How To Attract Readers To Your Blog

Last week I had the privilege to guest lecture at Ball State and Indiana University, two schools with pretty impressive journalism and PR programs. I talked about reputation management, the new social media and the wonderfully exciting future in store for students about to enter a career in public relations.

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A PR student at IU, Renee McNamara, asked me a question that I later thought might make a good blog post – how does a blogger drive traffic to his or her blog?

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Renee’s blog , (Lucky) Renee, features her creative prose and poems. Many of her posts are about relationships, with many bitter twists, kind of like a country music song without the steel guitar. Even her posts about politics are really about relationships. She once wrote: “I hate socialism. It’s like being friends with your ex: it’s a thoughtful theory, but in practice it just makes you want to kill yourself.” How can you not want to read more of that? (Here’s the post she wrote before my visit to IU.)

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Anyway, today I’m expanding on the answer I gave Renee last week:

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First and foremost, it’s about content. Offer interesting and unique takes on whatever your blog’s about and readers will come. It’s important to have a focus for your blog (if you write some days about the Chicago Bears, some days about Russian politics, and other days about technology, you won’t get too many repeat readers except for a few odd Russo-nerd-Bear fans). “Force for Good” generally takes a look at current events in the business world from the perspective of a public relations professional, and also spends a fair amount of space on trends in mass media and social media, with the occasional foray into social responsibility. There’s variety but it’s pretty much centered on what I call “aspirational public relations.”

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Second, make it an engaging and rewarding experience for readers so they want to come back. Find your creative voice as a writer. This is a very personal medium, so let your personality come out in your words. Keep it fresh; post often. Keep posts on the short side (okay, I violate this one all the time, such as today’s opus). You can break longer diatribes into a two- or three-part series, which helps to entice repeat readers (if they find the topic and your take on it engaging). Use photos, art and video to give your piece visual interest, always being on the lookout for the visual that adds some emotion to your post.

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Third, use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics in a smart and ethical way – be descriptive of your topic in the headline and lead paragraph in words that someone might likely type into a search engine to find just such a post. I am NOT an advocate of tricking search engines into hitting your posts by embedding words that will draw big numbers of the wrong readers. For example, I could embed invisibly (by displaying white type on white background) a bunch of words that might attract people searching for celebrity-gossip stories and likely greatly increase my raw readership scores. But as soon as they see it’s a blog about PR, they’ll leave disappointed; so what good is that? Work to make your blog relevant to a particular niche of reader. Then to market it to them you should…

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·        Read other blogs that interest you. Leave comments and link to your own blog posts that cover a related issue – or the same issue with a different take. Leave a trackback if you can figure out how to. (Still a mystery to me.) 
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·        Join mybloglog (it’s free) and form a community of bloggers who share common interests. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you draw readers from other countries and continents. See those faces in the right-hand rail of this blog? Those are other bloggers using mybloglog who recently visited this blog. Click around in there to learn more.
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·        Most importantly, know that it’s not about the number of readers you have; it’s about making a connection with a few other people, just sharing ideas and thoughts, or finding someone halfway around the world who liked your poem and really got what you were talking about.

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- Jon Harmon

Comments

[Vahsek]

I believe "content" is a must for driving traffic.
The rest are secondary.

[Mihaela Lica]

This entry resembles so much Lorelle VanFossen's "Blogging Is About Writing" post at problogger! It’s true what they say: great minds think alike.
I particularly like your observation on ethical SEO.
I have an observation though: "Leave comments and link to your own blog posts that cover a related issue" - I suggest you don't do this. Some bloggers don't like it and they'll add a rel=nofollow tag just to "teach you a lesson" or they'll delete the comment. Others have WordPress plugins that add those nofollow tags automatically - so they don't do it on purpose, but you still don't win anything (OK, maybe some traffic if they have an authority blog). I think the best solution is to do what you do: communicate. Add value to the blogs you visit through your comments. Write such a great entry and link back to a fellow blogger (I remember the time we met) and you'll certainly win more than just a link. You'll win a friend. For me blogging is not about content. It’s about people connecting, communicating. It’s about incisive debates. It’s about networking. It’s about relationships.

[TAR ART RAT]

sadly, I find that content- even the most unique, fun and interesting insights and experiences often do not stand a chance against a particularly relevant and well-timed tag. The one day I posted about peekvid being down my readership went up to 20 times the average, but nicely enough has leveled back out at a higher average ever since...

[Cory Buckley]

Hello, would just like to say when i read this it inspired me to pretty much go back through my articles and fix them up to make my descriptions more thorough so it may show up in search engines more clearly.

Great work, and keep it up. Hope you view my blog as well, still working but i am consistent.

[fasean]

great post! definitely helps

[One Minute Blogger]

Just started blogging. Enjoyed this post! Thanks for sharing!

[Frode H]

I have been blogging about a year and my visitors are increasing slowly for each post. I do blog because it is fun, not to attract readers. That is important as well. And be patient, it is going to take time. I have been blogging for one year 120 blog posts and still my readers are few. But it is growing slow, and for each person subscribing to my blog, it will continue to grow.