notice that I have a lot of things that stay the same on my index page. The three posts that are featured under my daily post are just a few of my most heavily trafficked posts. They’re also posts that receive a lot of search traffic. By those estimates, I’m hoping that you’ll be interested in those posts too.

Colors: The reality is that I don’t really care what colors you choose for your site. I just don’t want to have something that is hard on my eyes. Consider that at lot of people are viewing your site with different monitor settings and resolutions. While you can’t make it perfect for everyone know that in general starring at yellow, bright orange, bright green and the alike for too long begins to hurt the eyes. Bright colors like these should be used in moderation and mixed with neutral colors that won’t strain the eyes.

Content

Oh no, here we go again. As the saying goes, Content is King. If you have quality information that I’m interested in, I can bypass any other mistakes you’ve done with your blog by just subscribing to your feed and only visiting to comment.

Edit your posts so that they read seamlessly and speak to those you’re seeking to reach. Check your spelling and grammar. While I don’t expect writing to be perfect all of the time, writing in code or using jargon that is beyond me isn’t going to bring me back in.

With some practice, it’s easy to write for everyone. It takes just 2 seconds longer to type out search engine optimization than it does SEO. And while this may be a common phrase for you there are still a lot of people that have no clue what it is. As someone who does know SEO, you won’t make me feel as though you’re speaking down to me by typing the entire thing out so that someone else gets it. In fact, I’ll think more of you for doing it.

Publish the best possible. Read what you have written, double check for types or simple errors that most spell checks won’t pick up on. After publishing if you spot an error, fix it. It doesn’t take long and it’ll be worth your while.

One last thing, forget simple Internet jargon as well. Don’t type out “n” when you can say “in” or “and.” Use a smiley face to show your laughter rather than “LOL.” Throw the jargon out completely!

Personality

One of the biggest factors for standing out, I want to see your personality in your posts and through your site. Can I reach you? Do you respond to comments? Are you encouraging a conversation or just throwing random information at me?

Don’t just write on your blog, be an active participant in your blog’s community. Again, I’ll keep coming back with this. I don’t just want to read information, I want to belong to something and that feeling of belonging starts with you, the blogger, not me the visitor or commentator.

Inject your personality whenever possible. Sarcasm in the right places, laughter, jokes, and a strong personality will win people over.

Fix The Obvious

Now, while I have said that you can’t please the masses you may still need to fix problems on your site or with your blogging habits.

If your blog sports a nice shade of hot green, you might want to consider how that might feel on someone’s eyes. Get a neutral opinion to find out if colors hurt or are acceptable. (Never allow the excuse that you can’t see a lot of the color, especially on backgrounds. I have a 22’ monitor – chances are I’m seeing more of your background than you are.)

Fix up any posts that you spot with grammatical errors. I’m not perfect in this department, especially when I’m typing faster than I should be and listening to a 2 year old talk and scream as opposed to my own thoughts when I’m writing. So if you haven’t spotted an error until weeks or months after the post was published – it’s never too late to go back and fix the error.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to ask opinions for a general opinion on any number of aspects. And when someone doesn’t like something about your blog, take the comment with a grain of salt, evaluate the truth to their statement and decide if it’s best to change or leave it the same. And whatever the case may be, don’t allow the comment to overwhelm you or consume you (I know, easier said than done).