Attracting Activity to Your Blog
As with static websites, the success of a blog depends on attracting a steady stream of new and return traffic. It is just that the tools for blog promotion are slightly different, a bit more diverse and on the whole much more effective.
Blogs are designed with interactivity and social networking ability built in. They are ideal both for developing relationships and marketing your brand.
However, this doesn’t mean you should neglect standard promotion techniques in favor of blog only techniques. In fact, traditional marketing activities can become even more potent with a blog due to its nature.
For example, you will still want to utilize your email list. Ask readers to subscribe, and let them know when you post a new article just as you would with a new feature or product on a static website.
Of course, if you are prolific blogger and post every day, you’ll only want to alert them when you’ve published something extra special or compile a list of new posts and descriptions and send it out once a week.
You don’t want to overwhelm and annoy, but inform and share. However, do make sure you ask them to subscribe at every opportunity — on your sidebar, at the end of every post, on every page, and perhaps with pop-ups.
(But use pop-ups judiciously. Remember, you don’t want to annoy. As you can see, I use an unobtrusive bottom slide-up opt-in form on this blog, which is Instant Slideup. Since incorporating it, my optins have tripled.)
You don’t want to neglect keywords either. I’m no SEO expert, but I do know that choosing titles with strong keywords and using key phrases within your post is important to attracting new traffic through search engines.
Blog posts are indexed much more quickly than static pages whether your keywords are strong or not. Using keywords increases the odds that a page will rise to the top of the search engine listings as opposed to rank #65 with a phrase you never anticipated.
In addition, you will want to make sure your blog pings the blog search engines. Most blog software has this function built in, like WordPress, but it’s a good idea to double check if you are using an off-brand or an older version.
I only use three of them, since they, in turn, ping the majority of the search engines and blog directories out there for you whenever you post. And it does so automatically. This way, you don’t need to ping a bunch of them since they do all the work for you. They are:
- Pingomatic.com (rpc.pingomatic.com)
- PingGoat.com (pingoat.com/goat/RPC2)
- FeedBurner (ping.feedburner.com)
You may want to consider submitting your blog posts to ezine directories, publishers, and even offline magazines. Actually, you should likely considering hiring this out to a publicist, as I do. My articles are still distributed to thousands of ezine editors and publishers by my publicist, Anne-Marie Baugh.
Not only will it free up your time, a publicist will be able to monitor your blog, retrieve articles and prepare them for submission, target specific industry leaders online and know how to entice the right magazine editors to reach your target market.
Make sure you utilize RSS feeds. Make sure your RSS feed icon is large enough that it can be easily found, and offer an email alternative for those who prefer not to use readers. Just like opt-in forms, make sure you add it to every page.
Speaking of opt-in forms, around the RSS button you can add your own opt-in form from your favorite autoresponder service, or use an RSS-to-email service like FeedBurner.com or FeedBlitz.com to increase subscriptions.
It’s preferable to use a third party site because they provide extra features that will help you promote and publicize your blog with little extra effort.
In conjunction with the lists and feeds, you’ll want to create a separate landing page for subscribers. This is similar to your typical “About Me” page, but instead of promoting you or your products, you’ll want to outline the different ways people can subscribe to your blog.
You can increase your responses by offering a “bribe” to those who sign up. This could be a free report or special offer for those who join your list.
Another tactic I recommend for increasing blog traffic is to submit your RSS feed to the various RSS engines like Yahoo and Technorati.
There is no point in doing this manually as inexpensive software like RSS Submit will accomplish the job quickly and easily. This type of software will automatically submit your RSS feeds to all the major RSS engines.
Next, use a social bookmarking and posting service, like ShareThis.com. By adding ShareThis, you allow people to bookmark your blog or blog post on a variety of popular social networking sites, as well as send the post/page by email to a friend.
Finally, have someone else whether a friend, client or staff member, submit your posts to highly trafficked social sites, like Digg.com, Facebook.com, Sphinn.com (the one I use), PlugIM.com, and more.
