10 Facile Steps to Reviving a Dead Blog

In the current state of blogging, readership is the most important part of everyone’s blog.  Without readership, or people to absorb, agree or disagree with your views, there isn’t any incentive to blog.  Even if you’re on the bandwagon of “I started a blog to make money”, visitors are the key to becoming successful and generating income.

“Dead” blogs arise from people who abandon, or semi-abandon their blogs, and stop posting on a consistent basis.  Life events, or a mindset that doesn’t allow posting, is the main reason that these blogs begin to fail.  Readership begins to drop, and the writer finds that it really isn’t worth posting anymore.  

photo credit: booleansplit

Being able to revive the health of a dead blog can be accomplished in a few simple steps that anyone can use, even if their blog isn’t on the path to failure.

1. Begin posting again, or start posting on a more consistent schedule.  Even if your readership is nearing zero, search engines and other aggregators may pick up that you have returned to your website and your site may begin to get indexed again, drawing in new readers.
2. Draw a new blueprint.  Think about the way you want to re-grow your blog.  Write some plans or goals that you want to accomplish and don’t let anything stand in your way of accomplishing them.
3. Stop worrying.  Blogs are looked at as some as a piece of property, while others view them as part of their life.  In everyone’s blogging career, if you want to call it that, a person will suffer losses, criticism, or other unfortunate events.  Lose that fear of failure and you will able to accomplish more.  Failure is success once you have overcome the obstacle of losing – you will eventually come out on top.
4. Promote your blog again.  If you have plans for starting over, place some traffic-generating tools, such as banner exchanging widgets, or advertise on other blogs in your niche.  You will begin to see a small stream of visitors again, and your readership will resume.
5. Create or add services to your blog.  Using this technique will permit more growth if visitors see that you have put some effort into expanding your blog.  Not only that, you will view yourself as more successful for creating a small portal for others.
6. Learn the basics or re-teach yourself what is essential.  Finding where your success lies takes time.  If you’ve abandoned your original tactics, your blog won’t see the success (or potential success) that you originally envisioned.  Browse others’ blogs, discover what they are doing correctly, improve on their methods, and finally, embody them on your blog.
7. Devote time, time, and more time on your blog.  Set aside newfound time for posting and optimizing your blog.  Blogs don’t grow when you’ve only posted one post in the past few months.  Write several posts in your free time so that your blog appears to be updated on a consistent basis.
8. Drop all previous efforts and re-inaugurate your blog.  Recently, Ashley Morgan of Upstart Blogger posted about how she hopes to revive his blog, Brass Revolver by using the approach of starting fresh.  In this technique, you essentially delete all previous work, tactics, or simply write a post that declares you are starting over.  While this may appear as a last choice tactic, it will allow you to start on a clean slate.
9. Reinvigorate the purpose of blogging.  Blogging was originally a place to capture your thoughts, not a place for having success.  Why not try to refocus your blog (if you can) on your personal life and your thoughts on current issues?  It’ll become more enjoyable and will result in less stress.
10. Return to the community.  During the time that you ceased posting, the visitors that you once had left your community and went elsewhere.  They likely missed you, so it would be a good idea to reconnect to the people that were once your top commentators.  Give back to your frequent visitors in the form of links in your posts and place widgets on your blog for people that comment most frequently.