How I Grow My Blog Organically Using These 5 Tips

A lot of peo­ple ask me what’s my blog­ging strat­egy. They want to know, for instance, how I post arti­cles, build a list, and drive traf­fic to my blog. More impor­tant, they want to know how I make money with it. Those are good questions.

The short answer, of course, is to keep offer­ing great con­tent. Fresh con­tent. Con­tent you find valu­able. Con­tent you believe may be of inter­est or value to your readers.

But here’s some­thing you might find surprising…

I don’t use my blog as a busi­ness model like some A-​​list blog­gers out there. Mak­ing money is purely a byprod­uct. Sure, I do have ads on it, inter­spersed through­out, link­ing either to my prod­ucts or to prod­ucts I’m an affil­i­ate of. But they are not focal points.

Granted, those ads do help to pay the bills, keep my blog alive, and incen­tivize me to con­tinue post­ing what I hope is valu­able con­tent for my readers.

But some peo­ple won­der how I drive traf­fic to this blog and build my list of sub­scribers. After all, I don’t adver­tise it at all with any paid adver­tis­ing — other than in my sig­na­ture file on some forum posts, or on my social net­work pro­files like Twit­ter and Face­book.

I’ve revealed part of my strat­egy in some courses, such as Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity, which is our flag­ship train­ing prod­uct. I’ve also revealed it in a few inter­views I gave here and there. I’ve also revealed a hand­ful of them on this blog in the past.

How­ever, there are very spe­cific things I do to help me grow this blog.

There are five major com­po­nents to my process. It’s noth­ing extra­or­di­nary, and it’s cer­tainly not exhaus­tive. I do carry out a few extra things on occa­sion, and I also love to test new processes and plu­g­ins I come across. I some­times reveal them occasionally.

How­ever, in here I’m going to list five strate­gies I use reg­u­larly, which I have found to be the most effec­tive. Any­one can imple­ment these five tips quickly and easily.

1. Post Once a Week

On aver­age, I post one new arti­cle or blog entry a week. Some peo­ple — espe­cially top blog­gers — will say it’s not enough. And that might be true. I’ve seen a jump in traf­fic and sub­scribers when I post more fre­quently. But I’m too busy, and this works for me.

Con­sis­tency, I believe, is more impor­tant that frequency.

My inspi­ra­tion often comes from just nor­mal, every­day activ­i­ties. For exam­ple, I’ll post arti­cles based on a cur­rent trend, some­thing that hap­pened to me, or some­thing I’ve read about or writ­ten some­where on the Inter­net. Whether it’s…

• a forum post or reply I’ve written,
• a blog com­ment I’ve made,
• an answer I gave to a coach­ing student,
• some hot topic I feel strongly about,
• an insight­ful con­ver­sa­tion on a social network,
• an idea from a recent event in my own life,
• or a series of tips peo­ple ask me about (this post is an example)…

… I then pull one of them, and con­vert it into a blog post or write one based on it.

Here’s what I do: since some arti­cles are pulled from posts or com­ments I’ve made on other blogs, on forums, or via email to my coach­ing stu­dents, they may be incom­plete or hard to under­stand when there’s not enough context.

Some­times, they are good-​​to-​​go as is. But other times, I have a free­lance writer who mon­i­tors my posts, and slightly rewrites them to make them blog-​​worthy or article-​​ready.

She fine-​​tunes my arti­cles by adding his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion, con­text, and/​or uni­ver­sal­ity. The com­pany I use and rec­om­mend is Annette Elton’s All​Cus​tom​Con​tent​.com.

2. Hire a Publicist

I have a free­lance pub­li­cist who mon­i­tors my blog. When I post entries tagged within the “arti­cles” cat­e­gory, she pulls them and sub­mits them to thou­sands of edi­tors, direc­to­ries, ezine pub­lish­ers, other blogs look­ing for con­tent, and even offline magazines.

Offer­ing the abil­ity to freely reprint, syn­di­cate, or dis­trib­ute your con­tent is quite effec­tive. Some can be reprinted or sub­mit­ted as is, while oth­ers need to be slightly mod­i­fied as to make them unique, ever­green, or rel­e­vant to the tar­get publication’s readership.

(That’s where my free­lancer writer comes in handy, too.)

In fact, I’m still amazed by how often I see my arti­cles reprinted in some offline mag­a­zines or pop­u­lar email newslet­ters — even arti­cles I’ve writ­ten over a decade ago.

That’s why, at the end of each of my blog posts, I have an “about the author” byline, along with a note that lets oth­ers reprint my arti­cles — as long as I’m cred­ited with the author­ship, and the con­tent and links are left intact.

Nev­er­the­less, you should def­i­nitely sub­mit your arti­cles for reprint. You can cer­tainly do this your­self, but hir­ing a pub­li­cist to do this for you can save you a lot of time. Plus, many pub­li­cists will have indus­try con­tacts you may not know or have otherwise.

My pub­li­cist, who has worked with me for close to a decade now, is Anne-​​Marie Baugh of Write​-Pro​mo​tion​.com. Note, how­ever, that she may or may not be available.

