A Plan For Bloggers Struggling to Find New Readers

Category: Blogging -

This article was guest blogged by Skellie from SkellieWag.org. She is a regular contributor to some of the top blogs like ProBloger.net, CopyBlogger, and ZenHabits. In this post Skellie will talk about ways to acquire new readers to your blog.

The early stages of your blog are always the hardest. As your audience grows, others will shoulder some of the burden: they’ll link to you, recommend you, and vote for you on social media. In the beginning, however, there are few people around to help.

The process of ‘finding new readers’ is something every blogger needs to do. The word ‘finding’ very accurately describes the process. You can’t wait for an audience to find you. You need to go out and find them. You need to work out who they are, and go where they go.

In this post, I want to provide a concrete plan of action for anyone struggling to pull their blog out of a rut and find new readers. I used these same strategies to grow my own blog from nothing to 1,050 subscribers in three months.

1. Define your target audience

You can’t source-out new readers if you don’t know who you’re looking for. You also need to make sure the content you provide suits the kinds of people you are drawing to your blog. For that reason, defining a target audience is the first step any blogger should undertake.

If you haven’t and you’ve already started blogging, don’t fret. You can work out a target audience at any stage in your blog’s growth.

Your target audience essentially refers to whoever you are targeting with your content. What kinds of people will benefit most from what you write? What are they interested in? What are they not interested in?

If you have some readers already, you can work out what types of people they are by the comments they leave and the questions they ask. Are they bloggers? Designers? Gamers? Wannabe martial artists? Lawyers? Literature lovers?

Once you work out who you’d like to write for, this makes finding new readers a lot easier. If you know who you’re looking for, it’s a lot easier to deduce where they’re likely to be hanging out!

TIP: once you’ve decided on your target audience, let them know that the blog is written for them. After all, if you knew a blog was written specifically for you, you’d feel confident that most of the posts would be of interest.

Mention your target audience on your about page, or your tag line, or even within your blog’s title (SEOmoz, for example, is written for people who practice SEO).

2. Find your target audience on other blogs and websites

Other blogs and websites in your niche will be a perfect place to find potential readers. The question you need to ask is: how can I get links to my site on other blogs and websites in my niche?

If you think of all the ways you can do this, the list looks something like this:

  • Leave comments and link up my username to my site.
  • Write guest-posts and get links in the by-line.
  • Purchase a link or banner ad.
  • Get links from within posts.

When building my own blog in its early stages, I focused heavily on writing lots of guest-posts and leaving lots of comments. My target audience is bloggers and webmasters, so I focused my efforts on the blogs about blogging niche.

TIP: if you want to write a guest-post, ask first. Work out what kinds of content work well on the site you’re targeting and think of a post idea that sits in line with that. Send an email to the blogger summarizing your post idea, and ask if they’d like you to write the finished product (for their consideration — no obligation as yet).

If they say yes, send it to them. If not, you can use the idea somewhere else, and you’ve wasted no effort. You’d be surprised how many bloggers will say yes if you only work up the courage to ask.

ANOTHER TIP: bloggers do recognize the names of their regular commenters. If you regularly comment on a blog, you’re more likely to be indulged when you ask for favors. Send a link to the post on your blog that’s best suited to the target blogger’s audience and simply suggest: “I thought your readers might like this.” If it’s good, you’ll get a link. If not, what have you lost but a few minutes time?

3. Find your target audience on social media

All kinds of people enjoy using social bookmarking services like Digg and StumbleUpon, including your target audience. Vote up articles that would be of interest to your readers and you’ll start to make a name for yourself in that niche. You’ll also open up opportunities to connect with people who vote for the same articles that you do.

Though my site has been on the Digg front page twice, StumbleUpon (SU) is still my biggest referrer. Rather than bringing traffic in big spikes, SU traffic is a constant flow. Best of all, unlike Digg, you don’t need a big existing audience to get the ball rolling. Just one single vote can send you hundreds of visitors.

It’s my strong recommendation that any blogger looking to lift their site out of a rut join StumbleUpon, vote up targeted articles and add friends. Even very casual use can start to build up a network of social media influencers. Social media connections are invaluable for any blogger striving for growth.

4. Find your target audience on forums

This was another core element of the strategy I used to build my own blog. I joined a forum dedicated to my target audience — bloggers — and added my blog’s URL to my signature. I tried to make my posts thoughtful and knowledgeable, and to be active as often as I could.

As a result, I built up my initial audience almost exclusively from forum users. Despite sending me dozens of hits a day (a lot for a new blog!) the forum helped make me more knowledgeable in my niche. I would strongly recommend joining a targeted forum to anyone looking to find new readers.

