Transform Your Blog – Ideas – 7 people share how they have turned around their blogs. Keeping people to return and getting their customers to blog about them.
Matthew P. Schwartz • I quote my musical hero, Jerry Garcia, on this query. After 15 years of performing Garcia was asked in 1980 what keeps it fresh for the audience. “It always seems like we’re just getting started,” said Papa Bear. I think it’s the same deal with blogs — always striving, always preaching and most important constantly (and better) serving your audiences’ needs. It’s not built it and they will come, which is a huge fallacy perpetrated by a Hollywood movie (Field of Dreams). Rather, it’s get your audiences conditioned to visiting your blog, seek out the influencers and movers and shakers in your industry, run good stories. Then they will come and then you build from there.
Brian Stovall, ATP • Don’t know if my blog has “taken off” but it has provided me with an opportunity to be a guest blogger on others. Guess that means someone is reading it. The guest blog appearances have given me more exposure though.
Susie Sullivan • OMG! Just had a break through thanks to all of you pre-posters! I will write for my audience! I will post often! I will tag! and comment! I will try to add images! I may find Google Analytics! and persevere. Happy trails!
George Efpraxiadis • I’ve had a good amount of success getting my blog out there and gaining some recognition through social media and networking sites. Facebook and Twitter are key, and you have to be willing to use both if you want to grow your site. Twitter is especially good, considering most of your followers /people you follow end up being strangers, and your posts show up in searches. I would say it’s the biggest source of traffic for my site. Facebook can do similar things, although obviously mostly around your group of friends. Still, I’ve been able to use it to reconnect with old friends, find new ones and new connections. A fan page is a must as well, as it’s available to more than simply your friends. I just started using LinkedIn to drive traffic and I’ve already seen some good results, the group page and RSS news feeds are brimming in a solid 10-15 hits a day depending on the number of articles posted on the site.
Posting on forums that allow promotion/advertisements is also a good strategy. Plenty of hockey forums out there so for me I guess it’s a little easier. Simply put, you just have to be persistent, keep at it and monitor your site and keep it consistently active. I have a group of 15+ Bloggers on my site, but I’m still on there a lot maintaining the content, promoting it and making sure people come to the site, even now, in the off-season for hockey and the NHL.
What I have noticed is that people do keep joining me on Twitter as I have a link to my site and I post my blog articles there too to offer my followers as much value as I can.
I agree that content is king. I know that I only sign up to site where I feel there is real interest and value and also that I resonate with the person at some level – there is a connection.
I also think offering a range of different content is helpful and as others have suggested inviting guest writers, you can offer to trade backlinks with mutually beneficial sites which increases traction.
Paul Novak • Comluv was a great plugin (it’s no longer available) for those just starting out who want to gain exposure quickly. You have to visit a lot of sites, and make a lot of quality comments, but it drives a lot of traffic and even helps build a few beneficial relationships. I also agree about writing longer posts. I can’t keep it below 800 words. Most of the blogs I prefer to frequent can’t either. I much prefer detailed expression and entertaining content to short blurbs any day. I’m strongly opposed to limiting an article for any reason other than what the needs of the subject dictate.
Natalia Adhi
I also use it to post my dress creation to attract costumers and it works very well. You don’t have to wait for long to get noticed by. I got my first customer in 2-3 months after blogging. All you have to do is gain link from some of social media networking like LinkedIn ( one of the best ) and it doesn’t always have to be link with a similar blog of yours. In fact, the more you have friendship building with other Bloggers, the more you can have them change a link to yours. You also have to learn about SEO which you can browse on Google.
Patty Mooney • I would add is: your attitude will show through. If you feel that it is drudgery to post blogs, it will be apparent to the reader and like a hummingbird tasting something bitter, it will not return. But if you let your warmth, passion and delight shine forth, then readers will be attracted. Also, something you may be interested in doing is printing a business card with your blog address(es) and just pass it out to friends and new acquaintances. I find that I hand out more blog cards than business cards because people are interested in reading “A Diary Left Open.”
P.S. Like what you are reading? Here’s some more articles about transforming your blog. They are under blogging.
