How to Really Grow Your Blog Traffic

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 11:47 AM PDT

Firstly, a few words about other guides, blog posts, and entire blogs on blog growth. Forget about them.

Chances are they've been full of fluff and haven't gotten you where you want to be.

I'll start by telling you two tips to blog growth. They'll make all your efforts more worth it, meaning everything non-blog-growth related you do with be more worth it. If you don't read the whole post, you'll at least benefit from these.

Tip 1: Social media is next to nothing. Your growth doesn't depend on Twitter, or Facebook. Unless you have a massive following and use a media platform to tweet your messages 500 times a day, it's not worth it. Facebook marketing, if you haven't noticed, is a bag of hot air waiting to burst. It’s leaking as you read this.

Tip 2: Loyal readers grow blogs. Excited, loyal readers will do more for your blog than you can and will. They'll comment, share, like, and buy from you all while you're not even blogging. That’s the holy grail of blogging and what you’ve probably tasted, at least to some extent.

I specialize in keeping readers on blogs for longer. Bounce rates, retention, interaction, and the like. Why? It's actually just the area of blogging I chose to specialize in. College lets you choose your major, and in my opinion, so does blogging. Darren Rowse focuses on digital photography, and Glen Allsop covers SEO. It's really wherever your heart is.

Keeping readers on your blog and building relationships is the key to growth. If you’re not succeeding at this, your work might be phenomenal but it’s not going anywhere big. That’s sort of the bad news. The good news, is that you can improve. Surpringly enough, you can retain readers and grow your blog more by changing the most simple things.

Take a look below. I’ve focused on 5 parts of a blog that make or break it. I’ve also included slight modficiations you should make to keep your blog airtight. Do all of this and you’ll win over readers, and once their on your side your work will truly take off. Note: I focused on these 5 techniques this past summer, and by summer’s end my pageviews and subscribers had more than doubled.

Titles

Don't sell yourself short with boring post titles. Do you spend three hours writing and editing a post, then slap a generic title on it? It should be the opposite. Your titles should pop, and make people click. Erase a few posts titles, and convert them to statements that challenge your reader's beliefs, or relate two seemingly unrelated things.

The general criteria for great titles are: challenge, relate, and explain.

My post "How Playboy Helps your Blog" airing soon on ProBlogger.net relates in a unique way. When you pose a statement that relates unrelated things, you catch the reader's attention, and from there all you need is a good intro. The Blog Tyrant writes gripping posts, like "Why Your Post Style and Structure is Killing Your Blog." These titles evoke emotions and get clicks because of it. Excited yet?

Tone

You must sell yourself through writing. Hate to say it, but it's not enough to write good information and it never has been. If you don't boost yourself, talk about your own expertise, and show some social validation, how the heck are people supposed to know you're a legitimate source? Your quality advice, research and information literally sails off the face of the interwebs if you fail to insert statements on your own knowledge. Build your tone up with bold statements, and again, challenge readers. Look at what major bloggers with strong personalities do. They’ll begin with bold statements, end sentences with questions, and include little “notes” of how their techniques have worked.

Images

Are your images random, irrelevant or things only you find funny? I've got two words for you. Delete them. Images are ONLY useful if they clarify a point or create curiosity. Those are the criteria I've lived by since day 1 and I'm doing alright. Or, just roll without images and let users focus on your text. See how DailyBlogTips doesn't use many images? That's a good thing. It's a subtle way of telling readers what's important, and where to focus.

Place as much emphasis on your images as your text. If you do a clever job relating images to text, even in an abstract way, you'll tell readers you know what you're talking about.

Diversify

Show that you know your topic, and hit users from a lot of angles. Now I know this is a broad statement, but it's actually easy. Diversification in blog posts can be quick and painless. If you're an online marketer, insert a case study into a post. If you're an artist, show a crafty coloration you did with someone semi-famous. Even things like tweets, quotes, or charts from Google Analytics can be inserted in your posts to show readers you really know your topic. Don't shoot yourself in the foot and hide your knowledge into with huge blocks of text. Not even your mom will read that.

Links (my best point)

You want people to click your links, right? Especially if they go to related posts, or better, to affiliates you've setup deals with. So make your links clickable. Place links around action verbs. I pitch premium themes on my blog from Theme Junkie, because that's what I myself use. I generate clicks with words like "browse beautiful themes", "upgrade your look", and "go pro today". I'd get a lot less clicks with link-text like "check these out" or "click here" that people are sick of. Another trick? Make your links pleasing. Give them a hover color, so users feel like their grabbing the link instead of just floating on it. Just a subtle trick that works. Google "hover link color" to begin.