Optimize your blog for new readers

The first question a new visitor will probably have is “What’s this blog about?” It’s a question a surprising number of blogs don’t adequately answer. Make sure you have an easy to find About page explaining what your blog is and what it has to offer. You can add details about yourself afterwards, as it’s not of primary interest to someone who’s yet to figure out if they want to explore your blog or not.

I’d also suggest that any blog struggling to find new readers should avoid advertising until it becomes more established.

One thing to understand is that advertising is a trade-off. While it presents some wonderful opportunities, they don’t come without a cost. They’re a constant reminder to visitors that, ultimately, you’re not just in it for them. You want to get something out of it too. Secondly, ads are rarely visually appealing. In the beginning, you’re unlikely to earn enough money to make this trade-off worth it.

I recommend that you hold off (or remove) advertising until the profits make the trade-off worth it. This is a strategy I’ve adopted for my own blog and something I’ve received a lot of positive feedback about. It really does help make your blog remarkable.

TIP: showcase your most popular posts in a prominent location on the sidebar. If they were very popular with your existing readership, they’re likely to impress your new readers, too.

I use this strategy myself and still receive a fresh in-flow of links to my most popular posts, even those that were published some time ago. Wowing new visitors with value is a great way to draw them into your blog (increasing the chances that they won’t forget you once they leave).

A one-month growth challenge

Sometimes general advice isn’t enough — we want a concrete plan to follow. For those of you who echo that, here are some goals you can set yourself this month. They will help you find new readers and have the potential to breathe new life back into your blog.

To be completed by one month from now:

  • Write three guest-posts for a blog in your niche.
  • Leave 50 comments on other blogs.
  • Join a forum in your niche and actively participate.
  • Start a social media account and engage with other users.
  • Aim to get one link from a popular blog.
  • Create a long list of resources for your target audience in blog post form. These posts are link-magnets!

Feel free to use the comments on this post as a place to talk about your struggles to find new readers, or to update us on your progress with the challenge. I’ll be checking the comments regularly and am happy to answer any questions you have.

Blog life cycle, and how success kills the content

Category: Blogging -

Every blog (in the Make Money Online category) goes through a “blog life cycle”, some blogs go through all stages and others experience only some of them, i.e they do not reach the end. These stages of the “blog life cycle” (defined by me) are:

  1. State 1: blog creation – new blog gets created
  2. Stage 2: blog recognition – blog starts to get recognized in the blogosphere and often gets linked by other blogs, success is near
  3. Stage 3: blog authority – blog becomes authority in certain field, traffic soars and money pours in…
  4. Stage 4: after success – blog either turns into community based blog that is run by the original blogger, or is run by the same blogger but loses the usefulness that it once had

High traffic often leads to content-kill

When your blog starts to get high traffic and your readership expands, it often leads to positive changes for you (the blogger) and not so positive for the readers.

Because when your blog is getting hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month, you will be approached by dozens of different types of advertisers. Most of them will be direct advertisers, and you will rely less on the traditional publisher programs that most of the blogs in the blogoshpere are using.

That means, if previously you were writing on various publisher programs and how they performed on your blog, after Stage-4 of the blog life cycle, you won’t be talking about them anymore. You won’t be citing different publisher programs and how much money each made for you. This types of posts are usually a good indicator to your readers about various publisher programs’ performances.

But when you are running direct advertisers, and no longer using normal publisher programs, you won’t be posting such posts anymore. And that, diminishes some degree of usefulness from your content.

Content turns into news about latest conventions, expos, gatherings…etc

Another sign of the blog riding on the waves of the success is that, the posts will turn into news about the latest blog conventions. You will be reading a lot of “I will be attending this convention….”, “I am in this expo now, here are the pics….”, “I have attended that gathering, here is the pics….” posts.

Again, it’s a great thing for the blogger, but not so great for the readers who want to learn something. During this time, daily great posts that user used to take for granted will be a thing of the history.

Blog turns into launchpad

Success will also attract lots of new businesses, every new business will want to advertise on your blog. Consquently, your blog will turn into a launchpad that has little benefit to the ordinary blogger.

How to control the damage of the success

The decision would depend on what you want to do with your blog, once it has reached Stage-4. Whether you want to keep it relevant to the bloggers or to take it to the next level and turn it into something different – something BIG!

If you want to stay relevant to your readers, then the better option would be to turn it into community based blog. Darren of problogger.net has chosen this way. He often asks his readers questions, makes polls, conducts researches and gets tons of feedback from his readers. After that, based on the provided answers he constructs well written posts (publishes results) that will be beneficial to the bloggers themselves. He also allows guest bloggers to write articles in his blog. The result is a hugely successful, relevant, community based blog, that is steered by Darren himself.

