How Well do you Understand How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog?
I blog regularly and I follow a lot of bloggers, but Michael Hyatt is undoubtedly among my top 5 favorite bloggers that I default to when I think of bloggers that are consummate authorities in the online space.
He is a blogger, he hosts a highly value-laden podcast, and is also the author of Platform: Get Noticed in A Noisy World, which is a book that teaches you how to build a large following online.
His blog at www.michaelhyatt.com has over 600,000 subscribers and if anyone knows what works and what doesn’t, it would definitely be him.
Blogging isn’t a difficult concept to understand nor is it difficult to understand why people do it. The use of the internet to reach people that are far removed from you geographically in support of your business, your ideas, and your messages is by far the most profound piece of online marketing.
You have a product or service. Clients need your product or service. The Internet provides the bridge.
Blogging for all intents and purposes allows you to build and index web pages that are stored and archived by the search engines–in this case Google being the biggest search engine, along with Yahoo and Bing–while giving you the opportunity to leave a digital footprint online that allows people to find you and your content for years to come.
What does this mean?
It means clients for your business. It can mean income opportunities through different monetization strategies, and it can also mean more authority and more notoriety in your field or niche, and for the most part it cost little of nothing and anyone can do it.
In his most recent podcast he outlines 10 strategies for blogging success.
If you haven’t watched the video already here is a summary of those 10 tips:
Create compelling content that people want to share
Be consistent – Consistency is key to bonding with your audience. Schedule one blog post a week at a minimum. People will identify with your consistency over your frequency. Start with the minimum and dial it up. Adhere to a consistent schedule
Get a domain name – What you want is your own self-hosted blog over a wordpress blog that clearly makes you unique in the marketplace.
Include your blog address everywhere – You want to ensure that you are promoting your blog in as many places as possible.
Make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog – You want access to a visitors email so you want to ensure that you ask for a first name or email. You want an opt-in in the upper right hand corner of your blog page. You also want to ensure that you give them a very good giveaway to give to your readers in exchange for their email.
Optimize your posts for SEO – He recommends blogging in WordPress first and foremost. WordPress is the Mercedes Benz of bloggers. Also, he recommends using the plugin (All-in-one SEO). The search engines need to score your posts using a variety of SEO metrics and this wordpress plugin helps you accomplish just that.
Utilize social media – Use your social media platform to advertise your content and direct people back to your content.
Engage in Conversation around your blog posts – You need to go where the conversation is and engage with your users.
Comment on other peoples blog – This allows you to link back to your blog and create visibility for your own blog.
Write guests posts for other people – This is a great way to get people to discover your content and your voice through your writing by creating content for other bloggers.
