I’ve been thinking lately about how I might generate more traffic to my blog. Yes I get a fair few comments on it, but I’d like to be able to reach out to more people. That way I can get myself and my writing ‘out there’ so to speak, and have a bigger audience.
Having read other people’s blogs, some with a huge number of followers, some with less, I realise that there are various things I could do to increase the number of people following my blog as well as increasing the number of visits to my blog.
The blogs that have the most followers tend to have links to various other sites, which makes their own site kind of like a hub. These successful bloggers also tend to pick an aspect of writing which they choose to blog about.
Their chosen aspect tends to be related to what their writing is concerned with – I guess that’s obvious, but not all bloggers do the same. But many do choose to blog about genre writing, so for example romance, if this is what their burgeoning novel is concerned with, or fantasy if they’re writing in that genre, and so on.
Truly successful bloggers will thoroughly engage with their audience. So they will often ask a question at the end of their blog post inviting their followers to comment in return, to participate. Sometimes if there’s a promotion going on that the blogger is involved with, say to do with that blogger promoting their latest novel, they will do a giveaway and that in turn increases the popularity of that blog.
So where does this leave me and my blog? Well I should mention another important aspect of a successful blog – regular updates! I’m not so good with this; life takes over as well as writing (and currently editing) my novel and I don’t get around to it, and by the time I check back to my blog a whole week has passed since I did a new post!
Well I’m not going to beat myself up about that – I do what I can. But I would like to try to aim for two blog posts a week initially, and then maybe increase over time. I think it’s so important to engage with other writers and bloggers. We give each other a confidence boost that way and it enables us to promote our work for free, as well as getting other people’s opinions on it – if we share bits of it as I do.
OK, to recap a good blog is updated regularly, it engages with its audience, it provides links to other interesting sites and it has information that people will find relevant and helpful.
And finally I’d like to share with you a list of a few of the blogs that I enjoy reading and that you may do too:
And now for my question, what do you find most helpful about the blogs that you enjoy following the most? As always your comments are much appreciated!
Elaine Jeremiah 