Do you feel like you’re writing to yourself when you blog? Do you feel like you have no subscribers or readers?
It happens from time to time. Even to the best of us.
You put out all of this wonderful content for the world at large to read but you see no comments, you see no visitors, no subscribers, maybe a e-tumbleweed rolling across your front page.
Well, maybe you are getting no visitors. Right now. However, you must struggle through.
First, we have to assume there are no technical issues, your site is ‘live’ and viewable by anyone online, your subscription service is working, etc.
Are you writing quality content? is it topic oriented? is it useful? and most importantly, does it make sense?
Subscribers come and go, you’ll find that if you keep producing quality content, the curve of the numbers of your subscribers will take a upward curve.
If your site is working and you are producing some wonderful content people will, eventually, see it. Here are some tips on how to make sure they do.
Keep on trucking
Keep that content coming. One of the great things about the Internet and blogs is that the content stays around as long as the site is active. If someone visits your site and sees an older article that sparks an interest they can click on it and find another and so on and so forth.
The more useful content you have on your site the more search engines are going to ‘crawl’ it and blog update services are going to log it.
Use your networks
Sign up for Twitter, MySpace, Pownce, Facebook and other social networking sites. Let your friends know that you have posted, or put up something really interesting.
Don’t overdo it though, people get tired of seeing your name so be selective.
Spread your links
Tell your friends about your blog, email people, make up business cards, add a link to the signature in your email and forum posts.
Recipricate
This is common courtesy and a part of human nature.
Do you have blogs that you find really interesting? Do you post links to interesting articles on your blog?
Ask people if you can post links and if they’ll post links to your blog. This increases both their and your exposure. Blogging is a part of what is called ‘social media’. You need to be social in this forum, online and in person.
Comment on other blogs.
Use RSS and Feed publishers
There are free services such as the Google Feedburner that takes the native RSS feed for your blog and…. burns it.
These services notify sites when your blog is updated, essentially spreading the word across the internet.
People visit blog linking sites to see what is being written about all in one place.
Communicate
If you happen to snag a commentor on your blog try to find out an email address. Send them a quick email thanking them for visiting and for commenting.
Ask your commentor if there is anything they would like to see happen on the blog. Ask for feedback.
