One thing about the blog that makes it unique among any other Web publishing platform, including conventional and static web sites, is the fact that it is interactive. Rather just posting your content and make it available for public viewing, you can also receive more feedbacks, if you choose to. How can a blog help?

Business website should listen to their visitors because the feedback will describe things in their mind, which in turn can help you build a picture of what they really want out of your site.

We usually can safely assume that if more than one people write about the same element of your web site, other visitors may have the same problem. Just they don’t take the time to submit feedback. In this situation, obviously changing the site may result in even more wanted response from the existing traffic.

No one can give greater feedback about your web usability other than the visitors themselves. Make it your priority to build a visitor-centered web site, and you’ll see your business growing for the better.

Convensional web sites can receive feedback from their visitors through one of these methods. A blogger should also take advantage of these to encourage feedback:

• Feedback form - Contact me page or e-mail address is the minimum resource you need to provide one click away from your home page.
• Website polling - Usually in the form of one question polling. A visitor can choose one of the answer from a list of bullet points and click submit.
• Forums - A bulletin board or forum is a place where a group of people with the same interest discuss, share ideas, ask questions and get answers. Forum owner usually has a forum just for suggestions and comments to improve overall web site experience.
• Newsletter feedback - Your newsletter subscribers usually are also visitors to your site. You can direct them to your site and suggest leaving some information about what they like or dislike.
• Web analytics - This method involves no direct interaction with the visitors. However the information you can get from a good analytics service or software is priceless. Example: visitor’s trail, internal and search engine keyword searches, etc.

If you are seriously want to improve your business, listening to comments from these feedback channels can build a picture of the kind of information people really want.

How can a blogger get more from a blog platform? Other than the tactics explained above, we really have many more choices:

• Enables comment and trackback - so readers and other bloggers can expound, critique, or simply extend the visibility of your message. Comments often lead to interesting topics you can bring up as new posts, adding more content. This is also what the word loop means in Marketing Loop. The difference with a simple feedback form is that using a blog comment, the feedback is very specific to the corresponding post.
• Participate on other people’s blog - get the words out, demonstrate your expertise, network with other fellow bloggers and learn new things along the way from people in the same industry. Perhaps as important, you also can learn from their visitors.

If you listen carefully, you will be able to make improvements to your site sooner rather than later. Visitor-centered website will attract more visitors and increase stickiness instead of turn them away.