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10 Things You Can Do to Get More Visitors to Your Blog 13 points posted about 1 year ago |
There are no secret formulas to make your blog a success. What succeeds in one blog may not necessarily work in another. However, here are some general guidelines that can, hopefully, attract people to your blog. |
What makes a good blog? What can you do to your blog or put in your blog that can attract a zillion visitors right away. These are the kinds of questions that online marketers and bloggers ask every day. Unfortunately, most of the answers we get are a lot of baloney.
The thing is, there is no secret formula to make your blog a success. Since your blog is your own personal journal, it starts and ends with you. Therefore, one thing can be successful in one blog may not necessarily work in another. The best that we have to go on are some general guidelines that can, hopefully, attract people to our blogs. Here are some of them.
1. Give Something Away
If your blog is in support of your company or product, then try giving away your products and services for free. Nothing captures attention like giving something away. It will work wonders for you in terms of attracting eyeballs and generating word-of-mouth advertising. Of course, your free giveaways don't have to be something expensive. Something affordable and useful will work just fine. For instance, you can distribute free software programs, free information, free e-mail services, free buttons and the like. You will amaze at how quickly word about your blog will spread if you do this.
2. Appeal to common human motivations
Try to put some elements in your blog that appeal to basic human motivations such as a desire to feel important, loved, attractive, understood and even baser instincts like greed and sex. For example, you can have a regular tip of the day that can address your readers' need for these things. Of course, keep everything in good taste and don't be perverse. If your blog has a strong appeal to these basic human motivations, you have the makings for a very successful blog.
3. Target your reader's communication networks
According to studies, each person usually has a close network of about eight to 12 friends, family and associates with whom he communicates regularly. They also have a bigger communications network composed of hundred or even thousands of people that they interact with. For example, a waiter has dozes of customers a day with whom he communicates with. Try to include a link to your blog in all your communications with people, say, in your e-mail, and word of your blog will spread rapidly throughout their communications networks.
4. Tie-in Your Blog with Your Other Communications Tools
Have a link to your blog ride on the resources of other Web sites so it reaches more people. For example, you can write a press release or article about your area of expertise, include a link to your blog and distribute the release throughout the Internet, which you can do so for free. Your press release could be published by hundreds of online publications and your link exposed to thousands of their readers. This is a quick and easy way of promoting your blog on cyberspace.
5. Use Images and Videos
You can put images and videos on your blog that will attract your target audience. For an original video that you created yourself, you can attach a link to your blog so people know where to find you when they pass it around in cyberspace. There are several cases when an amateur video has captured headlines and created a powerful word-of-mouth buzz throughout cyberspace. If your videos are interesting and entertaining enough, there's a chance that they will also catch on.
6. Use Controversy
This strategy is not for everybody and, surely, some people will not be comfortable doing it. But we can't deny the fact that controversy sells. If you want to provoke discussion or have people pass around links to your blog, one of the surefire ways to do so is to write something controversial. The more controversial it is, the more likely people will visit your blog and pass around your link. You don't have to do anything really crazy either. For example, something as simple as criticizing a famous person or company may be just enough to do the trick.
7. Have a Contest
Running a contest through your blog is another great way to draw attention, especially if you are offering an attractive prize. Naturally, the contest should have some relation to the subject matter of your blog or any product or service that you are offering. For instance, you can give away a special prize to the coolest or funniest image or video of the month.
8. Write from the Head and the Heart
When it comes to blogging, content is king. Therefore, the blogs with the best content are also the most successful and the most widely visited. And what makes great content? Why, a lot of things, of course. There's passion and purpose. There's style, originality and intellectual honesty. There's perfect grammar and spelling. There's also knowledge and familiarity with the subject matter involved. It can be all these things and more.
For your blog, you must write what you honestly think and feel. Your honest opinions. Don't write something because it's popular or fashionable. There's too much of that going around. Write about something that's uniquely you, and that will make you stand out in the blog universe.
9. Write in simple, everyday language
The best way to communicate is to speak in your readers' language -- meaning, use words the way your readers use them in their everyday conversations. Don't fall in love with big words. If you can communicate an idea in simple terms, then by all means do so. Nothing ticks off a reader than something that tries too hard and too blatantly to impress. Remember, don't write like you are talking about rocket science ... even when you're writing about rocket science.
10. Be Up-to-Date
Your blog should reflect the latest goings-on about your particular subject matter. Don't simply recount news or reprint published news reports. You're not CNN or BBC. Add your own take and opinion about what transpired. Try to look at things from the perspective of your readers and interpret exactly what kind of bearing events will have on them. Writing about the latest happenings taps into your readers' minds and encourages interaction. It also keeps your blog fresh and updated regularly, which are characteristics that all the leading blogs share.
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