Widening your blogs reach
I was recently Googling self improvement, entrepreneurship, and making money via content based websites and began to realize something. I’m stuck in a community where everyone knows everyone. What I mean by this is that I began blogging because a friend showed me Steve Pavlina’s and then Yaro’s Entrepreneur-Journey blog. From there I promoted my blog to those linked to and from Yaro’s or Steve’s. I would trackback, leave comments and try and link exchange with people who were reading those and similar blogs.
This was all fine and dandy for a while but I then noticed that all my comments were coming from people reading the same stuff that I was. The same stuff in the same niche dominated by Yaro, Steve, or Darren. Where is there room for me in that company?
That’s when I began to Google the topics of my blog looking for similar forums or blogs outside of this sub-web I got myself stuck in. Now don’t get me wrong, the sub-web led by the likes of those three is a good one to get in and I feel as though I have learned about a whole other business world. However, I needed to widen my blogs reach. I love the aussie’s as much as the next person but that seem to be where most of my comments were coming from and a good chuck of my repeat visitors as well. (Maybe they just like tennis and running more than other countries.)
In order to widen my blogs reach I decided to focus on several methods which I list below.
Google Your Topics
- As I mentioned the number one way to get into other sub-webs of bloggers is by googling your blogs topics and then following links on the blog or page results. I sometimes use google blog search beta but most of the time I’ll just google it and sooner or later come upon someones blog related to my search. I just make sure those people don’t have a link or back link to the usual blogs related to the 3 mentioned previously.
From there you can leave a comment, email the publisher, or click a link through to another blog. Eventually you should find someone responsive and if you leave good information you’re bound to get some type of traffic back to your blog. Even if it’s minor. Every bit of traffic helps.
Forums
- There’s no better way to boost traffic than by slipping your URL into a useful post at a medium to high traffic forum. It’s like when someone begin interviewed slips in their product line or company URL, you can’t beat the free promotion. Now some are bigger than others and you could post until you’re blue in the face and not get any outside links from it. But the goal here is to widen your reach. So look for forums that aren’t mentioned a million times in the usual pages you read. I found that the little traffic spikes from forum promotion have carried on for about 3-7 days depending on the forum posted in.
Just remember to post useful stuff. If you are shamelessly dropping your URL the people who visit often and ave websites to link from can spot you a mile away. Be helpful and informative and the traffic will come.
Look For No-Name Blogs
- Like no-name steaks, no-name blogs can be a diamond in the rough. I’m talking about blogs like this one where not a lot of people know it yet. If you bookmark the blog and comment usefully every now and then on their blog, and that person keeps posting and builds traffic, you’ll get the links into your blog. This is where you can really begin to widen your blogs reach.
Being the first “fan” of an up and coming blog will make you a hit. People that begin to visit or comment on that particular site will think you an expert or a friend, either way they’ll be curious and want to find more out about you. Click on your name, BAM, at your site. Beautiful.
Don’t Do The Usual
I guess in closing what I want to say is that if you are getting in a rut with your blog you should begin to search elsewhere for links. People in your niche might already have their 10 favorites and be passing yours by because they don’t have time. You want to find related blogs that don’t know about the big dogs yet so you can solidify yourself as a big dog.
Get out there and search for a new friend and possibly a new repeat reader. Keep updating your content and see where it leads. Hopefully some new eyeballs will be looking at your pages in no time.