3. Max­i­mize Your “Real Estate”

Every piece of real estate on your blog should be opti­mized for build­ing your list.

Sure, you can have an optin form at the top, on your side­bar, and at the bot­tom. But don’t for­get your 404 page, your land­ing pages (like your “about me” page, “con­tact us” page, your “FAQ” page if any, etc), and other non-​​blog sections.

Make sure you also add one at the end of your indi­vid­ual blog posts. What I do is use Robert Plank’s Action Popup and Action Com­ments scripts. The for­mer cre­ates a lightbox-​​like popup when vis­i­tors hit your blog, and the lat­ter adds an extra check­box near your com­ment form ask­ing peo­ple to join your list as they comment.

Also, don’t be shy to high­light some­where on your blog how many peo­ple have joined your list or sub­scribed to your RSS feed. Sim­i­larly, another thing that’s impor­tant is to high­light the num­ber of com­ments your blog post gets.

You’ve prob­a­bly seen this. I do this on the front page of this blog with the big, yel­low “[num­ber] com­ments” box. The rea­son is, it pro­vides social proof. When a post gets a lot of com­ments, it tends to arouse curios­ity and engen­der more comments.

It’s a snow­ball effect, really. The more peo­ple are on my list, the more want to join. And the moment a blog post hits 10 com­ments, it often explodes in inter­est from that point on.

4. Pre­pop­u­late Your Autoresponder

This is my best tip. Take note because it’s the one I’m most often asked about.

Osten­si­bly, I man­age my optin lists with an autore­spon­der. This allows me to both broad­coast one-​​off emails to my list, such as an email to notify my sub­scribers when I post a new entry, as well as pop­u­late them with mes­sages deliv­ered over time.

I have a spread­sheet of all my blog posts. I pull out the sta­ple posts (i.e., posts that are ever­green, or posts that may not be ever­green but can be updated to become so).

Each week, I visit one, update it (whether it’s to fix a bro­ken link, add a new or key piece of infor­ma­tion, or rewrite to reflect cur­rent issues or trends), do an email broad­cast about the update, and add it to my autore­spon­der cycle for this blog.

My autore­spon­der has sev­eral months worth of these “blog updates,” which keeps dri­ving traf­fic back to my blog with­out lift­ing a fin­ger. As well, inter­spersed through­out are mes­sages point­ing to resources — my prod­ucts or prod­ucts of which I’m an affiliate.

I tend to alter­nate them equally, or hinge slightly more in favor of mes­sages with or link­ing to con­tent. Because I try to avoid send­ing just pitch after pitch to my list, I pre­fer to send them a higher ratio of con­tent over promotions.

(How­ever, many of my resources are not bla­tant pro­mo­tions. They are often rel­e­vant and tied to a blog post, or one men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous post I made.)

Ulti­mately, when I post a new arti­cle to my blog, I add it to my spread­sheet. I do a broad­cast to notify my read­ers that a new post was made, and, if appro­pri­ate, I tag it as an ever­green arti­cle. I then add it at the end of my autore­spon­der cycle.

This way, peo­ple who are cur­rently on my list will see the new blog post or arti­cle the moment I post it, but future sub­scribers will even­tu­ally get to the same arti­cle as well.

This is a great way to recy­cle the con­tent on your blog with­out any extra effort. Look at your blog right now: does it have any ever­green arti­cles you can eas­ily add to your blog’s autore­spon­der? How about posts you can slightly mod­ify to make them current?

If so, you’re sit­ting on a goldmine.

5. Don’t Date Your Posts

In con­junc­tion with the above tip, another impor­tant point is to not have dates on your posts. I know some blog­gers won’t agree with me, because they say that dates help inform read­ers how fresh and timely a cer­tain post is.

Plus, some peo­ple have told me that dat­ing posts also pro­vide some search-​​engine opti­miza­tion, although I’ve tested this per­son­ally and don’t see much of a difference.

Nev­er­the­less, always make your post’s URL be your domain and the post’s title only. Called “pretty per­man­links” or “van­ity links,” refrain from hav­ing your blog post’s URL show any dates. Just leave them as “domain​.com/​p​o​s​t​-​t​i​t​le/.”

Plus, don’t add the post’s date near the head­line or the beginning.

Sure, you can have the date at the bot­tom, or have posts listed chrono­log­i­cally in the archives. But with ever­green or sta­ple posts, dates are unim­por­tant and can even make them look less rel­e­vant and deter read­ers, even though they are still relevant.

When some­one sees an older post, which may still be 100% rel­e­vant and timely, they may believe it’s out­dated and be tempted to ignore it.

While it might be true that peo­ple pre­fer fresh, cur­rent infor­ma­tion in the con­text of peo­ple book­mark­ing or vis­it­ing your blog for the first time, for your autore­spon­der cycle, which brings sub­scribers back to those ever­green blog posts, dates are irrelevant.

Nev­er­the­less, I hope these five tips are help­ful to you, and please let me know of any you use that you find to be use­ful in your blog. I’d love to hear them.

About the Author

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