Some people write blogs because they want to journal things they are doing, things around them, and their feelings about such things. Other people write blogs as particular format of a website with a specific topic in mind. Many others are somewhere in the middle. Regardless of the type you write, it's often nice to get feedback on posts.

This can be accomplished in a couple of different ways. One way is to keep your blog among friends and get your friends to take part. This is very common among the people around me. Another way is to drive traffic to your site. The links at the end of the post are mostly about the latter.

I've found that the primary way to get traffic on my site is by writing content that people want to read or that is very current. Since I tend to follow gadget news, this often means writing something about a very current toy. Another way that works well is by good content on forums where a signature has a link to it. You can't just write, "check me out!" Well, you can, but it won't be taken as seriously as real content -- nor will it come up in searches.

One of the ways mentioned in these articles that I hadn't considered was by signing up with each of the RSS aggregators and making sure to subscribe you'll make sure those sites spider your site. You don't have to rely on pinging them or other people to subscribe. (The User Agent these aggregators use usually lists the number of subscribers in it, which is very useful.)

Many of the normal website design patterns and rules also apply. However, it's my opinion that a successful blog can get away with breaking some of the rules. After all, it's your blog and you can do what you want. You aren't necessarily targetting everyone, anyway. Ultimately, people like you will find it and come. Sure, it is potentially a much smaller population of people, but that's your decision to make not some web designers.

Naturally, you could advertise. But do you really want to advertise to bring traffic to your blog? In one post on a forum site, I drove over 500 visitors to my site. At 10 cents a visitor, that had $50 in value. And the traffic was likely all much more real than that from advertising. Of course, I'm sure some of the blogs out there spend thousands to advertise. It would take a lot of work to match those results with a single person making some forum posts.

One of the sites mentions Technorati as being a way to generate a lot of traffic. My results haven't shown it to be any better or worse off than other sites. But then, maybe I'm not using it correctly. ;)

In any case, some of these methods to increase traffic can be fun, too. So, enjoy!

HOW TO: Boost Your Blog Traffic at PaulStamatiou.com

Intelligent Bacon: 16 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog. Tips for Terrific Telephone Interviews.

Posted by Shane on November 6, 2005 6:15 PM | Permalink