今天在煎蛋看到的文章，拿出来分享一下。此文原名是---救命啊，我妈妈是我 blog 的唯一读者！，此文章总结于---19 (More) Strategies for Finding Readers。希望对大家有所帮助。
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咳咳，这个不是说
我，原作者用这个标题的真正意思是，如何给你的 blog 带来流量？一般来说，写博到一定程序，访问量似乎就上不去了。很多人问作者，怎样才能继续上升呢？甚至有一位每天 7w ip 的 blogger 来咨询，可见无论现状如何，人们总是渴求得到更多。
那么，你该如果跳出现状的桎梏呢？
关于这个有很多答案。比如作者曾写过的《
发现新读者的19个点子》，但是直到今天才总结出两个主要的观点。
一、如何撬动大流量
当我开始写博的时候，总是幻想会有巨大的流浪来压垮我的 blog。两个月以后才意识到，这种事基本上不会发生。
然后某天我灵光一闪，我想到怎么获得大的流量了，我得寻找获得流量的方法。于是我问自己：
潜在的流量在哪里？
在任一时刻，都有数百万的人在网上，他们中相当一部分人在搜索自己感兴趣的东西。如果我刚好写过，那么他们会搜到它吗？
那么你潜在的读者呢？
这个问题很难回答，但是可以给些建议。
1、论坛。恩，虽然它们还是web1.0(或者说1.3)，但是事实上每天仍然有无数人在里面看帖子。
2、社会性网站，比如 digg ，reddit，flickr，youtube，myspace等，这些站聚合了巨大的流量，而其中有相当一部分可能是与你的网站有关联的。
3、大的 blog，大部分主题会提到相关文章的。
4、大的网站，而不是只盯着博客圈，否则会限制自己。
但是，如果你没有真正理解上面说的这些，并不能给你带来超额流量。关键在于，要
发现你的潜在流量聚集在哪里，接着要
知道如何成为这些网站/圈子的一员。
通常情况下，一些网站站长只愿意给那些自己喜欢的其它网站作链接，如果其他人能让他了解那些网站有一定价值。比如：
#发邮件要求链接，或者交换链接；
#去他的网站发 spam 评论；
#把他的读者引到你的网站。
比较有效的办法有：
#给他们提供免费内容
#在留言里提供有价值的信息
#在社区里搞个有性格的签名档
#提供一些他们感兴趣的链接
#了解作者
第二部分是发现读者，但是我要中断翻疫了，就此打住吃饭去，瓦哈哈哈哈~
救命啊，我妈妈是我 blog 的唯一读者！
How do I get my blog beyond the initial launch phase and actually find readers beyond my mum, girlfriend and work mates?
Launching a blog and getting a few regular readers (usually friendsand family) isn’t the hard part of blogging (although it’s not ‘easy’)- the challenge comes in trying to find a way to take things up a notchand hit some sort of ‘tipping point’ where you hit a new level ofreadership.
In this post I’d like to explore some basic techniques on how to grow your readership beyond your circle of friends and family.
Before we begin - One little ’secret’ for youbefore I give some ideas on how to grow your readership - no matter howbig your blog gets, there’s always another ‘next level’ that bloggersstrive for. I spoke to a blogger this week who has 70,000 daily readerswho asked me how to go to the ‘next level’. Blog readership is likemoney - no matter how much you’ve got, most people seem to alwaysthirst for more.
So how do you get out of the plateau that your blog is in (whatever that level is)?
There are many answers that could be given to this (for example I wrote
19 tips for finding new readers previously) - but as I’ve pondered the question today two main ideas came to mind.
1. Learn to Leverage Big Traffic
When I first started blogging, I had romantic notions of an incomingrush of traffic hitting my blog. A couple of months in I began torealize that that wasn’t going to happen.
I remember the light going on in my mind one day - the rush of trafficjust wasn’t going to ‘appear’. Of course there was a trickle of trafficthat did just ‘appear’ - but if I wanted traffic in large numbers I wasgoing to have to find some way of going and getting it.
I began to ask myself a question:
‘where is my potential traffic?’
At any given moment, millions of people are using the Internet - acertain percentage of them were interested in and even searching forthe information that I had written - so where were they and how was Igoing to get them?
So where are your potential readers?
I can’t answer that question for each of you (because it varies,depending upon your blog’s topic) but here are a few suggestions ofwhere your readers may already be gathering:
1.
