1. Determine your target audience: It is essential that as a writer/blogger you work out just who your main readers are likely to be. For example, BubbleCow aims at writers, mostly unpublished, who have an interest in getting their work into print and wish to understand more about the murky world of publishing.

Who is your reader?

2. Develop an on-line persona: The idea is to present a consistent and interesting persona. As a writer you must sift through your life, find the good stuff and hide the rest. Readers will not be interested in your dog, or your kid’s latest test result or possibly even your latest book. They may, however, be interested in the way you find time to write, which word-processing software you use or your insights into creative writing classes. Think carefully about your life and which aspects will be of interest to your target audience.

3. Only write posts that fit: Having determined your audience and developed you online persona you will now have an idea about the kind of posts you should be writing. If you are targeting writers, then write about writing. If your audience is likely to be writers of teen fiction, don’t write a book review about the latest romantic novel. You might have loved the book but remember you are writing for your audience not yourself.

4. Experiment: Don’t be frightened to experiment. If you fancy the idea of book reviews, then posts a couple and see what happens. If feedback is less regular or more negative, or visitor numbers drop then forget the idea of book reviews and move on. Don’t be worried about trying new things; just be careful to watch your reader’s responses.

5. Encourage comments: The blog should be a two way conversation. Encourage comments, ask your readers directly for their thoughts. I would even consider asking friends to comment on your blog. Take this post about Web Browsers. I had no experience of using a Mac and asked a couple of Mac using friends to leave comments and enhance the post. One nice trick is to make sure you respond to each comment; this not only encourages conversation but also increases your comment count making it more likely for others to comment.

Have I missed anything?