Want more traffic to your blog? Try these three simple tips — two of them you can implement today, with just a few minutes of your time.
Let your visitors share your blog posts.
Don’t try to do all your blog promotion by yourself! Enlist the help of your readers by installing a social sharing plugin like SexyBookmarks or DiggDigg so they can share you with their friends and circles of influence.
When you give people those easy-to-see, easy-to-click sharing buttons they are much more likely to share your content with their connections on the social networks.
Here’s my favorite plugin for sharing: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/
Offer readers the opportunity to subscribe by email.
I use feedburner.com to allow my readers to enter their email address and then receive an email anytime I’ve got a new post on my blog.
Feedburner is a free service from Google. You may also be able to set this up through your email delivery service (like AWeber).
Here’s how to set it up: https://michelleshaeffer.com/how-to-add-a-subscribe-by-email-widget-to-your-blog/2010/11/12/
Grow your connection channels.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest — where ever you are active, and you connect with potential clients, work to grow your audience. The more listening connections you’ve got there, the more traffic you can generate back to your blog.
Now it’s not all about numbers because it’s better to have 1,000 engaged connections than 10,000 followers who ignore everything you say. So be careful how you build. Build those targeted, engaged connections.
Next week I’ll be sharing more about how to grow your connection channels, so stay tuned!
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Thanks for this Michelle, I am glad to see that I am more or less on track with your suggestions here. I have sent this sexy bookmarks plugin to my wife who is my website technician:-)
Awesome! Isn’t it always great to get confirmation you’re doing the right things? I LOVE when that happens. :)
Our social network connections can help us a great deal in expanding the online presence of our blogs. Whether it’s about sharing the posts with others or spreading a word-of-mouth campaign about a blog, one’s social media contacts can work wonders.
Thanks.
Absolutely – social networking gives us such a great opportunities.
Hi Michelle,
I’ve been wondering about the benefits of encouraging folks to sign up for RSS as well as subscribe to my newsletters. Do you encourage both?
I like the subscription route because I can control sending email to my list whenever I want to tell announce a new post or alert them to something relevant. How does that compare with the RSS feed?
Thanks.
I do, and one of my goals within the next few weeks is to figure out a better way to distinguish and show people they can choose one or both. Those who sub to my RSS do hear from me more frequently (near daily vs. once or twice a week) and are the most active commenters and sharers.
Hi Michelle,
Yes – Having easily shareable content to social media channels and bookmarking sites alike is an important aspect of increasing the amount of exposure to your blog. Not to mention the great social signals it creates if shared by users when it comes to ranking in the SERP’s of Search Engines. And be social, engage with people in different social channel communities – this will help to establish yourself as an expert in your niche/s and in return will help you to grow your connections base.
Yep, it’s interesting to watch as the search engines learn to integrate our sharing and social networks into their rankings, isn’t it?
Thanks so much dear for your awesome tips on how to get more traffic. Keep sharing your insights. Happy Weekends ((Hugs))
Thanks, Amit. Have a great weekend!
nice tips ,,,,,,,initially its social media plays an important role in getting good traffic ,,,i have seen many bloggers getting more then 50% of traffic from social media
Yes, my own blog gets at least 50% of traffic from social media (mostly Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest). :)
I read the other day that you must find ways to have your content retweeted, apparently, traffic increases by 117%.
apart from the above mentioned tips using proper seo with good keyword density can also play a good role in getting good visitors
Yes, SEO done well can build good traffic.
I’m proud to say that I’ve implemented those three strategies.
Your suggestion “it’s not all about numbers because it’s better to have 1,000 engaged connections than 10,000 followers who ignore everything you say. So be careful how you build.”
Is a PLATINUM NUGGET and those who listen will avoid a lot of wasted time marketing to the wrong clients/customers.
Something, I learned the hard way: by trial and error.
Thanks for sharing!
Yay, Adalia! :)
And it’s so easy to want to look at those numbers and think bigger numbers are the main goal but the engagement and focus matters so much more.
I think by sometimes offering your readers some type of reward you can increase traffic. People, encouraged by the incentive, are more likely to engage with your site on that occasion and in the future.
Hi Elena, there are some cool strategies around contests, giveaways, incentives and rewards that can be used to build traffic, especially short bursts. Good suggestion. :)
Dear Michelle,
Sanjib here. I have posted my views on a similar article yesterday.In my view, a blog becomes special if you keep it fresh as much as possible. Articles should be relevant to the present, readers should be encouraged to contribute and rewarded them if possible. Look may be changed if it can be afforded.I am sure these are all helpful tips.
Regards,
Sanjib
Thanks for commenting, Sanjib. Fresh content and building community with readers are definitely important.
These are really great ways to get traffic.I liked the post.Its really a great sharing.
Hi Michelle,
Some of the traffic for my blog comes from Facebook .I spend time building relationships on FB especially in specialized groups. Make lots of comments and likes. I like to interact with people. I also work on my headlines and try to pick a combination of words to interest the audience. I try to live up to the promise of the headline. Still have a lot to learn. I also use Twitter and Google+ where quality counts a lot. Have a lot of room for improvement, but am trying.
Regards
Sara Fargoons
Hi Mickelle,
Nice tips for increasing traffic. Sharing give both benifits in traffic and rust to google as well.
Keep sharing :)