7 Tips for Successful Blogging

So, you have a blog! Do you have traffic? Do you know how to build traffic to your weblog? There are seven proven methods for building readership of your blog. They start with defining the purpose, or life, of your blog. Then, after you have a blog worth promoting, driving traffic is crucial to your ongoing success at blogging.

Here are seven tips to help you build and hold an audience for your blog:

Tip #1: Provide quality content.

On the Internet, whether you are talking about websites or blogs, a lot of space is given to content. Everyone directs you to provide quality content. But, what is quality content? The quality of your blog’s content is directly related to how well you have defined your ideal audience.

A successful blog is written with a distinct audience in mind. In this way, you can provide content that is unique to your audience’s issues, needs, or desires. If you create content they like and wish to return to read, you have quality content.

The second issue is to stay true to your audience and tone of your blog. If people are reading your blog, it’s because they like your topic and tone. Try not to stray from your typical topics and style too much. This will give your readers a reason to link back to your blog on an ongoing basis, as will posting on a regular basis.

Tip #2: Blog regularly

If you don't update your blog often enough, blog readers will move on to other blogs. There are too many blogs out there competing for attention. Blog readers will go where they can get enough of what they want.

Successful blogging takes a commitment of your time. When you begin blogging and wish to capture an audience, you should be prepared to blog every day. In this way, you can develop an audience who counts on you to help them begin or end their day.

This means you should also try to post at the same time each day. Your readers will get accustomed to your schedule and check your blog at the appropriate time. The time of day is not as crucial as the consistency in your posting.

Since you now have quality content and a regular posting schedule, it’s time to drive traffic to your blog. Your readers will do a lot to promote your blog just by telling their friends. Don’t count on this alone! You need to do some additional work.

When you post, make sure you set your blog to “ping” blog tracking sites every time you add a new post. Think of this as a means to get their attention. The ping says “Hey, we just added a new post”. An alternative to automatically pinging from your blog is to use pingomatic.com. This is a one-stop place to automatically ping everyone you should notify of your new post and only takes a couple of minutes to accomplish.

Tip #3: Mention your blog wherever you can

Mention your blog’s address in your email signature line, in forums where you post, on your business cards, on address labels and in conversations with anyone you meet. Use a tag line under your blog address to further entice them to visit. Mine reads:

Michele Schermerhorn
http://www.imarketblog.com
A sassy little marketing blog

Beyond just mentioning your blog in writing and conversation, you must actively participate in the blogging community too.

Tip #4: Participate in the blogosphere

Get involved in other people's blogs. Visit blogs that interest you and are in line with the general topic of your blog. Then, leave thoughtful comments. Almost every comment option on someone else’s blog will allow you to post your blog URL and your email address. Help other bloggers out with traffic and they will help you.

If a blogger really likes your site, they will add you to their blogroll. A blogroll is generally found on every blog which understands linking to the rest of the blogosphere helps drive traffic. A blogroll is a listing of other blogs. Think of it as a “recommended reading list”. Don’t be stingy with your blog roll either. Add those blogs that you read and enjoy to your blogroll too.

Tip #5: Think keywords when you post

Think about keywords with your use of titles, links and blog posts. Search engines, like Google and Yahoo, like keywords. The more targeted your keywords, the better the chances of your blog appearing in search results. Search results can drive that extra traffic you want.

To increase the value of the key words in your content, make certain keywords are part of the hot link in your posts. Don’t use “click here” as the hot link. You will be wasting valuable real estate in your post. Instead use the relevant keywords for the hot link, like “a great marketing idea. This gives the keywords added emphasis with the search engines.

One last thought on keywords for driving traffic; if you want a real leg up in the traffic game, in your linking code add rel=”tag”. This helps Technorati, a major blog resource, index your blog for their directory. But don’t stop there! It’s time to submit your blog to blog directories.

Tip #6: Submit your blog to blog directories

In addition to submitting your blog to the major search engines, make certain you submit the blog to exclusively blog directories like blogwise, blogcatalog, or bloghub. Many people find blogs through these online directories.

When you do submit your blog to these directories, remember to add a description that will entice your targeted audience to check your blog out. For instance, when I post my blog in blog directories, under description I put “General musings, rants, advice and strategies from a battle-worn veteran of the Marketing Wars, online and off”. Your description should help the potential reader understand your blogging topic and the flavor of how you write.

In addition to submitting your blog to blog directories, join a few of the free or inexpensive traffic exchange sites like blogexplosion or blogclicker.

