Building your blogs readership

Cast your mind back to the days when the world wide web first appeared on the scene. It was the time where the little boy could take on the big boy in a level playing field. After all, we both controlled the same area of real-estate on a persons browser and we both had the same opportunity to pitch our message to the reader. Such phrases as "build it and they will come" resinated around the marketing circles with a hope of securing the future for the Internet.

But history has shown us that it didn't quite work like that. The big-boys got the bigger slice of readers leaving the smaller boys picking around left-overs hoping to get that infamous link-back from a large portal or site to drive some of their users over to your humble area of the world wide web.

Blogging is going through a similar realization. While one shouldn't be seduced by the promise of huge traffic numbers, you shouldn't cut off the opportunity all together. With a little work, little thought, you can indeed move through the ranks and start getting yourself a healthy readership. But be realistic.

A good entry over at Sabahan.com illustrates his own goal of moving from around 100 daily readers to 10,000 within a year. A fine goal and one that shouldn't be too hard to achieve if follows through on the tips he has laid out. But why 10,000? Why not 100,000? Or even a million? Or what about something a little more modest like 1,000 readers?

The harsh reality is that it comes down to a pure numbers game. There is only a finite amount of users on the Internet, and while that is increasing daily, there is an ever growing number of pages vying for their attention, growing at a much faster rate, thanks largely to the ease that blogging has brought.

Take a look at your own Internet experience. Sit back and think about how you move around the Internet. How many new sites have you stumbled upon today? How many of those new sites will you most likely visit tomorrow or maybe at a later date? How many of those new sites were lucky enough to be bookmarked by you? or even better, have their RSS feed added to your feed reader?

We are creatures of habit, and while we like to discover new things, the vast majority of our internet surfing time is spent visiting the same jumping-off sites on a daily basis. The only hope we really have of finding a new site is if it pops up in our news/feed reader and happens to catch our eye. Of course we can't discount the ill-fated validated link; the "oh you have to read this" email from a friend or colleague. Those can often be the key to the large influx of readers some desparately crave.

It is all about context - making sure you set your goals to a realistic value that reflects the type of readers you expect to attract. This goes back to our previous entry on Why people blog? But understanding your reader is the key to the whole success of blogging. Put yourself in their shoes, why would you want to come back to your blog on a daily or weekly basis?

Experts often cite daily or constant content is the key. But only if its of interest and of a perceived value. Drivel is still drivel no matter how often it is produced. Content is your product - after that, its just packaging. Deliver good solid content and you'll find you will start carving out the niche and the readers as your blog evolves.

Another tip that is definitely worth bearing in mind, is to make sure your blog doesn't become a virtual cul-de-sac. Once people visit your blog, where do you take them to next? Links to other interesting stories around the Internet is a common thing to do and try to make your entries as rich as possible with links. So if you reference a story or comment on a product, then leave a link to the original source. This gives your entries not only greater depth, but serves you no harm when the search engines and aggregators come to rank your blogs popularity.

One of the best ways to get traffic to your blog, is to get involved in your community. Go out and find other related sites of interest and start contributing there, ensuring you leave a link back to your blog. Mailing lists and online forums are a great way to build up your credituals. A trick often used by the hard core bloggers is to participate on a list and instead of writing a full answer on the forum, write a quick overview and then tell them that if they want to read the full explanation then visit your blog.

There is no magic answer to building blog traffic, but by doing some of the small things, one can easily increase your readership. Just don't expect it overnight.

tags: blog traffic  self marketing  blogging