I am going to share the biggest and best secret about blogging and how to increase your traffic. Are you listening? Lean in really close and I will whisper it to you: create great content.
That’s the big secret! You may have a zillion followers and a gorgeous, high tech blog but people will not return if your content sucks. Bottom line. Provide value in what you create.
That being said, I’ll share with you a few things that you can do, once you have written something spectacular, that can get the word out to a larger audience.
From Jay Baer, “The same amount of effort you put into your content creation should also be put into relationship cultivation.”
Create a network — Triberr is the ultimate in blog networking. Their tagline is “the reach multiplier” and that is accurate. My first day of blogging I was invited to Triberr and at the time had approximately 1,700 followers on Twitter. My first Triberr tribe multiplied my reach, by adding up the followers of the whole triber, to approximately 65,000 eyeballs. Currently, I have 8,400 Twitter followers and my Triberr tribe reach with all the tribes I am in is just over 2 million. Million! The additional benefit is sharing your tribemates fabulous content. Win/win!
Share at optimal times — Buffer App helps you not only share at the optimal times based on your followers being online but also evenly distributes your amazing content throughout the day so you don’t annoy your followers with a huge spurt of brilliance and then lose them with silence later.
Engage — Thank people who share your posts and comment on your blog! Use the “tweet this” comment button on your blog after you comment.
Grab them with an eye catching headline! Here are a few memorable ones:
How To Turn Your Blog Into a Twitter Powerhouse by Dino Dogan
How Not to Suck at Email Marketing Coincidentally also by Dino but the title caught my eye on the Business2Community website.
14 Bloggers Share 14 Awesome Tips For Using Google+ via Social Mouths
4 Key Criteria to Build Your Dream Blog via Problogger
Craft Your Best Blog Post Yet! by Heidi Cohen
You get the idea, right? Interesting language, a tease for the post and give the reader a reason to read it. THEN dazzle them with your article!
StumbleUpon: My recent guest post for this blog Maximizing StumbleUpon For Your Content Sharing Strategy provides a lot of detail on the WHY you should Stumble. Bottom line here: StumbleUpon is now the second largest provider of referral traffic. People are using this successfully, if you aren’t you are missing the boat. And guess what, Stumbling is FUN too! Another win/win in my book!
There you have it, some tips from me to you on blog traffic.
Action plan for increasing your blog traffic:
- Write amazing, valuable and interesting content
- Join Triberr and multiple your reach
- Start Buffering your posts so that you can share consistently
- Demand attention with a kick ass title
- Stumble your posts and network like a bandit
What has been most effective for you in your blogging efforts? Love to hear about it!
Featured image courtesy of 27147 via Creative Commons.