Get someone other than you to do this. Self-serving links are viewed poorly in the world of social marketing. It’s worth the effort to find someone to do so for you as the traffic you receive can be quite considerable.
This is just a sampling of the most used techniques to drive blog traffic.
Granted, there are other effective methods for blog promotion you might add to your repertoire. But it’s best to start with a handful to get traffic flowing rather than overwhelming yourself with too many blog marketing tasks. After all, your focus should be your content.
In the end, the ultimate traffic driver will always be good quality content that meets the needs and expectations of your target market.
About the Author
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, consultant, and CEO of The Success Doctor, Inc. Visit his blog and signup free to get tested conversion strategies and response-boosting tips by email, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com.
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Posted by Michel Fortin on September 30th, 2008. Filed in Articles, Marketing, Tips. Tagged as autoresponder, blog, email, ezine, facebook, interactivity, keyword, Marketing, networking, opt-in, promotion, publicity, rss, service, social networking, subscription, wordpress. Follow responses through the RSS feed.
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From Susi
Michael– I read this post on Better Networker. VERY helpful. I’m new, don’t have a blog yet but hopefully will have one soon. Your info will help as I prepare mine.
Thanks,
Susi– learning.
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Andrew Cavanagh
When I look at my sales statistics it always amazes me how many of my sales come from my blog.
A blog is an amazing way to build trust with your prospects, deliver value to your clients and attract search engine traffic to you.
Oh and you might sell some products too!
Nice tips Michel.
Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Jeremy Reeves
Great post Michel - I learned a few new things and will be implementing them on my blog
That slide up thing looks awesome…I definitely have to look into that.
Jeremy Reeves
http://www.GetClientsIn20.com
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Greg Thompson
Thanks for the popup tool Michel. I’ll give it a try on one of my sites and see how it works out.
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Gerald S.
Thanks Michel for your great tips. I am just starting a blog, so I am going to use some of your suggestions. I do have one question. You say to submit your blog articles to ezine directories. Do you submit the original article or a modified one? I am concerned about duplicate content and being penalized by the SEs.
Regards,
Gerald
http://www.essential-nutrition-plus.com/health
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Tom Chechatka
Any recommendations for outsourcing all this?
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From David Leonhardt
All good tips.
I would add one more - visit other people’s blogs (which is what I am doing right now) and commenting. People read comments and follow the links and visit your blogs.
If the blog you are reading is one with a MyBlogLog widget, people will see your profile link just because you visited. This won’t interest too many people…except the blog owner.
But if you can get the attention of and build a relationship with a few good bloggers in your niche or a somewhat related niche, you open up all sorts of possibilities for marketing, joint ventures, guest posts, etc.
And thanks for the “slide-up” idea. I am asking my programmer about it now, and of course I will purchase through your affiliate link if he gives me the green light.
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Jer@PaydayLoanIndustry.com
Michael,
The slide up tool intrigues me! I too will go through your link to get it and test it on a few of my payday loan web sites!
Great post, man!!! Very informative and I’m no newbie!
Jer
Author's Website September 30th, 2008
From Lan
Hi Michel - love the Instant Slideup! Will try that on some of my sites. You mentioned having your blog posts submitted to ezine directories, wouldn’t that be dup content?
Thanks,
Lan
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Peter - Software Marketing Secrets
Thanks Michel, excellent post with useful content as usual.
I see that you have dropped services like mybloglog from your blog. Did they get to “spammy” or why did you remove it?
Also, thanks to Andrew Cavanagh. I took a look at your blog and I like how you display all your products after every blog post. I will definitely steal that idea
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Reyn Aria
Great tips, Michel. Simple and effective. I especially like your pop-up opt-in form. Will definitely get it for my blog.
To Your Continuous Success!