Forums - yep, they are Web 1.0 (or 1.3 maybe) inmany ways - but the reality is that people are probably discussing yourtopic every day already on a forum somewhere in large numbers.
2.
Social Sites -sites like Digg, Reddit, Flickr, YouTube and MySpace are generatingmassive traffic at the moment. Many of them won’t have the kind oftraffic that will naturally relate to your site - but increasinglysocial networking and bookmarking sites are arranging themselves aroundspecific topics and verticals.
3.
Bigger Blogs - on most topics there is already a blog that is at least covering a related topic.
4.
Bigger Sites - don’t just look at the blogosphere - doing so will limit yourself so much.
Ok - the above list is pretty general but it’s hard to be more specific without knowing the topic at hand.
The key is to
find those places where your potential traffic is already gathering and then to think about
how you can become a part of those sites/communities in a way that draws traffic to your blog.
In general I find that other site owners are more than willing toshare a little link love around IF you provide them with some valuetoo.
Notice I said
IF you provide them with value. It doesn’t mean:
- sending an email asking for a link or offering to trade links
- spamming their site’s comments/forum
- manipulating their site or readers into coming to your site
Find out a way of genuinely enhancing their site and becoming a valued part of their community.
- Write them free content
- Genuinely participate in comments in ways that add value to the conversation
- Use a signature in your communications with people in the community (as long as it’s within the rules to do so)
- Provide them with some link love (even if it’s not returned)
- Get to know the authors - thank them for anything that they do do for you
Over time (and this isn’t usually an overnight process) you’ll findthat the more you add to and participate in larger sites, the moreyou’ll personally get out of it.
2. Get discovered one reader at a time
The second piece of advice I’ll give is to not get caught up in finding the big incoming link that will bring a rush of traffic.
Yes you should be on the lookout for these opportunities - but
don’t forget the readers you’ve currently got and don’t forget the small trickles of traffic that you already have from smaller sources.
Google and other Search Engines - millions ofpeople start their search for information here every day - while it’s along term thing to grow SE traffic it does add up over time. Learn somebasic
search engine optimization techniquesand incorporate it into the way you blog. While search engines likeGoogle will only ever send you one reader at a time - they can do so invery large numbers over time.
Reader Recommendations - one of the most powerfulforces at your disposal as a blogger is your current reader. 10 readerswho each find two new readers for your blog each month who each findtwo new readers for your blog each month will see you end up with areadership of over 40,000 within 12 months. While that might not be areasonable expectation - the fact remains that blogging is by itsnature a viral medium. Tap into this - concentrate on providing valueto your current readers and you will find over time that you could beon the receiving end of some viral growth.
Smaller Blogs - Getting a link from a larger blogor website can be a huge rush (for example last week I got a link fromthe front page of Yahoo.com as a featured article and it was a funthing to watch) but sometimes it’s the links from smaller blogs thathave a more lasting impact upon your blog. Build relationships withother blogs in your niche (not just the powerful ones) and over timeyou’ll find that the traffic that they send will not only bring you newloyal readers but that the links will help your search engine ranking.
Bonus Tip - Live with an Attitude of Openness to Opportunity
A few years ago I had a business coach. The main thing I took home fromthe time I spent with him was that he was someone that was constantlyon the lookout for synergy and opportunity with those that he met. Hedidn’t do it in a manipulative way - but he had this ability to connectwith people and spot potential connecting points between what he didand what the other person did.
Almost as if every conversation he had led to a new mutuallybeneficial business partnership, customer or product idea. The resultwas that his business grew.
As bloggers, I think this is an attitude that all of us could learn from.
Don’t expect the large rush of traffic to land in your lap - it rarely comes.
DO look for opportunities and DO be willing to act quickly upon them and in time you’ll find the growth will come.
19 (More) Strategies for Finding Readers
Yaro has already kicked us off on this topic of how to find readers fora new blog but I thought I’d pull together a few ideas on the topicalso (with a little overlap with Yaro’s ideas). These points come froma variety of older posts I’ve written on the topic - sort of a ‘bestof’ kind of thing. I’ve updated some, others are straight extracts fromthings I’d said before and a few are new:
1. It takes time - It may not be what you want tohear, but it unless you’re a genius, extremely lucky or have an amazingnew idea, it takes time to build a readership. So settle in for thelong haul and muscle up some patience.
