How to Increase Your Blog Readership 10-fold

This is the text version of the live show the 13th of January 2010. I hope you can use it and thanks for everybody who showed up. Much appreciated.

Introduction

So there are two key things you need to do to gain readers from Google and the word of mouth method.

• Write consistently
• Build credibility

If you write consistently, you will get better search ranking in Google, because Google likes frequently updated blogs, in general Google just like content.

You need to stay up-to-date with your topic, if you aren’t doing that you will simply fall out, you need to give away fresh content, to able to compete with others. So what you read about your niche, is something you really need to educate your readers in, but of course you need to be unique.

Post about the new but add your angle to it, so it gets unique!

Guest posting for Newbies (read it even if you aren’t a newbie)

Guest posting isn’t something I’m doing enough, to be honest. I once did one at Teenius.com (sorry Simon, but I didn’t), which didn’t gave me any traffic at all and when I get no traffic = no readers.

Remember you are writing guest posts to get readers, not traffic. To get known. To get your brand out.

Analysis of The Blog

When you are writing guest posts on other blogs, then you need to study 10 different posts and see which of these posts are the most successful and see why they are so successful as they are.

So analyze the blog you want to write for, because then you will be able to see what kind of content you should write to get success on that blog. I’m not saying that you should copy the topic. Not the writing style, well at least not that much. But just see how he have done it.

Is it a list post, what is it? How did it become that successful?

Networking is Important

When you want to get a guest post on a blog you don’t know or at least you do not know the blog owner, I think it’s important that you build a stable relationship with the blog owner first. Because then he’ll be more likely to approve your blog post.

You can do it by tweet him and say that he has an awesome blog and you would like to have is instant messenger username. Then he will probably give you that, if he want to network with others.

Then write a bit with him everyday, for 3 days or so, if possible not less. Then ask him on the fourth day, if it is okay to give him a guest post and if there’s any chance for him to approve the post.

If he answers yes, then give him the post on the sixth day, not instantly. Two days after, he shouldn’t think this relationship is all about getting some traffic from his blog.

Keep chatting with him, for 14 days and if you like keep holding the contact to him (but do not write every single day, just once in a while). It will be best to keep the relationship on going as you will be a good friend of his and then you can eventually after that, do some business together.

If you do not want to do this, just send away a sample to him and then hope for the best. Worst case is that it wouldn’t get approved. Best case is the opposite.

Using Twitter to Get Readers

It is far from easy to get readers from Twitter, it is easy to get visitors come straight to your blog, but chances are that you’ll never see them again. P(getting a reader from twitter of all the visits you get from twitter) = 1%.

For the non mathematicians that just means that the chance (p is for probability) for getting a reader from Twitter who already got to your blog from Twitter is 1%.

The easiest way to get Twitter visitors to stay loyal readers is to build a relationship at first. When you want to turn visitors into readers then you probably should start laying out a foundation to a relationship.

Start by tweeting to some of your followers and so on, just interact. The formula to get Twitter relationships is:

Twitter + Interaction + Friendly Tones + Being Funny + Being Helpful = Twitter relationship

It’s quite simple, just be simple and helpful.

Make Visitors Feel Welcome

It’s critical that you make your visitors feel home, so they eventually is going to subscribe to your RSS feed. You can do that by using the WordPress plugin called “WP-Greet Plugin”

When you for an example have written a guest post on DaneBlogger.com, you can set this plugin to show a message, to every people who gets to the site from DaneBlogger.com to say “Hello DaneBlogger.com Reader, I hope that you enjoyed my blog post. If you did, subscribe to my RSS feed”

How BlogEngage is Going to Help You

When we are talking about gaining blog readers, why don’t we talk about BlogEngage.com?

Blog Engage is a community driven by the awesome man called Brian. He is f*cking helpful, really. This guy is having a so, so awesome heart. He is just amazing.

Blog Engage is so much more powerful than Digg, which I have mentioned before (Why Blog Engage is More Powerful than Digg and how to use it)

Digg is more for tech blogs where Blog Engage is more for bloggers who blogs about blogging.

To be honest, I haven’t been able to reach the Digg front page, have you? If so, then keep doing what you are doing. But it is much easier to reach the front page of Blog Engage. Of course it isn’t that much traffic you get from that. But still, it’s really hard to get to the Digg front page.

That was, all the topics we got around in the 13th January live show. I hope you enjoy it! The next live show is the 27th of January 3 P.m.