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Trying to craft the perfect piece of linkbait to land you on the front page of Digg or ReddIt? Want your post to go viral on Twitter? No matter how great your content is, if the headline sucks, it stands little chance of getting the attention it deserves. That’s why I’ve come up with a list of 22 linkbait headline ideas almost every blogger can use.

I’m sure there are plenty of great headlines I left off, so share your own by leaving a comment.

Note: For the purpose of this post, I’m just going to use the number 10 for any list headlines. Of course, you can change the number to anything you like for your linkbait post.

1. 10 Things You Didn’t Know about _______
2. 10 Reasons to Hate _________
3. 10 Amazing Blogs about ________
4. 10 Secrets about __________
5. How Does ______ Work?
6. How to be Great at _______
7. 10 _________ Myths Exposed
8. ______ Myths vs. the Facts
9. 10 Deadly _______Mistakes You Might Be Making
10. 10 Shocking Facts about _________
11. 10 Questions to Ask about _________
12. Everything You Know about _________ is Wrong
13. 10 Amazing ________ Videos
14. The Truth about _________
15. The Science behind _________
16. 10 Inspiring Quotes on _________
17. 10 _______ Experts to Follow on Twitter
18. 10 Funny Tweets about __________
19. 10 _______ Rules You Should Follow
20. How I Increased My _________ Success by 200%
21. 10 Cool ________Tricks You Aren’t Using
22. What (insert celebrity name here) can Teach You about _______

Add your own linkbai

You already know about the major blogging mistakes, like not posting regularly and not promoting your content. However, there are several overlooked mistakes that even good bloggers continue to make. Are you making these 5 blogging mistakes?

1. Taking too long to approve comments—While blogging isn’t quite a real-time conversation like Twitter, it still moves pretty quickly. Readers comment on a post, interact with other commenters for a little bit, and then move on to something else.

If you’re taking several days to approve comments, you kill the momentum of your post. This removes the conversational element of blogging, turning your blog into a one-way channel of communication, thus defeating the purpose of having a blog. You need to stay on top of moderating your comments. Get them approved as quickly as possible to keep readers engaged and talking.

2. Allowing low quality guest posts—Allowing guest posts on your blog offers many benefits for you and the blogger. However, you do need to remember that your blog is a brand, and a low-quality guest post can cause you to lose readers and create a poor image for your blog.

So, while I encourage allowing people to guest post on your blog, you need to make sure you review the blogger’s work before giving him (or her) the nod of approval. Check out his blog and other guest posts so you can decide if his posts are up to your standards.

3. Not starting a conversation—Like I said earlier, the conversational element is what makes blogging so popular. As a blogger, it’s your job to get the conversation started. You can’t just expect readers to start commenting in droves. You need to give them something to talk about.

One easy thing you can do is simply ask your readers to leave a comment. Think of it as a call to action. Another thing I like to do is to leave some information out of my posts so that readers have something to add to it. After all, if you’ve covered everything there is to say about a topic, your readers won’t have anything to say.

4. Rushing a post—Everybody has different opinions on how long you should spend blogging. However, I think we can all agree that being productive, no matter how much time you spend, is extremely important.

That being said, you need to be careful that in your quest to be a productive blogger, you don’t rush your posts. When you quickly crank out content, you’re much likelier to make mistakes and to write low-quality content.

5. Not having drafts saved for creative lulls—Every blogger suffers from writer’s block at one time or another. Rather than writing a sucky post or no post at all, the ideal solution is to have a backlog of drafts saved so you can publish one of those. Whenever you’re feeling creative, write some drafts and save them in WordPress. Trust me, they’ll come in handy.

What are some of the biggest blogging mistakes you’ve made? Share your experiences by leaving a comment.

One of the reasons blogging is such a popular medium is because it allows the writer and readers to interact with one another. This gives everyone a voice, making blogs a conversation, whereas standard articles are more of a one-way channel of communication.

In light of this, I think it’s important that you do everything you can to make sure blog more interactive. The more interactive your blog is, the more participation you’ll get from your readers. As a result, they’ll become more loyal.

To help get you started, I’ve come up with 5 easy ways to make your blog more interactive. If you can think of other good tips, please leave a comment.

1. Use TwtPoll—TwtPoll allows you to include a poll or a survey in your blog posts. This lets readers who are in a hurry to quickly share their thoughts with the click of their mouse, rather than taking the time to type out a comment. Creating a poll takes just a few seconds, and embedding it in your blog is easy.

In addition to making your blog more interactive, TwtPoll can help you gather useful information. If you have a fair amount of people who vote on a poll question, you can use those results for a future blog post.

2. Respond to your comments in a timely manner—When you think of interactivity on a blog, you probably think about the comments. Comments let your readers share their thoughts on the subject being covered in your post. But it’s not enough to let your readers comment. You need to set aside the time to respond to these comments thoughtfully. Don’t just say “Thanks for leaving a comment.” Instead, try to push the conversation forward with the commenter. This keeps them engaged, and it helps you build relationships with your audience.

