Newbiary :: Blog Traffic Headaches

Here’s all my collective knowledge (oh so much) from the past few days of becoming a "full-on blogger", if indeed there is such a phrase.

  1. There are a few awesome articles out there to help. Especially How To Boost Your Blog Traffic by Paul Stamatiou. Use Google and Technorati (and any others) to find them. Most are rehashes, some are gems, others are downright horrible.
  2. Develop a strategy for the site. Nothing is too little to think through. What purpose do your posts have? Do you just look at other news items and comment (maybe …)? Do you write about your own ideas? Are your articles about things that people will want to hear? Are your articles about something that you feel is important, and everyone who doesn’t like it can … well.

    Strategy. Think through where your headed.

    Of course, this is a Newbiary, and I’m only a few inches along the road … so maybe all my thoughts are wrong. Still, I’ll find that out on the journey.

  3. Be active in the community. Target a number of other blog websites. Comment on their stories, and don’t do it with the obvious reason of plugging your own. Do it because you have read the article and agree/disagree. Show interest, and hopefully people will show interest in your own site.

    This is part of the overall site strategy. You can be as specific as you want. Write a little webapp to keep track of who you are targeting. Send out an email invititation to some kind of event on your site.

  4. Get accounts with sites like Digg and Slashdot and shoot them your new articles.

    Be prepared to endure a lot of non-events. You might push fifty articles and have none of them get onto Slashdot. It might be more like five hundred. Digg is a little easier to get exposure, but people will tell you what they think.

    If your post is a couple of lines of commentary on another post (news, etc …) that you found, then be prepared for flaming. In Digg, the best course of action is to post the actual news link.

    There are more sites. If you use WordPress, there’s Blogs of the Day. The other main site I’m constantly checking (you put their tagging linking functionality piccie on your own site) is Blog Top Sites. More specifically, for Dev Dawn, Blog Top Sites – Technology.

  5. Which leads to … always be advancing the site. Dreaming of new functionality, but also looking around at what is happening elsewhere. There will always be a new direction to take, something more to implement.

    I like the idea of having a strategy for never being static. Work hard at making a fluid plan, that will be able to grow with changes in the community, but also with changes you wish to implement. Don’t be afraid to try something new.

    This is the beauty of the inter-web. And because blogging is a relatively new idea (old idea, new technology), there is still plenty of stuff to be thunk up.

  6. Lastly, you have to suck it up. Receiving flack is going to happen. I’ve gotten a little (minor) in the last couple of days, and because this is my first serious venture into the world of blogging, my feelings were very, very close to the surface.

    "What! How dare that person say that I suck!"

    It’s gonna happen, and we have to suck it up. Not ignore, but take it … work it … use it.

‘Nuff said. Thanks for listening/reading … be true to truth, and start thinking. Always.

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