Blogging, how to get started and build traffic

One thing for sure about bloggering, what with the competition, new comers need a good strategy to bring people to their site. If you’ve got an audience already somewhere, use that to get going- hand out your web address at events, to clients and whatnot. Ok too obvious. But if you’re really at scratch, man, you’ve gotta use tags and organization. Make it look like you know a lot about many things and people are gonna trickle in slowly from every direction. Provide useful or entertaining information with a clear path towards more, you’ll show up on more and more searches. Gotta get those hits baby!

Tags

Tags and labeling things is a huge pain in the ass, but its really necessary. Whatever blog site you’re working from, there is probably a place to put in tags. Your post will then be ‘tagged’ as relating to that subject and can be given as an answer to that query in search engines. Come up with an extensive list of words that relate to your post– anything at all. Things you may have mentioned in the post, other words for things, names, places, news. Basically anything that, if a person searched the tag word, arriving at your post would make some sense. Also use: The Keyword Tool

Topics

You may be an expert on something, in that case, keep pushing what you know especially well. For me, i know im not ‘the’ expert on anything, metaphysics and crazy music maybe. . ..at least i like to think so. . .Most of us, if we want to be heard, have to offer the benefit of our individual perspective on many varied topics. Take my post on alkaline batteries, maybe im full of shit, maybe im not, who knows.. . sounds pretty good though either way right? point is i said something about it and now it shows up on related searches. Every tag on every post has a chance of bringing you a hit. Logically, the more tags multiplied by posts you’ve got, the higher your traffic.

Personality

All this disconnected information may get distracting to the wonderful readers who’ve decided to come back and read new posts regularly. Make sure to have your own personal thread that follows throughout. It could be your writing style, viewpoints, maybe you italicize everything or some lame trick- whatever. Point is you need to be a good read for both the dude who typed “batteries” on google, and the dude who has liked a couple posts and is coming back wondering what else you’ve got.

Frequency

To keep the regulars coming back, you’ve got to post fairly often. . . . Must keep feeding the beast. . . .I start biting my nails after about 5 days without a post. I’d love to be one of those people who post material every day, but somebody’s gotta ‘gimme some a that internet money‘ before thats ever gonna happen. Point is if you don’t give people new info, they’ve got no reason to come back. Your fancy logo and wack ass graphics will float away into a distant memory. . . .”what the hell was this bookmark for?” . .*delete*.

Brevity

Another good trick, don’t bombard people with too much information all at once. This blogging post for instance is way to long and boring. Have lots of info available, but front pages and such should only have quick highlights and links. Also, always sound confident in your highlights and headlines— you know your shit! People don’t go to the link: “pondering time”, they click on “why time sucks ass”. Also, ha ha, if you look back my first few sentences or so on this post made it sound like i could give you a magic fix instantly and that i was quite an authority on blogs. .which i am of course. . . When your tag gets you up on a search result list, you’ll be up against many other textual intros. Text is the only thing that can make your link stand out upon first introduction with a potential reader- don’t blow it by sounding unsure, misspelling “Blog” or something else regrettable.

Organization

Hmmm organization?, that brings me to the organization part. People aren’t going to spend time sifting through the random notes of a stranger. If someone is bothering to look around for something else you’ve said, make it really easy for them to find your best stuff. Failing that, make sure that specific interests can also be pursued. This is done by keeping everything well organized. People may want to see what you said last month, or about food or whatever- categorize topics for people to move around your blog easily. The guy that liked your ‘mp3 players’ post may like your ‘cameras’ post, but couldn’t give a shit about your politics. Get him easily into the info he wants now and maybe later he’ll read your marxist agenda as well.

Relevance

This is straight forward, say things you figure people will be interested in. Being original is important, but give a good mix of opinions on existing topics as well as your wackjob self-composed topics. Also, give the latest news if you can. Easy really, keep up on the news sources. As soon as something interesting happens, be one of the first to say something about it. I should do more of this myself, it really works. If it happened last week, everybody has had a chance to reflect. But if it happened 2 mins ago, you and cnn may be the only ones who come up on searches. There is a great potential for traffic in the Hegelian “Now”, but it requires a steady diligence of news monitoring. Again needing that internet money.

Network

Cross traffic from several sites. Post on your blog, but post/inform people on your myface and spacebook. Also use del.ico.us and digg- oh shit blogger stuff you look it up. Basically you try to make yourself show up in as many places as possible with as many good answers to things as you can, and channel all that traffic through your well designed main site that encourages repeat visits. Personally i try to channel most of my traffic onto my wordpress account, but the reality is people like different platforms so you’ve got to try and be available within the site they like best. Also, its good to have your own url- makes you look more official. Got mine at planetdomain. Remember, what you’re saying may be terrific, but if you’re on a standard blog page with myspace or wordpress or something in the location bar- it makes you look like a new user or less legit. If you’ll try www.remistevens.com you will find it takes you to the front page of my blog- but it hides wordpress. This is the address i advertise, sure everyone coming on the old address or through wordpress knows the dark secret, but newcomers may never know the truth. . . .Maybe im a big enough deal to be funding the whole server?

Make it happen

$15 for the url, $15 to be able to customize the look of your wordpress account. Find all the programming code you need to customize by google searching; copy and paste- really easy shit. So do it, 30 bucks and some computerizing and you’re cooking with gas on your own private website blog.

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