This blog idea is all about how to develop a great, high quality readership for your blog.
I want to state up front that I’m a supporter of the power of effective search engine optimisation (or SEO). That said, I also believe that relying exclusively on SEO in order to build a great audience for your blog is a mistake.
Human referred blog development
To make my point, the number 1 ranked blog on AdAge is currently chrisbrogan.com. Now, one of the interesting things about Chris’ blog, is that he doesn’t use any SEO tactics on it. His amazing online success is built around people powered recommendations, via various social media / social bookmarking sites.
When I went to Google earlier and typed in “social media consultant” and “social media guru” I didn’t find Chris on that all-important first page of results. In fact, it was only when I searched for “social media expert” that I found a single, page 1 mention of Chris’ blog on Google. However, I’m willing to bet that Chris gets far more traffic than most or possibly all the blogs ranking higher then him for all those search terms.
I use some SEO here on this blog and I recommend you do the same. However, I ALSO wanted to share the idea, that it’s possible to grow your audience in other ways too. In my experience, the best-read blogs are those that do two things really well.
The first thing I notice whenever I study a popular blog, is that it provides content that people want to read and share. This sounds obvious, yet many blogs are very self-indulgent and provide little of value to the reader.
The second thing I find, is that the blogs writers and readers connect. This causes their readers to feel part of the blogs community, so their readers feel good about recommending the blog to their friends. They trust the blogger. When you have this kind of relationship with your readers, they are also far more inclined to keep coming back, which helps increase reader numbers.
Many blogs that ignore those 2 points, find that maintaining their readership is like trying to keep a bucket of water filled – when it has a hole in the bottom.
What’s your take?
I’d love to know what you have found to be effective ways to grow and develop a blog. Do you have any non-SEO ideas you would like to share? If so, let us know!
I comment on blogs, mostly. Not small “nice post” link-building comments but actual paragraphs that generate discussion (hopefully in a positive way, haha). I also email other bloggers who are talking about my topic or who just have really cool blogs and build connections. Finally, I always get reviews of my website from various forums.
Honestly the concept of SEO used to scare me, haha. I think it’s just because it’s an acronym.
There’s a great old saying, which tells us; “success leaves clues.” When almost all (if not all) of the most successful blogs are using non-seo tactics, it suggests this is worth exploring.
Commenting on blogs has a number of benefits. Nice share Corey.
As everyone likes to say “Content is king”. However, as you stated, that content must be interesting to the niche your blogging to, and more importantly, it must be of the right frequency and length to get people to subscribe or visit on a regular basis. Find out what your followers want to read, and then deliver it on a consistent basis.
Responding to comments from readers is also very important. I’m amazed that some really good blogs that get comments that ask questions are not responded to by the blog writer. It always leave me thinking “is this blogger just yelling in the wind”? Respond, add commentary, and your blog can come alive.
And don’t be afraid to tell other bloggers in your industry about one or two of your better posts that they may like. I’ve found doing an “@twitter_name” to a few twitter users in your niche saying they may be interested in a blog post you made can work wonders for publicity and Re-tweets.
Rob – LexiConn
You make a number of great points Rob.
Consistency is really important. When I think of blogs I have stopped reading, they are usually blogs that were inconsistent. I find that happens a LOT with blogs that use guest bloggers just to get ’something’ out there.
Thanks for the feedback sir!