This week, I wound up having a conversation with another blogger about what she should include on her blog. What started as a discussion about buttons quickly turned into tool bars, pop up subscription boxes, etc.

I will be the first one to stand up and say I want to do everything I can to make my site easy to navigate, easy to have social interaction, and all that, but at what point have you gone too far and you start deterring readers from your site?

Unless you’re under 18, you have probably lived through the pop-up generation of the internet. You remember that, when every site you went to thought it was a good idea to have pop-up ads and information. Then, you remember what a savior pop-up blockers were because we no longer inundated with things flying at us when we opened a new site. Our computers were not bogged down by 100 processes running and all of the “hidden” windows that we didn’t realize had been opened. Life was good.

Perhaps it’s because of my less-is-more philosophy when it comes to blogging, but it annoys me when I visit a site and there are toolbars popping up at the top and bottom of the screen, social media icons that travel with me as I scroll and worst of all, the dreaded pop-ups, called light boxes that force me to take action in order to read the content. Want to know a secret? Unless I know of something REALLY good behind that lightbox, the action I take is to click on the X and go to the next site.

Yes, I know this is my personal opinion, but think about it for a moment… even in the age of technology we live in, there are plenty of people who don’t have high speed internet. These cute little toys that don’t cause a noticeable difference on your screen can create a big lag issue for someone surfing on a slower connection or an older computer. Not only that, but more and more people are at the other end of the technology spectrum, ditching the computer all together for mobile devices. Depending on the device, all of your fancy stuff may not run or may cause the site to load improperly. Is that a chance you want to take?

I’d honestly be interested in hearing if others have had success in increasing traffic thanks to the tools that are available. If I’m wrong, I’ll say I’m wrong. Until then, I suggest that you put yourself on the other side of the computer screen for a moment. Would you like those plug-ins running on a site you visit? No? Then WHY would you subject others to that?

Yesterday, I talked a little bit about how bloggers should handle the end of giveaways in an effort to turn giveaway entries into loyal readers. Today, it’s time to talk about what a reader should do when a giveaway ends.

When you’re entering giveaways, chances are you have to like a long list of blogs in order to have the best odds of winning. So, what do you do when the winners are announced? Well, to put it pretty simply, there are two options: stay or go.

Being totally honest, bloggers don’t just  do giveaways as a way to thank their fans for being there. Sure, there are times when there’s no motive other than to say thank you, but the simple truth is that every one of us wants our voice to be heard. We want to know that there is someone sitting at their computer reading what we write. If that wasn’t the case, why would we write at all?

One way many bloggers have come up with to grow their readership is to get involved in giveaways. This will often mean you wind up “liking” pages you’ve never visited, and often never heard of. Before you head to your Facebook account and start unliking all of the pages you had to like to enter, why not browse around a bit and see if you find something you like? Some of the best blogs in my personal feed, the ones I never miss, are blogs I would never have know about if not for a giveaway, a linky, or a blog hop of some sort. Many of these women (and men) are now on my list of people I would love to meet some day. How bizarre is that?

No, no one can make you stay on a page, but what’s the harm? If a blog is posting 30 times a day and updating their Facebook fan page every 10 minutes, go ahead and hide them. At the same time, if there is a blog you simply can not see yourself ever enjoying, by all means, click the unlike button and move one. Some bloggers might not like hearing me say that, but being totally honest, if I had liked a blog that fell completely against my beliefs or lacked any sort of spark for me, I’m not going to keep on liking it just because someone told me I had to one day.

What do you typically do when giveaways end?

Okay, so there are two ways I can write this post. One, I can write it as if I’m an outsider looking in on the world of blogging, or two, I can write it as I see it.  Can you guess which one I’m going with?

Lately, I’m seeing more and more giveaways for big ticket items. Along with these big prizes often come big entry forms. No one likes them, but it’s the nature of the beast. Few bloggers can afford to shell out $600 for an iPad2 giveaway, but if you break that down to 30 or 60 bloggers sharing the cost, it’s not so bad. The problem is, each of those bloggers then gets at least one, or sometimes as many as three or four, entries on the giveaway. So what happens after the giveaway is done?

For the Blogger

It seems that the more giveaways that are done, the more bloggers I see getting concerned that their numbers are going to drop when the giveaway ends. Once it’s actually done, the Facebook feed is sprinkled with bloggers who are seeing fans leaving their pages quickly enough that it’s noticeable. So, what do you do to keep that from happening?

I have to say that I haven’t seen this issue on most of the blogs that I manage. I think a large part of the reason for that is that two of the things I harp on when I’m helping a site grow are providing rich, evergreen content and interacting on whatever social media networks they are focusing on at the time.

If you’re not providing the content to keep your readers interested in what you have to say, why should they stick around? No matter what niche you’re focusing on, you need to provide something that will be just as relevant in 6 months as it is today.

If your Facebook wall is nothing but your news feed, why would the “fans” who signed up during the giveaway stick around to become long-standing, quality members of your community? I’m not saying you need to be on Facebook 24/7 but you do need to check in to answer questions, start conversations, etc. Oh, and while we’re at it… don’t put up status messages saying that Facebook is changing and people have to like your post in order to keep seeing your posts. Don’t ask every couple of days if people are seeing your posts. Find a creative way to grab the readers’ attention and pull them in!

Rather than focusing on watching the number on your sidebar grow, focus on doing things right and keeping your current readers happy!

Tomorrow, we’ll talk a bit about what the end of a giveaway means for you, the reader…

I’m finally back to doing some more design and I have to tell you, it feels GOOD! Then again, so did the break, so who knows…

I wound up taking some time off from design as I took on an amazing new adventure that I’m sure you’re going to be hearing about from time to time. The new project seriously could not have come at a better time. I was running 1000 miles an hour at design and blogging, then only on design, and I was tired. There’s no other way to put it. I was just mental toast.

Now, I feel like I’m refreshed and it feels good to be back to Photoshop and coding! I truly believe that everything that has happened in the past couple of months was for a reason and I couldn’t feel better!

This is my newest creation to go live. As you can see, it’s so new that the wonderful new owner hasn’t even gotten content on it yet! She wanted something crisp and clean and completely lacking the “typical blog feel” that has been popular for a while. I have to say, I’m in love with it and a bit jealous! As much as I love Stephanie, I might have to stop designing for her because every time I do one for her, I feel like it’s awesome and I want something fresh for myself.