Here’s an awesome little hint for you that I’m going to have to try a bit more often myself.

Next time you go to do a blog post, count the number of sentences in your paragraph.  If you often have more than three sentences in a paragraph, consider breaking your paragraphs down into smaller chunks of text.

What this does, is it increases the amount of white space in your blog, and thus increases the reader’s perception that it’s harder to read, even if you say the same thing.  See, the human eye is essentially lazy, and is drawn to empty space.  The more empty space you have, the “simpler” the blog post appears to read.

It’s always a great idea to take advantage of the natural human element in your blog posts.  If you can work with normal human psychology or physiology to your advantage then you’ve done something you know can’t fail to help your blog.  All human beings react the same way to empty space; it’s a universal trait.  Gaining that edge will give you plenty of help.

You’ll see from above, however, that it isn’t always possible to get that ideal three-sentence paragraph.  Don’t worry too much about that–as long as the majority of your work is in that simple block format you should get more readers, and more engaged readers.

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You might wonder what a “blog carnival” is–well, on the surface, you’d think it’s self-explanatory.  A carnival is a gathering of booths and rides and other attractions all in one place for easy access by large numbers of people who then select what they want to see and do from the many available options.

In general, you’d be right.  And this gives you a great opportunity to help your blog’s traffic.

When you enroll your blog in a blog carnival, you basically become a booth in that carnival, allowing people with interests in finance or engineering or movies or celebrity gossip or whatever it is you’re writing about to have a better chance of finding your blog.

If you’re counting on people to find you via Google, you’re going to have a tough run.  Let’s say you wrote a review of the recent Rob Zombie movie, Halloween 2.  you join seven hundred and fifteen thousand others who’ve done the same thing, and that assumes people are searching for the exact phrase “Halloween 2 movie review”.  Leave out the quotes and the number skyrockets to over thirteen million.

Your readers aren’t looking for a needle in a haystack any more–they’re looking for a needle in a stack of needles.  And the chances of them finding YOUR needle…well…one in thirteen million if you leave out the quotes.

So if you want a better chance at being found in the great seething mass of needles that is the blogosphere, consider joining a carnival!

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Ever wished you could get an A lister to comment on your blog?  Why not try a different route and get an interview with one of them?

Firstly think about the content of your blog, the main topic and find the people you most admire that write about your area of interest.

Then read as much as you can that they have written recently about that topic.  Think about whether you agree with everything they say and how you might have written things differently.  Check out where else they are commenting, this is relatively easy to do through the use of tools such as google alerts, yahoo pipes and other feed services that will trawl the web for you.

Having accumulated your knowledge base compile your list of questions.  Make a list of approx 10 questions, then choose the 5 best ones.  Talk them through with someone else, how do they sound out loud?  How difficult are they to answer, are they too vague to get a clear response?

Ok, so you have your research, you have your questions, now do the whole thing again for at least three other people, because chances are the first time you ask you will get a rejection, but don’t give up on the idea.

Once you have everything in place, email the idea to your first choice, explain what it is you want to do, tell them it is only 5 short questions and that you will happily send them a preview of the post before you post it if they wish.

The amount of traffic that this type of post, if properly executed, will drive to your blog is well worth the effort.

Popularity: 3% [?]