Thy Readers Haveth Some Rights Over Thee

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You blog first and foremost for your readers, right? You write the content, design the whole blog and so on for your readers. Then come other things like making money, etcetera.

Since you blog first and foremost for your readers, your readers have several rights over you, which you simply must acknowledge and fulfill, or else risk losing your readers to others.

So, here’s a list of some of the rights which your readers have over you:

• Quality Content. The most obvious of all. People who read your blog do so because they find your content to be of quality and interesting. Don’t start posting crap. Don’t forget to spell check every post. Don’t forget to grammar-check every post. This is very important for maintaining good quality. Don’t maintain quality and your readers will be gone before you can say “I’m sorry!”
• Usable Layout. Your blog layout must be appealing and attractive, I agree, but most important it should be usable. Don’t use dark colour over dark background or too small or too large a font. Choose your typography carefully. Your visitor shouldn’t be

  confused in the least about blog navigation while they are on your blog. Ensure that there are no broken links. Don’t use too many images, which will make your blog’s pages as heavy as an elephant and take ages to load. Implement an easy-to-use navigation which will not confuse and worry your readers.

• LESS ADS! This point cannot be emphasized upon enough. Your readers are there to read your content, not see your ads! Don’t over populate your blog with ads. Place your ads strategically on your blog. Remember, less is more, when it comes to ads.
• Things that work. Might seem stupid, but important enough a point. Make sure that things like comment forms, links, search, etc on your blog are working. Readers seriously get so pissed off when they see something on your blog that doesn’t work! Maybe it takes a tampering here and there to make it work, but they don’t care in the least about this! They want things which work and if they don’t find them, they go away from your blog, disgusted at your utter lack of respect and care for them. Stubborn and rash, eh?
• Interactivity. Blogs are blogs because they provide a means of interaction between readers of your blog and/or you. Readers want means of interaction with your blog, such as a comment facility or even a contact form or forum. Give them this and they’ll become fierce supporters.

The above was a really simplified and brief explanation of readers’ rights and were only some of the rights readers have over bloggers. Do you have any points which could make it into the above list? Please leave a comment, if so :)!