Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
If you’re running a blog and using it to build your business, you have A LOT to learn. Or maybe you’re trying to build a business out of your blog and you want to better monetize it. Either way, I put together a short list of rock solid blogging tips you should absolutely follow/incorporate into your weekly blogging activities.
In this guide
1. Posting Frequency
I can’t stress this one enough as it’s vital that your blog gets enough content. For SEO benefits, traffic and relationship building. You need to post enough content to build a relationship with your readers. If you post once a month, you’re not going to have much of a rapport with anyone. So my rule of thumb is at least once week. I’d say once a week as a minimum. You can post a lot more, but not too much. You want your readers to have a sort of exclusivity feeling about your blog posts.
That they’re full of secret information that’s getting leaked onto your blog every now and then. If you post too often, the value of your posts decrease. If you post multiple times daily then people just won’t read your blog. Sure you’ll get the long term search engine traffic, but you won’t get many repeat visitors. You need to build anticipation for your blog posts. Leave your posts on a sort of hanger. You know… To Be Continued… But in a less crappy way. Just enough so readers will subscribe to your feed and wait for your next post. Something else, keep your readers guessing. Make them think, what will it be next week? Just a few ideas that have proven to work for me.
2. Tell Stories
This doesn’t just apply to your blog; it applies to all marketing in general. As stories sell better than anything else in the world. Think about it for a second, every Clickbank sales video in history starts off with a story. Like… “Tim used to be fat and ugly; he struggled with his looks and contemplated suicide for years… until he took UltraWeightLossMagic27XXX. It transformed his body in days.”
You know what I mean, stories sell AND more importantly… they keep readers engaged in your content. If you tell a good story throughout your blog posts, people will keep reading. They’ll want to read the final outcome of whatever happened to Tim. Tell stories, they keep visitors glued to your posts and you can use them to sell just about anything!
3. Publish Lists
Another tip on posting content, use lists! Lists just like this one, “5 Essential Tips For Blogging”. I don’t know why, but lists work very well. In fact, thanks to Google analytics I’ve proven that I get far more click-throughs to my lists than any other blog posts. People like lists, why?
Well because they’re damn easy to navigate through. Instead of a long block of text, people can scan through lists. Just make sure you use numbers and point out that you’re using a list in your title. Again, this post is a prime example. Also, use odd numbers. I don’t have a clue why this works better, but you’ll get 15%+ more traffic by using odd numbers. People like odd numbers? Who knows…
4. Cut The Crap
This one’s imperative as if you don’t cut the crap, your bounce rates will sky-rocket! What do I mean? Well, I mean don’t rant on for half an hour about your dog or any other useless information before you give readers what they want. If your title reads “5 Steps To Build A Better Blog” don’t write 500 words on blogging in general beforehand.
Give them the steps upfront, feed your readers when they’re hungry or they’ll eat you alive. Meaning they’ll screw you by closing the page. When I start my posts with the actual promised content, I get like 5-20% bounce rates. However, when I write just around 3-4 paragraphs beforehand… people tend to bounce. (60%+)
5. Make Sure Your Content Is “Scrollable”
Whatever you do, don’t write your posts in long text blocks. Your posts need to be structured well or your visitors will be off to your competitor’s posts. Just make sure your content can be easily browsed. You do this by sectioning your content into multiple sub posts. If you’re using the lists strategy, this doesn’t apply.
If you’re just writing a long post.
Create sub posts where you use header tags to create sort of titles like the one above. Then, below the header write a short paragraph or two. ALWAYS keep paragraphs to 3-6 sentences or less. Just break your posts up into multiple sub posts and you’ll be fine. Also don’t be afraid to use lots of images, people love them. The more images, the better. Just as long as they’re on-topic, they make your posts a tad friendlier.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Feel free to leave your comments and questions in the box below.
Comments (carried over from the previous site)
Jenefer Lapinig, September 1, 2011, 10:00
Incredibly useful! Cutting the crap implies feeding your readers with what exactly they want. That’s the essence of blogging.
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Start free →Aprel Fajardo, September 1, 2011, 11:00
I like the last idea — you have to make sure that the blog is ‘scrollable’. If your target viewers won’t have the interest to scroll down to further read your blog, then you must change the quality of your blogs. These are amazing and upfront ideas. I had a nice time reading it, thanks!
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Lady-jen Pabutawan, September 1, 2011, 12:00
Wonderful blog! When blogging it should be relevant to the topic that is discussed. Information for blogging is considered but must be in the correct/right comments. But for the beginners of this, they could think that it’s really hard to say but bear in your confidence so that you could easily cope with it. This is all I can say based on what I read. Thank you.
Ronie Barcoma, September 1, 2011, 13:00
Nice Blog. Example, Everyone has something to say about education. Whether or not their opinions are informed, those interested in education go to blogs to read more, of course, but also to comment and discuss. Every blog post you write should in some way invite further discussion. It’s not enough to simply have a comments field and let things go from there. Ask your audience for guest posts, and require that each guest post bring a new perspective to your blog—whether it’s insight from a teacher, principal, professor, university president, or student.
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Rick Pua Pila, September 1, 2011, 14:00
Understand that there are time swings where more people are online than not. First thing in the morning East Coast time is always good. Mid-day slots 11-12 and 2-3 EST have both coasts online, with a likelier frequency of being at computing devices. End of day East Coast time is also good for catching both coasts.
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Anthony Morgan, September 1, 2011, 15:00
The big question here is how to make your recap of the event unique so that it stands out. If you are writing about the event exclusively, then you have little to worry about. However, if more people are providing coverage, put forth a little more effort. A good idea is to have unique assets such as a photo, video or an interview with one of the attendees that other bloggers don’t have. You can also include all the recaps of the event in your blog and then collect all the coverage about the event as links in your post.
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Post at least once a week, it says, more if you can manage it. I write these after a night shift. ‘More if you can manage it’ assumes there’s a version of me with more to give some weeks. There isn’t.
Nia, six years running a team taught me the same thing about ‘post daily, everyone can’ advice generally — it’s written by people whose business already generates the content for them. When you’re the only writer with a day job on top, weekly is a real commitment, not a floor.
Samir naming that gap is exactly what needed saying here. Nia, doing this on top of night shifts at all is the part worth noticing, not whether you hit weekly.
Nia raises the real question underneath the advice — is the once-a-week minimum actually load-bearing for growth, or just a round number that felt right? The post gives a bounce-rate range for ‘cut the crap’ but no comparable data for posting frequency, which is odd since it’s listed first.