Blogging | Forum « Building a Following

Building a Following (6 posts)

Topic tags: audience, blog readership, following

Christina Hussey said
1 year, 5 months ago:
Obviously good content is key, but once you have the content there and you promote it on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and of course your website how do you get people to find you. I’ve heard of inviting popular guest bloggers, what else can you do to raise the visibility of your blog?
@christinamarie7 | # | Top
Kristi Hines said
1 year, 5 months ago:
@christinamarie7 Getting guest bloggers on your site is one way to draw another blogger’s audience to your site. An even better way to get new people to your blog is to guest post on other blogs yourself. Excluding Google and Direct traffic, out of the top 10 traffic referrers to my blog, 3 are sites I guest post on regularly. The other 7 are social media sites.
Another way to get new visitors to your blog from social media sites is through their groups. Facebook and LinkedIn both probably have some groups within your niche. Start participating in those groups and, when extremely relevant, drop a link to one of your blog posts. You should see a boost from that!
My other favorite way to drive in new traffic to my blog is via blog commenting. As I mentioned in the webinar, if you can find blogs enabled with CommentLuv. Try searching Google for a particular topic and the word CommentLuv (like gardening Commentluv). When you comment on a blog with CommentLuv, you’ll get a link back to your blog as well as a link to your latest blog post underneath your comment. People will get the chance to be grabbed by your latest post’s headline which could lead to more visits.
Don’t neglect blogs without CommentLuv though – if you leave well thought out, valuable comments on a blog, people will notice and click on your website to learn more about you!
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Mike Delgado said
1 year, 5 months ago:
@christinamarie7 Getting noticed is the toughest part about first starting out. Kristin Hines shared some great strategies above, and I think writing guests posts is key to drawing your targeted audience. Writing guests posts is time consuming, but can definitely be worthwhile especially if writing for a popular blog in the niche you’re in. I also enjoy interviewing experts in my field as a means to add more content into my site — and also build credibility. Often the experts will share the interview with their following, which can drive new traffic. Also believe in linking to other blogs in my niche to show love to fellow bloggers – and let them know I appreciate what they are doing. Don’t expect a link back on their side bar, but you’ll eventually get noticed by them (when they review incoming links in analytics) and you might get a referenced in a tweet or blog post at some point.
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Michael Stelzner said
1 year, 5 months ago:
@christinamarie7
Another thing you can do is build an alliance with a few folks in your industry and agree to cross promote each others work on Twitter, etc.
A key thing for Social Media Examiner are the social share buttons you see embedded at the bottom of each article.
This makes it very easy for people to let their friends know about your content and naturally brings in lots of traffic.
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Eugen Oprea said
1 year, 5 months ago:
I agree with Mike that social share buttons are really important, because I often skip sharing an article if it doesn’t have share buttons.
Some other ways of driving traffic are, just as Kristi mentioned in the webinar, LinkedIn groups, Linked Answers and Quora.
I got clients from the WordPress group on LinkedIn because I have spent time there helping people and when they needed additional help, they knew where they can come.
Also communities like this one, but better, communities in your niche can also help you become recognized as an expert and be a source of traffic.
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Mike Delgado said
1 year, 5 months ago:
@christinamarie7 I love reading all the advice here, because all of the strategies here are spot on. It takes time to gain a following, and you have to spend half your time writing — and the other half working on promoting your blog and networking. When Brian Clark first started Copyblogger.com, he wasn’t getting noticed for about 3 months. He spent time contacting other bloggers in his niche, and finally got noticed by Darren Rowse (Problogger.com). Once he started doing guest posts for Problogger, his site really took off.
Here’s a summary of all the great strategies listed above:
- Keep focusing on writing great content
- make it easy for people to share by adding social icons
- network with fellow bloggers in your niche (via comments, tweets, email, and in other social networks, etc)
- write guest posts
BTW, what has been your most popular blog post to date? Did you do anything to promote it any way?
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