Reyn Aria
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Bill Knight
Hi Michel,
Everything you say about blogs is true. I know because I use blogs to get the word out about new products I have reviewed. What I would emphasize is, blogs and social networking sites, when used in conjunction are an absolute marketer’s dream.
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From caleb osborne
Michel,
Ok… you got two guys before my comment asking, and I’ll bring it up too: do you worry about posting your blog articles to ezinearticles and other article directories because of duplicate content penalties?
Let us know
caleb
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Michel Fortin
@caleb osborne - I’m not sure why people think that reprinting content is considered duplicate content, because duplicate content is a myth.
Google themselves said it (and I’m paraphrasing), that one will be penalized when duplicate content is found ON THE SAME DOMAIN. Google itself uses duplicate content, such as with Google Knol (which is great for articles!), Google Books, Google Scholar, etc.
Duplication is at the heart of the entire RSS process. That’s why it’s called RSS — Really Simple SYNDICATION. Syndication is duplication.
Again, let me be clear. I’ve tested this, and some of the biggest marketers online (like Armand Morin, for example) share the belief that duplicate content is a MYTH.
Article marketing and content syndication has been and will always be (at least for now) the single greatest marketing strategy for building traffic online. It has been for me and still is. Why? Because at the heart of the Internet is INFORMATION. Period.
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Chris Bradley
Michel,
Been awhile since I’ve been to your blog but glad I still get your emails b/c you always post useful and helpful info. Love the slider form, will start to incorporate that into my sites and blogs.
Chris
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Frank Deardurff
Michel, I’m always impressed with the content you give on your blog as well as the sheer numbers of subscribers and comments you have. I keep tweaking my blog and try to follow your example. Obviously more to do from things you’ve mentioned in this post, thanks so much for the info.
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Ian Brodie
Great article Michel,
Can you say a littl ebit more about what you mean about a “separate landing page for subscribers”. Do you mean a page where people can go to see & select the different ways of subscribing - or do you mean a page that subscribers “land” on when they come to the site that’s somehow different from the main homepage?
Thanks
Ian
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Michel Fortin
@Ian Brodie - Sure. Just clink my link at the very top of this blog where it says “subscribe.” Or here are a few examples:
http://www.copyblogger.com/subscribe/
http://www.problogger.net/subscribe-to-problogger/
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Katherine Haag
This is the first time I’ve posted to your blog. I really appreciated what you had to say here (you gave very specific info about something I needed clarification concerning), but what I most wanted to say was that I liked the wording in the part right after your “Leave a Reply” heading. I’ve considered putting together a blog myself, but hesitated because I have personally been considerably “turned off” by some posts I’ve seen in other places. If I do a blog, I don’t want to subject that kind of thing to others, and your forthrightness on your obviously popular site gives me permission to do something similar. Thank you!
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Brenda Nicholson
Excellent article. I will be putting it to use.
BTW - you look younger somehow. Can’t quite put my finger on it. New pic?
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Lu
Michel,
thanks for bringing up the “duplicate content” MYTH because it is.
Your post brings up a number of important steps for a blogger to get noticed :).
The steps you describe above DO matter as they bring excellent results.
Lu
Author's Website October 1st, 2008
From Richard Muir
Such great stuff in here and really realise that there is so much more power in my blog then currently using.
THanks
RIch
Author's Website October 2nd, 2008
From Peter Mashall
Thanks Michel for an excellent post on attracting activity to your Blog. I’ve investigated pop-ups and am very undecided about their usefulness. They certainly have the potential to annoy and turn people away - particularly people who do a reasonable amount of searching and come across them often.
Author's Website October 5th, 2008
From Stu McLaren
Michel,
This is a great list for sure and I love the “Instant Slide Up” (will have to check that out).
Another tactic I have found powerful is to refer to your own post when leaving comments on other blogs (I think David mentioned this above). Of course you should only do this if it’s relevant but it does help attract people interested in similar material.
Likewise, referencing other popular blog posts can also help drive traffic through trackbacks.
