There are many how to blog resources available. There is just as much information on how to market your blog. Two posts that I recently read and studied thoroughly stood out to me. Interestingly, these posts came from the SEO crowd where there is a great deal of community and sharing, with the intentions of helping everyone get results.
First, Rand at SEOmoz had a popular post back in August 2006 titled “21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic.†All 21 tactics are directly actionable steps any blogger can utilize. One critical learning that I will spend time on is to pay attention to my analytics. Not only should one know where readers are coming from, you can learn what posts your readers really enjoy and when they are most frequently reading those posts. The resulting lesson is to write more of what your readers want and to never miss posting on your busiest time of the week.
Second, ProBlogger.Net had a guest blogger all last week – Tony Hung. In his post “How to Market Your Blog in 2007,†Tony lists 41 ways to kickstart the marketing of a blog. I am going to be busy implementing almost all of these great action items too. One incredible idea is to publish your own original research. Don’t simply be the 217th blog to post on a major news story. Come up with an engaging question or hypothesis, research the topic thoroughly, and then publish the findings.
Wait. I didn’t mention link baiting, social bookmarking, actively posting comments on other blogs and forums, or joining a blog carnival. That is because those items are simple, must-do steps that have a single focus – drive traffic. Those tactics do not build readership. What is very clear from Rand and Tony’s posts is that to succeed you need to work hard and focus on your readers. You are blogging to build readership by engaging them with great content, not by being traffic guru.
To me, you are not an impression, a clickthrough, or a potential click on an AdSense ad. You are reading this post right now. I hope that you enjoy what I write about and comeback often.
Here are the links to the aforementioned posts:
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic by Rand on SEOmoz
How to Market Your Blog in 2007 by Tony on ProBlogger.Net
