Before I get into this, I want to congratulate commenter Bryant for winning the book contest! Thanks to all who entered. There may be more contests later.
I look at my Google Analytics every morning. Part of it is to know what people like to read and what days they like to read. For starters, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are my best days. Monday and Friday are about the same, and Saturday and Sunday are my worst. Yesterday was my biggest day ever. I guess a lot of people wanted to find out about our new church name.
Web traffic is great and all, but what I really want is more interaction.
If I was a business (and I am not), I would have tons of people in my store, but no one would be buying. But I think the problem is I only offer one product a day (post / article) and only one form of currency (comments). We recently tried to expand (contests) but only a handful cared, and they still had to pay with the same currency. Make sense?
How can I build more interaction?
I really want to interact with people. I want to learn about them and learn from them. It is just in my nature. Having a theologically “themed” blog makes that harder because there are more opportunities to teach than to learn. There are also more absolute statements than open discussions.
Here is what I want to do (and your ideas could really help, so stop lurking and comment for once…please 
I have a (very) small list in my head:
- Allow a guest post (this is scary to me, but I am seriously considering it)
- Write a couple of “how to” posts (showing people how to do something can help open up questions)
- Use more “web 2.0″ features like video and social networking tie-ins
That is all I have in my limited scope.
I want your help with more ideas. For that, I am going to need you to leave it in the comments or email it (don {at}youseedrybones [dot]com).
Thanks for your help in advance!
-Don-
Sounds cool. Not sure what the web 2.0 tie-ins are, but the other two definitely sound good.
Here’s something real simple that I was thinking about that encourage interactivity: ask questions. Keep posting your usual stuff, but also try putting up posts that merely set the stage for discussion. Kinda like a poll, but it allows for more open answers and discussion. On a certain message board I go to, they’ll often create threads that simply say. “Stem cell research. Discuss.” or link to an article and “What do you think of this?”