Driving Traffic to your blog

Do you have a blog?

If you do then, depending on the goals, you'd like to increase traffic to your blog. I have spent some time this week reading a variety of articles, blog postings and other materials to find out new ways to bring traffic to our blogs, websites and articles.

I've put together a few you might not have thought of before, and some you have. Try these and then we'd love to hear back from you and find out what has worked for you.

1. Blog Carnivals
I am a huge fan of blog carnivals. They bring over people who are in your target readership [assuming you do them right] and they helped me reach a much wider readership with my blogs. The key to blog carnivals is taking the time to READ THE REQUIREMENTS, DEADLINES AND THEME. These can be a very time consuming way to spread the word about your blogs, but it is worth it. If any of you run a blog carnival and would like submissions from our readeship, leave your info in our comments.

2. Follow
I talked about it a bit a week or so ago. Blogger now has a feature where you can follow others. The added benefit is that people can see you and might investigate.

3. Blogrush
You can see the theme list on the right side of my blog. Click through and join. It may take some time before you show up on thousands of blogs [like I do every week] but I have had a number of people subscribe to this blog recently as a result of seeing me through blog rush. As an author, the added bonus is you learn to write catchy titles based on what people click through to read.

4. Leave comments
I had heard of the value of leaving meaningful comments on other blogs for potential customers but had never really thought about it as a source of traffic for my blog. Now when people leave comments on my blog I will sometimes go to theirs and thank them for their comment. I do this first, because it is nice. I believe in saying thank you when a person pays you a compliment. What I didn't realize until recently is the number of times someone will see my comment posted on another person's blog and come over to mine to find out who I am.

5. Leave comments: part II
The other thing about leaving comments is going to the blog/website of someone who is talking about a topic that interests you or that pertains to the topic of your book. As you become a part of that blogging community there will be interest when you let them know about the book or article you wrote on their topic. Recently Rebeca Seitz wrote a book with scrapbooking as a main theme. She is an avid scrapbooker so not only did she appeal to writers and lovers of her genre, but people with an interest in scrapbooking. You can generate the same kind of interest in a topic of your book that will attract people who might not otherwise read it. The same with your blog.

6. Other
I'll talk about it more this month but NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month] has become a sensation and is another way to get to know people regionally who write. Last year I found a writer's group less than 30 minutes from my house [I live in the country so that is like 5 minutes for a city person. :-) ] These are not huge marketing opportunities, but they do introduce you to other writers in the area who might help generate buzz about your project, your writing in general and your blog.

Here is where you'll find my profile. If you're going to take a shot at writing a novel in November with NaNoWriMo then make me one of your friends.


So go out there and get noticed!!!


Your Coach for the Journey, Tiffany Colter