2. Content Content Content - I’ve said this over andover again so will keep it brief but unless you have ‘good’ contentyou’re unlike to build a readership. What is good content - start bythinking about it in terms of
usefulness and uniquenessand I think you’ll be on the right track. Other words that come to mindwhen it comes to good content might be ‘fresh’, ‘variety’, ‘up to date’and ‘well written’.
3. Link to others - Perhaps one of the centralfeatures of blogging is that they are linked. The intricate web oflinks and relationships was one of the first things that attracted meto blogging and it’s part of the reason it’s got real viral propertiesthat allow ideas to spread so quickly. Participate in the linking toother blogs and you’ll find that many benefits come. For a start you’llbe participating in the conversation, you’ll be getting the attentionof others and your readers will appreciate that you’re interested inhelping them find the best content out there.
Of course you don’t want to be linking randomly to everyone andanyone - be selective and link to quality content that is relevant toyour niche topic. As you engage in linking you’ll find that others willlink back (assuming you have something worthwhile to say yourself) andyou’ll find the traffic begins to flow - both from their sites and as aresult of your increased search engine ranking.
4. Get Links from other Bloggers - I can hear thecomments already - ‘Easier said than done Darren!’ This is true - butif you’re smart, genuine, helpful and polite there are
ways of increasing the chances of getting links from others.
5. Participate in other people’s conversations - Isuspect that a number of my first regular blog readers first came to myblog because I left a comment on theirs. It was not a strategy Ithought about - I just found myself quite addicted to reading othersblogs and giving feedback. When you leave a comment leave your own blogaddress. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and willcome visiting you.
Don’t comment just for the sake of it.If someone leaves me a ‘hi’ comment or is obviously spamming my blog Iwon’t visit them and delete the comment. Make genuine comments on poststhat connect with you. You might make a good friend in the process andin the long run will find the flow on effect of this is more interestin you and your own blog.
6. Interact with Readers - When a reader reaches outto you with a comment, email or link from their blog - interact withthem. For starters it’s good manners and secondly it’s a good way toincrease the chances that they’ll come back again. I get a lot ofpeople telling me that they don’t have enough readers to their blog -while I can related to this frustration I generally encourage them tosee what they’ve got as a good starting place. Interact with those whodo come to your blog and make it the best experience you can for themand you’ll find that they spread the word for you.
7. Update frequently - With the advent of
news aggregatorspeople can be notified of your new post in real time. I noticed thatwhen I publish a new post that my stats nearly always go up slightlyjust afterwards as those readers with aggregators log in to have aquick look at my latest musings. This works a lot better on some blogsthan others (some topics seem to attract more RSS subscribers thanothers do). Another side benefit of frequent posting is that searchengines like it and many believe that the more you post the more oftenSE’s will send their spiders out to index your blog. Similarly - themore you post the more you’ll get indexed by blog engines like
technorati (and numerous others). Of course I’m not encouraging massive amounts of meaningless content - keep it of a high quality.
8. Add a signature to your outgoing email - This is anoldie but a goodie. Many bloggers do this. Simply add the domain nameto your outgoing email. Most email programs will allow you to do thisautomatically via a signature option. However be careful with automaticsignatures if you don’t want your blog to be read by everyone that youemail.
9. Promote your RSS Feed - Most blog platforms comewith a RSS feeds built in but there are ways of increasing yoursubscriber list. The most obvious of these is to put it in the sight ofyour readers by putting your RSS button in a more prominent position.There are a variety of different buttons available that you can makeavailable to readers to help them to subscribe to your blog via theirnews aggregators with one click that might also be worth investigating.Also, if your topic is not one which many readers seem to use RSS in,you might need to do some education on the topic of RSS feeds. Write apost on how to follow your blog via RSS and you might find more do.
10. List your site on Portals, Blog Indexes, Directories and Search Engines- There are MANY places that you can list your blog to help it get moreattention. In fact there are too many and you could probably spend allyour time submitting your blog to them all. I’d recommend that youdon’t become obsessed by this and work on other factors in this listfirst and then in your spare time add your blog to some of these typesof things as you go. Making sure you get listed on some of the biggersites like
Technorati should probably be a priority (
here’s how for Technorati)- but don’t make this the first thing you do. In terms of getting intosearch engines - you can submit yourself (most have ways of doing this)but most people believe that the best and quickest way to get indexedthese days is to get a link from another site that is already indexed.