On the other hand, if you want to take your blog into the next level, you could become the next TechCrunch, having tons of your own other networks. Obviously you would be venturing into new fields and that would mean that you will be loosing some of your previous community members. But at the same time, you will be acquiring new community with new interests.

So the decision is in your hands. You are the captain of the ship and you decide to which shores it should take you. Just remember that, if you are going to be successful one day, then you will have to deal with this situation at one point in the future.

Why poll results on most blogs are skewed?

Category: Blogging -

One of the mistakes new bloggers do is to end up talking exactly what other established bloggers are talking. Not only on topics that are “the current events” in the blogosphere, but even going as far as reporting their daily life posts. You need to take into account that people have already read those popular blogs, so they don’t want to read it on another blog from a secondary person.

Visitors want to read something original. And if you want to increase your readership you should give them original, new, and interesting posts. So how do you do that? Here is some of the suggestions to keep your posts original:

  1. Take notes, write draft posts, and record ideas when they strike you

    2. Taking notes and writing draft posts is very important. It will help you to save time when you want to blog. Because when you sit to blog, there will be a draft post that you can continue right away. This way, you won’t have to think about what to blog.

    I do have up to 10 draft posts at one time. If you are not using draft posts, then I strongly recommend you to use it.

    Carry a pen and notepad when you are not near to your PC. This way, you can record the idea when it hits you. Most of the ideas will be forgotten if you do not record them. And it’s very difficult and time consuming to remember them back.

  2. Do read other popular blogs but do not be their carbon copy

    3. It’s good to read other popular blogs and to keep yourself up to date with what’s happening in the blogosphere. But do not let these other blogs affect your own style of blogging. Do not be their carbon copy. Unless it’s necessary to blog about what other blog has posted, refrain from blogging about it (in a dedicated post). If you just want to repost what someone has posted then it’s better not to. Just remember people have already read about that!

    However it’s okay to mention others’ post for analysis and critique purposes, especially if you want to take it as an example to prove a point. It is also okay to refer your readers to interesting posts of other bloggers. Link-love is always welcome by fellow bloggers.

  3. Be opinionated!

    4. Don’t be afraid to write your own opinions. People usually read blogs because of the author’s personal opinions on various topics. Without the personal opinions, your blog will be just another news-reporting blog.

    Don’t be afraid of what people might think of your opinion, what is important is – what you think! And don’t forget that it’s your blog (not someone else’s) and in your own blog you are entitled to voice out your own opinions.

    Please remember that you need to strike a balance here, voicing out does not mean you can start criticizing everybody. If you do that, you will make a lot of not friends (enemy would be too harsh a word here) very fast. So choose the middle way and blog responsibly.

Entrepreneurial Death Traps

Category: Startups -

I was reading this article called “Entrepreneurial Death Traps – How to avoid the classic entrepreneurial mistakes”. If you are ever going to start your own business in the future then you should read this article and take into account the advices given. Because you don’t want to repeat those problems.

Friend as a Co-Founder

It discusses about the partnership issues that start with a simple trust between friends and turns into a major problem later on. For example: Two friends launching a start-up together with 50/50 share. After few years one works and another simply looses interest and doesn’t work. The one who does not work still gets paid every month, and owns 50% of the company. Without his consent no major decision cannot be taken, and that includes firing him. So they are trapped.

Second example:

What about the three (or four) (or five) musketeer’s death trap. Although in one sense it’s a corollary of the 50-50 partnership deathtrap, in some ways it’s even more insidious. You know the story. Three friends decide to start a company. They split the ownership absolutely equally, they draw identical salaries, they’re going to make decisions “by consensus.” It’s the logical, “fair” thing to do. One of them (perhaps the oldest or the one whose idea it was originally) reluctantly assumes the presidency because state law requires there to be one.

What a recipe for failure! There are three primary problems with this set-up. First, this company has no leader, no one ultimately responsible for its success or failure. Second, sooner or later a major, honest difference of opinions will arise. What do they do then? Third, the reluctant president will almost inevitably come to see himself as “a little more than equal.” If they have any success, for example, and get written up in the local or trade press, guess whose picture the reporter will want? Guess whose quotes will be plastered all through the story? Guess which other two people are going to hang the article on their family room dart board?

The solution? Pick a CEO and treat him like one. Give him the largest equity position and salary, even if they are only symbolically larger. Somebody has to sit where the buck stops.

There are many more advices and examples, read the full article at http://www.vcinstitute.org/bookstore/deathtraps.html

I think it’s really important to make everything clear before you set out for a business with your friends. Discussing all the financial things might sound a bit money minded first, but that can actually save your friendship later on. What do you think?