Tip #7: Use free and inexpensive blog traffic exchange communities

There are many sites which can be termed “traffic exchange” sites for the blogging community. It won’t cost you anything to sign up. At the very least, join blogexplosion, blogclicker, and blogazoo. Once you sign up, you have two options to help drive traffic to your blog. Use both of them!

The first method is to earn credits (guaranteed visitors to your site) by using the “surf member sites” function. As you surf through those sites, you will be earning credits (visitors to your blog). When you find an interesting post, leave a comment as discussed above. When you find a blogger you like, add them to your blogroll and let them know you did.

The second method to drive traffic is to purchase credits. The cost is very cheap for the traffic you will drive to your blog. The more traffic to your blog, the more customers you’ll have. The more happy customers you have, the more they will tell others. The more they tell others, the more customers you get. Don’t you love this dance!

In summary, blogging may not be for everyone. However, it can be a great method for bringing your unique perspective to the Internet. You will surely find others who think the same way you do. Some bloggers will entertain you, some will inform you, and some will drive you to tear your hair out. Decide what type of blogger you want to be and be the best you can. See you in the blogosphere!

Bad Web Design: Advertising Mistakes

Okay, we know we all need to pay the bills. I know that many of us want to get traffic to our web sites. And some of us just want to make enough money to pay for our costs so that this thing we love to do is free.

But, come on, that doesn't mean you should plaster a hundred ads or a dozen banners on every page of your web site. A banner here and there, a small button or a few text links is fine, but I've seen some web sites that have dozens and a few that have hundreds of ads on each page! Now this is just tacky and is virtually guaranteed to get your visitors to hit that handy back button fast.

One of the worst kinds of web sites, in my opinion, are those that are just huge advertisements. Especially those that are advertisements for dozens or even hundreds of other services. People do not surf the web looking for banners, text links and other advertisements to click on. In fact, statistically, most people are surfing because they are looking for (a) information, (b) entertainment, or (c) someone to talk to. Most web surfers are not looking for something to purchase.

A good web site offers excellent content (which can be graphics, text or interactive features). Even those sites which sell something also offer content which is of interest to their visitors. Go take a look at any really good shopping site and you will see what I mean. Look at Amazon.Com or Barnes And Noble and you will understand - these sites offer tons of content. Reviews of their products, consumer comments and large amounts of data about the items being sold. This is what people want - information. Some common things on web site that you should never do.

Banner exchanges - It's real simple - these do not work. Oh, you will get a click or two, but banner exchanges tend to look tacky, take up valuable space on your web pages and increase your load time. To make it even worse, many times you will lose far more traffic than you will gain. Don't even bother putting even one of these on your entire web site.

Notices saying "please, pretty please, keep my site free and click on something". This just makes you look like a rank amateur. In my humble opinion, it's very tacky to expect people to click on links just so you can "keep your site free". Come up with or find a good product or service, and sell it if you must. Advertising is not in of itself of value - only products or services have value.

Pornographic ads (unless your site is a pornographic site) - You want to chase away your visitors fast, then include pornographic ads. Yeah, you might get a few dollars from them, but you will lose visitors and your site will not be "family safe", which can be important.

Gambling ads - I understand that these advertisements may be the only things (besides pornography) that people will click on nowadays, but quite a few people do not want to be exposed to these things. I believe that these kinds of advertisements will cause you to loose a large amount of traffic.

Web sites that are just advertisements - I suppose there is a place for brochures or full site advertisements, but I personally hit the back key as soon as I run into one of these. I want content. If I wanted this many advertisements I'd buy a magazine or look in the classified section of the newspaper.

Any large graphic advertisements. Remember one of the very important things in web design is load time. Your site must load fast. If you include large graphic ads you are increase your load times.

Sites which are just lists of pay-surf, MLM or other money making schemes. There is nothing wrong with include some pay-surf or MLM ads here and there on your site. Including a section on these programs is also fine. But come on, please put some real content there also. Otherwise people will hit the back key fast and never come back.

Brochures - I've seen a large number of web sites in my days, and one of the ones that I click out of the fastest is one that looks like a brochure. It feels just like someone took the company brochure and converted it to web format. What on earth makes companies think these are of value to anyone?
Popup Windows - If you do a survey of web surfers, you will find that these are among the most hated "features" that exist. No one likes pop up windows, and if your site has too many of them you will loose visitors fast. Oh, you may get a few more clicks or signups for your newsletter, but the amount of time your visitors remain on your site will be limited and of less quality.