11. Search Engine Optimization - While some bloggers
don’t think much of SEO I think it is well worth knowing some
basic SEO principlesand keeping them in the back of your mind as you blog. After all SE’sare the place that most people go to when they are searching forinformation on a topic. Don’t become obsessed by SEO, but don’t ignoreit either.
12. Participate in others Blogger’s Projects - Fromtime to time other bloggers will invite your participation in a blogproject of theirs. Put your hand up, volunteer some time and contributein some way. Don’t just do it to get a link on their site, but take theopportunity to build a relationship with them and their readers. Notonly will you make a friend, but over time you build some credibilityas a blogger who is not just thinking about themselves. On the flipside start your own blogging project. Some of the more popular thingsto get involved with these days are
Blog Carnivals.
13. Participate in other web forums - Blogging is notthe only vibrant online activity at the moment. I visit a number ofother discussion forums and e-zines that explore similarideas/hobbies/interests to me and my blogs. I’ve found an increasingamount of traffic to my blog is coming as a result of my contributionsto these forums as many of them allow you to add your link as asignature to your posts. Don’t spam these forums - but be a genuinecontributer that adds useful comments and you’ll find people are drawnto your other projects.
14. Explore other formats of communication - Anotherof the more effective things that I’ve done over the past year in myblogging is worth hard on email newsletters for a few of my blogs. Idon’t do it with all of them (mainly due to the time it takes) but hereat ProBlogger I’ve grown a list of over 1600 email subscribers who Isend weekly information to. These newsletters both are about keepingpeople in touch with what happened on the blog each week as well asgiving extra tips and information to build a sense of community andownership of the site. Other bloggers use forums similarly.
15. Offline Techniques - Blog Promotion need not onlyhappen online. Consider how you might promote it offline and you couldjust bring in some new readers also. Such techniques can includeputting your URL on business cards, letterhead, using press releasesand other assorted methods. Read more on this
here.
16. Make it viral - One of the things about infectiousdiseases that makes them so deadly is that they are very easy to passon from one person to another. There are a number of things you mightwant to consider doing to help with this. For instance a lot ofbloggers these days are adding links on their posts that allow readersto bookmark the post in social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us anddigg. Other bloggers have features that allow bloggers to ‘email afriend’ about a particular post. Others (like ProBlogger) allow readersto subscribe to comment threads via email. All of these types ofplugins allow your readers to do the work for you in either spreadingthe word about your site or making it more sticky. Speaking of socialbookmarking - there are also
ways of writing contentthat tend to be picked up more in this scene that you might like toexplore if that’s a source of traffic that you’re interested in.
17. Advertise - I’ve written a lot over the past yearabout running advertising on blogs as a form of income - but on theflip side of many advertising platforms that you can run as a publisherare the opportunities to actually advertise your blog in the attempt tofind new readers. In the last few months I’ve dabbled a little in thisside of things, mainly using
AdWords (the advertiser side of AdSense) but also advertising on a few sites using
BlogAds. I’ve actually been learning about AdWords using
Perry Marshall’s e-book(aff)on the topic and am finding it quite helpful if you’re looking to agood introduction to using it (he has a free 5 day taster too). Ofcourse you’ll need to weigh up the cost of advertising vs the benefitsthat you think it’ll bring - but I know of quite a few bloggers who runan AdWords campaign in the first month of a new blog to give it a kickstart and swear by the method.
18. Link baiting - This is one of the terms that hasbecome quite common among bloggers over the last year. In essence ‘linkbait’ is some sort of comment that will attract links to it and in manyways is no different than paragraph 2 above - write good content andpeople will link up. Of course there are many tactics that manybloggers use to link bait - I’ve explored a few of these
here.
19. Take all advice with a grain of salt - Be yourself and have fun!- The web is full of advice like the above - what I’m saying isn’trocket science. There are no rules of blogging and it seems everyone’sexperience of growing a blog (or not growing one) is different.
I’m sure there are a lot of blogs out there that ignore all or mostof the above advice that have a bunch of regular readers and healthyhits. So relax, be yourself and have fun with it. Experiment with newtools, styles of design and writing.
My suspicion is that bloggers who obviously enjoy the bloggingprocess and who are themselves are the type of bloggers that people aredrawn to. Bloggers that are uptight and who complain constantly abouthow their blog isn’t achieving what they want it to achieve probably doquite the opposite and turn people away. Traffic is a good thing for ablog but it’s not the ultimate measure of a good blog in my books.Write it for yourself and have some fun and a lot of the rest will endup looking after itself.