That's 5 solid tips to make your content gripping, win over readers and encourage them to click through and share your content. Do you think readers share boring content, or things they've seen 10 times already? No, and they’re not sharing your content if it looks that way. These are things the bigger blogs do as second nature that help them remain at the top of blogging. Stop wondering, start doing, and always savor the small gains in blogging.

Greg hold two advanced degrees in social sciences and blogs at Dear Blogger, where you can ask him any question on blogging.

Original Post: How to Really Grow Your Blog Traffic

ProBlogger: Kickstart Your Stalled Blog Content, Part 2: Make Writing Work For You

Kickstart Your Stalled Blog Content, Part 2: Make Writing Work For You

Posted: 17 Sep 2012 07:03 AM PDT

On the weekend we looked at a little exercise for kickstarting stalled content on your blog. This approach can be useful for reviving a long-neglected blog or just for reinvigorating your blogging when you’re struggling to keep up a regular posting routine.

For all the advice you can read online about blogging productivity, the one thing no one else can do for you is actually sit down and write content (unless you hire someone to do just that—which is an option for some, but not one we’ll consider here). But for many of us, finding time to write is a challenge and even when we have a great post idea, it can be difficult to get it out onto the page or screen.

For those who joined in on the weekend—who decided to participate themselves and kickstart their stalled content—I hope you’ve had a chance to write up the post you planned back then. We scheduled time for writing and editing back on the weekend, so hopefully you’ve been able to stick to that schedule.

But life can get in the way of blogging—believe me, I know! So if you’re falling behind your plans, or you’d just like some tips for the next time you’re struggling to fit writing and editing into your day, these ideas might help.

Break it up

The first post in this series introduced the idea of breaking up the writing task: in that post we researched and planned the post (which in itself was broken up into a series of individual tasks you could tackle when you had time). We then set aside separate time for writing, and for editing and publishing.

By breaking up the writing task, you can make it more manageable. You can even break up the writing itself: spending five or ten minutes of each section of the post you’ve planned as and when you have five or ten minutes available.

While this can make it difficult to keep the thread going, if you have a solid plan and a writing tone or voice that is effortless for you, this approach can be a good solution if you’re really strapped for time,

Tasks for times

Tackle the right part of the task at the right time—or whenever you have time. If you write better in the afternoon, try to schedule your writing then. If you edit or research better in the mornings, try to schedule that task to fit.

Perhaps you regularly find you have a few minutes’ spare at some point in the day. Try using that time for research or post planning, rather than tooling around on social media or checking your web stats. You’ll be surprised how much you can get through when you make the most of what might otherwise be wasted time in your blogging day.

While it won’t always be possible, knowing the best times to do the tasks involved in producing content can help you write better posts on a more consistent basis—not to mention that it can also make each task easier.

Make a habit of it

Get into the habit of using “dead time” like commuting or waiting places in this way. The trick, though, is to make a habit of this kind of work so that it’s a natural part of your day or week.

While you probably don’t want content planning, writing, and editing to take over every minute of what is currently your spare time, you can make decent inroads into blog productivity by using a reasonable percentage of your empty time in this way.

And if it’s a habit, there’s no argument—you don’t even think about opening up Evernote to compose an irresistible opening paragraph (or unforgettable ending) on the morning bus. It simply becomes part of life.

Focus for 15

For many of us, it’s the thought that we won’t get a post finished in the time we have available that puts us off even starting.

To get around this—especially if you’re the kind of person who likes to sit down and focus when they write—consider writing in 15-minute bursts.

Set a timer for 15 minutes and dedicate yourself to writing the post for that time. Don’t do anything but write, and write as much of the post as you can in that time. Stop as soon as the 15 minutes is up (or finish the sentence or thought if you like). Do another 15 minutes the next time you have the time to spare.

Do this three or four times, and you’ll likely have your post drafted. The advantage is that the time you’ve scheduled for editing will give you a chance to clean up any inconsistencies and make sure the flow is smooth.

Do it on the go

If you can’t find more time for your blog, find ways to fit content production tasks into the time you already have.

If you can write texts or emails on your phone, you can get down the bare bones of a paragraph or two (in Evernote, for example) while you’re on the commuter train in the morning.

Driving? Consider recording yourself dictating parts of the post, its key points, or outline, while you’re behind the wheel. Waiting in the doctor’s office or the car while your kids play sport? Take the laptop or tablet and work on your post. Even the ad breaks in your favorite t.v. show can be useful for doing short-burst topic research.

Can’t write in chunks like this? That’s fine: why not use those times for other blogging tasks so that when you do get back to your desk, your schedule is clear enough for you to devote some time to focused writing.

Keep the content flowing

If you joined us on the weekend, have you written the post you planned? Have you edited it?

Do you have any tips to add to this list? I’d love for you to share your advice with us in the comments. And don’t forget to check back on Friday, when we’ll be looking at your published post and using it to inspire your next piece of content.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger