Building Traffic

How do I get people to read my blog?

The key to building traffic is to find the right people to follow and have the right people follow you! Here's how:

1. Join the community: You should actively search for and participate in the conversations that are going on in the blogosphere about your topic. According to the Idiot’s Guide to Blogging, you should start out by looking for people in the community who offer fresh news on the subject often, and who are highly visible in the community. Say, for instance, you are using Blogger. If you become a follower of one of the veterans of the topic who already of a huge audience, people may stumble onto your profile and take a look at your blog. But you should also interact with anyone who is apart of the conversation in order to build more traffic. Going after internet gurus such as the Huffington Post may not always benefit you, but looking to engage in many smaller conversations can help.
2. Contribute to the conversation: After you have found the community you connect well with, start to dive into the conversations they are having. Leave comments on other people’s blogs. Include link references in these commentsThis may incite them to track back to your blog and leave a comment. This could also increase your followers and build a professional relationship between you and the community. Viewers will see that you are actively participating in the conversation and may look to your blog as a resource if they see that you are knowledgeable about the subject.
3. Market and Promote: How do people even begin to look at your blog if they don’t know it exists? Trying to master SEO is enough of a challenge to master. However, in the meantime you should use social networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter (and the thousand others that exist) to promote yourself. I find that Tiny URL and Tiny Pic are my best friends in this area. If you update a post and want to put it in your Twitter status, you will notice that it isn’t wise to try to fit the whole URL in there when you only have a few characters to work with. By visiting Tiny URL you can shrink your link down to a size that looks more attractive. Also, you might want to write a brief description about what readers can find on your blog when they click the link. Sometimes just including the link can compel people to want to click on it, but if you mention something like “Interview with Obama”, more then likely people who are interested in this topic (who are the people you want to target anyway) will visit your blog.