3. Feature Twitter followers in your posts—I got this idea from the SmallBizBee blog. Every Friday, they would hold what was called “Twitter Fest Friday.” The blogger would ask his Twitter followers a question, and he’d feature their responses in his post. It adds a social element to the blog, and it shows your readers that you value their opinion.

4. Start podcasting—I’ve already gone over all the reasons to start podcasting at great length, so I won’t repeat them here. You can set your podcast up to be interactive by allowing listeners to call in and leave a voicemail with their questions. This gives the podcast the interactive feel of a live talk radio show.

5. Let readers suggest topics for future posts—This is a win-win. Allowing your readers to suggest topics for posts not only get them involved, but it also ensures you’ll be writing about content that they’re interested in.

How do you make your blog more interactive? Leave a comment with your best tip.

Last night, I came across a blog post by Bob Bly (one of my favorite copywriters) that addressed the question of “How much time should you spend blogging?” Blogging productivity is something that’s almost always on my mind, so I couldn’t help but be intrigued by this post.

In his post, Bly states his theory of blogging. He says “Anyone who blogs more than 10 minutes a day — or more than an hour a week — is spending way too much time reading and writing on blogs.”

Needless to say, this caught my attention. 10 minutes a day? Bly thinks that spending more than 10 minutes a day writing and/or reading blogs is a waste of time, and I disagree.

See, Bly views blogging as something that’s fun, entertaining, and “possibly” useful. To me, blogging is more than that. Blogging helps you build trust with customers. I’ve acquired many new copywriting clients solely from my blogging efforts. They’ve read my posts, found me knowledgeable, and hired me to handle a copywriting project for them. Blogging keeps me visible and credible.

But that’s not the only benefit of blogging that Bly seems to be overlooking. What about the SEO effects of blogging? An optimized blog that attracts back links with fresh content every day can help your entire site rank better for important keywords. Once your site earns higher rankings, it attracts more targeted traffic. When you get targeted traffic, you get more customers. So, blogging can help you bring in more customers from the search engines as well.

I’ve also had success helping clients build their email list through blogging. Well-placed sign up links on a high-traffic blog can attract a high number of sign ups, which can then be converted into customers through effective email marketing.

Look, I’m all for being a more productive blogger. And I fully realize there are a lot of people out there who waste way too much time blogging. But to say anything more than 10 minutes a day is a waste of time is a bit silly to me.

What do you think? How much time do you spend blogging?

Goals are what keep us motivated to blog day in and day out. They give us direction for where we want to take our blog, and they force us to become better bloggers.

Now, I know I’m a little late on the whole New Year’s resolution thing, but we’re still in January, so there’s plenty of time to set some blogging goals for 2010. If you’re a blogger, I encourage you to challenge yourself to meet all of these goals by year’s end. Good luck!

1. Write a post that gets ReTweeted at least 350 times—Twitter is a powerful tool for driving traffic to your blog, but to be successful, you must get people to ReTweet (RT) your content. Start by placing a TweetMeme button on your blog, and then find creative ways to encourage people to RT your content.
2. Increase your subscriber base by 50%–Many blogs are graded by how many subscribers they have. The idea is that the people who subscribe to your blog are loyal readers who truly value your opinion. Check out these 7 reasons no one subscribes to your blog.
3. Get at least one back link from a top 10 blog in your niche—I’ve always said that I’d take 10 high-quality back links over 100 low-grade ones every time. So, this year, let’s focus on quality over quantity in our link-building efforts.
4. Write a post that gets 75 or more comments—The interaction of blogging is what makes it such a powerful medium. When your blog attracts a lot of comments, it shows that your readers are engaged. If you want to figure out how to reach this goal, start by reading these 9 easy ways to get more blog comments.
5. Guest post on 3 high-profile blogs in your niche—By now, you already know the benefits of guest posting on other blogs. Guest posting opportunities are all around us, and this year I want to challenge you to set your sights higher by trying to guest post on 3 of the top blogs in your niche.
6. Increase your search engine traffic by 50%–Put SEO fundamentals into practice with every post you write, and you should be able to reach this goal.
7. Double your blogging revenue—Whether you’re making money through affiliate marketing or by selling ad space, you should always be striving to earn more.
8. Post more than 150 times—Now, I don’t want to turn this into a quantity over quality thing, but I think 150 posts in a year is a reasonable goal for most bloggers. That’s fewer than 3 posts per week.
9. Publish a whitepaper/eBook that attracts 500 downloads—Free eBooks or whitepapers can provide numerous benefits, including growing your email list and increasing your authority. Check out these tips for getting more eBook downloads.
10. Increase your unique daily views by 30%–Promoting your posts on Twitter, Facebook, social voting sites, and other social media channels can help you attract more unique page views.

Are you ready to take the challenge? Join in by sending a trackback from your blog or leaving a comment in the replies.