My final tip is to tell people by posting a link on Twitter. You won’t get a massive amount of traffic but it takes two seconds to do and in some cases, this can be automated so it’s no effort at all.
Thanks again.
Stu
Author's Website October 6th, 2008
From Writers Needed- $250/hr
Author's Website October 10th, 2008
From Jon
Thanks for the article, Michel, that’s an excellent roundup.
One point re. the “duplicate content” thing. Make sure that you post an article to your own blog first, and that it has been indexed by the search engines (and then leave it a few days just to make sure), before you submit it elsewhere. That way Google knows that your site is the original source for the article.
Cheers, Jon
Author's Website October 14th, 2008
From Michel Fortin
@Jon - Excellent point! Google just posted this article where they admit themselves there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty.
googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-dup…
READ the full article to pick up nuances.
Here’s what it all boils down to…
1. Duplicate content penalties is a MYTH.
2. If duplicate content is found on your site, you are penalized if — and ONLY IF — the intent was to be DECEPTIVE trying to MANIPULATE search engine results. And that penalty is simply a lower ranking, not banishment. It’s not really a penalty.
3. If you do have content you innocently duplicated, such as multiple URLs pointing to the same content (such as with CMSes like WordPress), your are NOT penalized. Google will simply cluster them together in its SERPs, or cherrypick the one URL that best represents the main content.
If the best URL is different than what you had in mind (the URL that finally appears in SERPs), it is also 100% correctable by submitting the correct URL via Google’s Webmaster Tools.
5. Duplicate content on OTHER sites won’t penalize you, either. The other sites will be penalized if — and ONLY IF — those other sites deliberately SCRAPED the content from yours in order to MANIPULATE the search engines. Not reprinted content.
Reprinting your content is in fact encouraged. (Such as articles or affiliates, for example.) Better yet, if others add extra value to your content which THEY duplicated — such as comments on a reprinted blog post, adding their own comments, doing a review, complementing it with ads geared to their targeted readers, etc — is in fact going to INCREASE rankings.
There you have it.
Author's Website October 14th, 2008
From Mitch Baldwin
@Stu McLaren -
Thanks Michel, Stu and everyone for your posts.
Here is a handy tool that posts your blog posts to Twitter automatically and brings traffic back to your blog .
http://mitchbaldwin.com/?p=100
Author's Website October 20th, 2008
From Dolly Lutz
Hi, Michel,
I just finished a six hour course on “blogging” and I learned a lot, but I did learn two new things from your post. Thanks! Also, I did learn exactly what you said about duplicate content “myth”.
One tip I can pass on…After you have posted several days in a row, you can copy and paste that content and turn it into an “Article” that you can post to E-zines……You’ve get twice the mileage out of doing the work one time.
Keep up the great work, Blessings, Dolly
Author's Website October 30th, 2008
From David
Very informative article - especially like the post about duplicate content and pinging the search engines. Duplicate content issues have kept me away from submitting articles to ezinearticles and places like that - I think I will be writing and submitting to these article feeder sites now. I came here from Fred’s blog pqinternet.
thanks for the solid info.
David
Author's Website November 4th, 2008
From Terry Price
I’m currently in the process of designing a blog. Micheal, would you be willing to release how much revenue you have received from your “Tip Jar” idea, for the cup of coffee. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!
Terry Price
Author's Website November 7th, 2008
From Michel Fortin
@Terry Price - It depends. It averages to about 2-3 tips a week (price of a coffee, or $5 thereabouts, each). But when I post a new article, and the article is good, I get a lot more, like 5+.
Author's Website November 7th, 2008
From Jonathan
Hi Michael
Great article - I liked the part about unobtrusive pop-ups - the ’slide up’ approach definitely works better than the ‘fade in’, which I tried before but wasn’t happy with it.
Cheers for another informative article!
Jonathan
Author's Website November 20th, 2008