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| How to Build Your Blog’s Readership Posted: 25 Apr 2008 06:09 AM CDT
I’m not sure I’m famous outside of a very small segment of the internet - but the growth I’ve had on my blogs has come over a long period of time and I would say that one of the ’secrets’ to growing a blog readership is to stick at it and work hard for a sustained period of time. I’ve been blogging 5 and a half years now and have worked a lot of hours in that time. Outside of hard work (and a bit of luck) there are many techniques you can use to grow readership to a blog. I’ve summarised some of the many articles I’ve written on the topic here on my How to Find Readers for your Blog page. Also check out my 6 part series on How I’d Promote My Blog if I was Starting Out Again. I really believe that the topics covered in that of guest posting (on relevant blogs in your niche), networking, viral content, advertising and social media are a great place to start. Also - get on Twitter (I know you’re on it Jeremy and Josh but others should) because it’s a pretty hot spot at the moment when it comes on online activity and I think the potential to drive a lot of traffic from there is still only just being realized. It’s a space that is still in it’s early days of development so get in early (even though it’s been a year or two since it launched) and position yourself for the future. Lastly - keep tracking with ProBlogger because in May I’m planning a month long series on growing readership. Add Your tips to build blog traffic in comments below and go in the draw to win a ProBlogger Book. |
| Is it Worth Getting Local Domain Names for a Blog? Posted: 24 Apr 2008 11:22 PM CDT
I blogged heavily on this domain for a number of years and it got a lot of incoming links in the early days of running it and as a result began to rise in it’s search engine authority. What I found was that despite blogging in some very competitive niches (including Digital Cameras) on that domain it got quite a lot of traffic to it from Google. The traffic didn’t come from the global Google but Google.com.au (the Aussie localized version). For a while there the traffic was quite massive (although less so these days as I’ve let the blogs slip to focus more on my main blogs). Search engines are focusing more and more on localized search and indexing and promoting local search results to users. While less people use these local search tools than the global ones there is still a market and the traffic they generate can be significant. So yes - I definitely think targeting local markets with local domains can be very worthwhile. Have you got a local or a global domain name? If you’ve gone local, how have you found the approach? |
| How Do I Get More Relevant Readers for My Blog? Posted: 24 Apr 2008 06:38 PM CDT
@happygirl08 asks about how to - “get more relevant readers to your blog/ mailing list??” Good question - some bloggers tend to focus on getting more readers of any kind - they don’t really care about who they are, they just want their numbers to increase. So I think it’s good that you’re asking about ‘relevant’ readers because some readers will come to your blog and then leave, never to return, whereas others will come back again and again because they click with something on your blog (I presume this is what you mean by ‘relevant readers’. OK - now that I’ve said that - an answer: Here’s the question that I encourage you to ask - “where are the readers that I want already gathering in numbers?” The key is to identify where these ‘relevant’ readers are already gathering. On almost every topic you can think of there are people already gathering online - so it’s a matter of identifying these ‘hot spots’ and working out how to participate in them in a way that can draw readers to your blog. This doesn’t mean spamming their comments sections or forums - but adding value, submitting guest posts, helping that community grow etc. Out of this you’ll find opportunities come to grow your blog. I’ve written more on this at Grow Your Blog’s Readership by Targeting Readers. What would you add to my answer on how to get more relevant readers for your blog? |
| This weekend is a Speed Posting Weekend! Posted: 24 Apr 2008 02:31 PM CDT Yesterday I asked my followers on Twitter if they had any questions that they wanted me to answer on ProBlogger. There was a great array of questions submitted and over the next three days I’m going to answer 20 or so of them. But here’s the catch - I could quite easily write long posts on almost every question submitted - but I’m going to set myself a little challenge and give myself a maximum of 3 minutes to answer each question. I’m calling it ‘Speed Posting’. 3 minutes isn’t long to write a post and as a result they’re not going to go into great depth - but the object is to get through as many questions as I can over the weekend and for my posts to be discussion starters.
Answer the Question and Win a Prize Hold on to your hats - this could be a crazy weekend! |
| 5 Ideas to Come Up with Blog Content from Your Daily Life Posted: 24 Apr 2008 09:12 AM CDT
One great way to find new content for your blog is to capture things that you do in your daily routine that relate to your topic and then to present them as a blog post. This won’t relate to every blog topic but many of us are living lives that are a gold mine of content - we just need to learn to capture and repurpose it. Let me give you five examples of how to capture and repurpose daily activities for blog content: 1. Use your answer to a reader question as a post - one of the most obvious ways to capture content is to use the email (or even instant messaging) interactions that you have as the basis for posts. Most bloggers get questions from readers at least on a semi regular basis (whether via email or in comments on their posts). Replying to these questions via email is a great thing to do as it gives a reader some personal attention - but it can sometimes feel like wasted time to write an email with advice that only one person will ever read. Why not ask the reader if they mind you answering their question publicly? If one reader has the question then others are sure to be thinking it so you’ll be helping others, plus you’ve just racked up another blog post. Here’s a recent example of this. Alternatively simply take a question of a reader that they want you to answer and make it an open discussion post on your blog - with permission of course (see this recent example). 2. Use someone’s email answer to you as a post - how about flipping the last idea on it’s head and repurposing an email that someone else sent you as a guest post on your blog? I’m regularly asking others how they do things, picking their brains for advice on different topics etc - what if instead of getting an answer like this and then simply saying thanks you asked them if they’d mind you using it as the basis for a post? They might prefer you didn’t or it may be that you only use a short quote from their email as part of a larger post - but I’d bet that most of us have emails in our inboxes that would benefit our readers. 3. Document how you complete a task - if you write a blog with a ‘how to’ type component to it one of the simplest ways to create content is to simply keep a record of how you do something and then to write it up as a post. I did this recently in a post telling readers how I cleared my email inbox. These types of posts tend to go down very well with readers because it takes your blog from being a theoretical blog and makes it much more bedded down in reality. It’s also much more personal and inspiring to not only read how to do something but to read how someone else did it. 4. Video yourself doing something - extending upon this idea, why not video (or even photograph) you doing something? Instead of just a textual report of how you do something to visually show it can be very powerful. There are a number of approaches to take with this:
5. Record a conversation as a podcast or videocast - we all have conversations all day and every day and some of these conversations are relevant to the topics that we blog about. So why not capture some of them? Buying a recording device isn’t that expensive these days and editing a conversation down into a few bite sized but helpful snippets isn’t that difficult. Of course you’ll want to get permission from the people you talk to! Again this approach not only captures something that can be repurposed into content but adds variety and personality to your blog. The Key to Capturing Daily Life and Repurposing for Content The main advice I’d give with each of these strategies is to keep it relevant to your blog. While the occasional blogger seems to get away with posting pictures of their latest meal, video of what their cat did to their new couch etc - this is probably not going to go down too well on most of our niche focused blogs. The key is to find daily activities that you can draw on that also relate to what your blog is about and that will be useful to your readers. What examples can you give of when you’ve captured things from your daily life and repurposed them as blog content? |
Many bloggers suffer from the daily grind of having to find new posts for their blog - but what if there was an easier way? What if your next post was right before you in the activities that you do each day?| You are subscribed to email updates from ProBlogger Blog Tips To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email Delivery powered by FeedBurner |
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