Pronet Advertising’s article on “Increasing Your Blog’s Readership” sings a song familiar to many of you who read my blog. It’s not just about attracting traffic. It’s about keeping them.
Neil Patel of Pronet Advertising explains:
When I read a blog, I always think about what the blogger(s) could do to make me a regular reader. Also when I look at the stats for this blog, I wonder what I can do to keep my visitors coming back. I know many of you have probably opened up your web stats and found out that you are getting bombarded with visitors. It could have been caused by an increase in search engine rankings, a link from a large site, getting to digg’s homepage or even tons of blogs linking to you. So with all these first time visitors coming into your blog, how can you convert them into regular readers?
…You may be the owner of your blog and think its all about you, but without your readers your blog is nothing. So don’t be selfish, help your readers when they need help and if they want something from your blog then listen and take it into consideration.
Patel makes some very valuable points, though I have to say that his point on “do unique things on your blog” should probably be explained.
If you are interested in attracting traffic to your blog, your blog should have unique content and should always work hard to attract visitors and turn them into readers. However, what does “unique content” mean? Does it mean that everything you post should be completely different from the last 20 things you posted? Or does it mean it should be “different from the rest of the blogs”, making the blog itself unique?
I think the latter. Make your blog’s content cover one to four topics consistently, and make it different from those writing about the same subjects. Create a unique body of work to consistently attract readers interested in your topics.
Consistent content creates a body of work. A body of work creates a reputation. People learn by visiting your site that you have the information they need on a specific subject, so they are more inclined to return. That creates a stable and consistent readership, and it makes you the expert on the subject.
As for the small details that keep a reader reading, make sure feeds are clearly available and “findable”, make the articles make me want to come back for more by writing article series, the things I want to know from you, the expert, and make it a friendly place to visit and comment.
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Site Search Tags: seo, search engine optimization, search engine optimisation, blogging, blog writing, writing your blog, body of work, blog content, content, resume, representative, how to write, traffic, blog traffic, readers, blog readers, popularity, staying power
Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, member of the 9Rules Network
2 Comments
I would like to add that a blog with closed comments, no about page, or whose author does not respond to comments must have a darn good mark on the content scale to make me a regular reader. A blog is more than a dynamic website with new content every once in a while: there is someone behind the scenes, and I love it when I know I can interact with this someone (even when I don’t). Compare a schoolbook and a teacher, or a gym videotape and a gym coach…
Great link and tips, Lorelle.
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[...] on your goals for a particular blog. I look at a blog as a resource, and a venue, and agree with Lorelle, that: Consistent content creates a body of work. A body of work creates a reputation. People learn [...]
[…] for Dollars wrote a post about how often you should publish a blog post and cited What Can The Blogger Do To Make Me a Regular Reader, an article that shouts my theme song this year for this blog: content […]