Thanks, 500+ Likes

Dear all my friends,

Thank you so much for following and visiting my new blog since 16 December 2015. Getting 500 likes within 15 days is another great achievement for me after my first milestone on 1 January 2016. I feel grateful that I’m supported by you all. Along this fruitful journey, I can feel the engaging community has been growing so fast and I’m amazed by the power of words through blogging.

Here, I’m going to share some of my reflections on how to connect with other bloggers. Perhaps, for some people, the amount of “like” is an indication of the success of a post. The reality is some bloggers really created very wonderful piece of writing and maybe not satisfy with the number of “like” on the post. In my humble opinion, you have to appreciate your own writing before wishing others to like it. Therefore, try to write articles that is not only for yourself, but also for your readers.

Perhaps, having more readers to read our articles is one of the motivations that drives us to create more posts and bring inspirations to others. Honestly, after publishing a few posts on the first few days, it’s discouraging when I noticed there were just few readers read my posts. To improve this situation, I think there must be something wrong either with my contents or promotion strategies. Hence, I began to make some changes on both of these factors:

1. Choose an attractive and relevant image ~ a picture describes thousand words. Therefore, choosing a relevant image for your post is essential to enrich your article. It simply creates a visual message that invites readers to read more. However, do not put too many photos unless you’re doing a photography or how-to-do blog because it will distract your readers from reading your words.
2. Create a likeable content ~ certain types of topics can dominate the market such as blogging tricks and social media marketing. If your topic and content is too narrow, perhaps only a minority group of readers will read it. Try not to overly use jargon or scientific terms in your writings, because it may cause your readers feel headache and tired looking for online dictionaries.
3. Find out what makes people feel connected ~ if someone tells you about his experiences, it will be more convincing rather than telling you facts and theories. When you read, if you feel the readers is talking to you, then you would feel more engaged to what the author says. This is how the emotional connection works. Not only by words, poems, paintings, and images are also able to leave a strong emotional impact on you.
4. Bring values to others ~ if you can help others to find a solution on fixing something or craft a masterpiece of art, you can surely get some readers who really amazed by your posts because your blog offers value to your readers. If you write about your daily chores, try to describe your observations and reflections such as the hardship of home cleaning or dish washing.
5. Don’t be too emotional ~ no one likes to read stories about blaming others. However, if you can tell a solution on how you get rid of these negative emotions in your daily lives, you’ve created valuable lessons to others who maybe face the similar situation as well. This is a platform to help and share knowledge to others. So, don’t feel shy to write down your feelings and share with people on how you cope your challenges in daily lives.
6. Leave your thoughts on others’ posts ~ as I read more posts, I can predict how’s the author feel when he is writing his post. So, by that time, if you feel some posts are really good, don’t feel shy to express your admiration or appreciation by clicking a ‘like’ or/and commenting on it. When you feel there are something to be improved, try to leave your thoughts to them so that they can improve it.
7. Don’t ignore readers’ voices ~ our readers have helped us by giving new ideas and thoughts through commenting. If you ignore them, they will feel you’re just too busy to connect with them. After few times, people can feel your ignorance and leave you. They spent their precious time to write so many words for you, so don’t ignore these valuable responses, but try to explain to them clearly or create a post to clarify their doubts if they’re looking for answers.
8. Share your post on social media ~ if you’ve made a mind-blowing post, just share it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. Somebody out there may be looking for a solution mentioned in your post. Therefore, you need to be active and share it on any platform that you’re comfortable with. If you’re not confident to share your writings publicly, you can share it with your close friends. If you passed their screening test, then you can try to share it to the public on social media. Honestly, so far, I’ve shared my post on my LinkedIn page and sent my link to some of my close friends through Facebook messenger and Skype. You’re encouraged to share it out because posting on any social media will definitely bring you a certain amount of traffics and likes.
9. Write a guest post ~ you can write an article and send to bloggers who are willing to accept it as a guest post. This definitely a great way to introduce your blog to more readers. Thanks to my first follower, David Snape who allows me to share my first guest post My 5 ways to boost happiness on his blog. This post has driven some new readers to my blog and I’m grateful that I was given such a great opportunity to share my post on other blogs.
10. Be consistent and patient ~ if you’ve planned to write once a month, keep it consistently updated every month; if you’ve decided to publish 3 times a week, stick to your schedule and make it done. If the gap between the two posts is two months above, people will forget you and it seems you’ve disappeared from the blogosphere. Recently, I’ve posted my articles on a daily basis, therefore I tried to make them short and easy to read.

People like our posts mainly because of a few reasons, the first one is friendship, people always support friends when they are doing great. The second reason is you’re an influential person who is able to attract many readers to trust you no matter what you posted. The third reason is you really made a great post that have made your readers shocked, laughed, touched, inspired, or learned something from you.

So, thank you for reading this humble piece of my blogging experience within this 30 days. Your feedback is always precious for me to improve my writing, so please feel free to leave your comments at the end of this post and share it if you feel it’s useful. Happy Monday to you all! 🙂