We all have different goals with our blogs. However, the majority of the blogs that don't talk about cats, family, or vacations, have a goal of increasing the amount of readers that subscribe to their site. Right? Does anyone dispute that?
So, while I am not going to get into a monster list of ways to kill your blog (although I may one day). Today, I going to stick to one topic that kind of drives me nuts.
My message here is simple, if you are just getting started or if you don't have great stats and readership, I personally don't think you should go out of your way to promote your lack or readers.
Here are a few samples of things you should not add to your blog simply because it's advertising your lack of experience.
The Reddit button (this applies to the Digg buttons too):
Hey, I honestly love Reddit and digg. Both sites have sent us a monster amount of traffic. In fact, I have added their buttons to my posts but it's only after noticing that a large amount of people voted for the post. Look at this image that I grabbed from a finance blog. Why would you promote that only 1 of hundreds of readers liked your post enough to vote for it?
The Random Stat Widget:
Here is another example. If your blog is getting 10.86 visitors per day, you are not an authority on your topic. That's fine, we all have bad stats in the beginning. However, it will be tough for people to really take your posts seriously simply because no one else is. If you have a widget like this on your site and you're not impressed with the stats, readers won't be either.
The Feedburner Reader Count:
Hmm. Something tells me that 1 of those readers is you so really you have 6 people subscribed to your site. Again, not something that's going to boost your credibility. Feedburner offers images without the reader count so I'd use that until you are at least into triple digits.
I didn't add my Feedburner stats to the site until we were over 250. The same is true for the Sitemeter link at the bottom of our pages. We kept that in a "private" mode until we were getting 1000+ visitors per day. I am not saying that's right, but all-in-all, the concept of this all makes sense to me.
Just a little advice for those that want it however if someone has a valid argument, I would love to hear it.
Does your Blog shout, "No one reads me!"
