It’s pretty much universally accepted these days that having a blog is a smart move for any business. And because just about everyone understands that, just about everyone (and their uncle) has a blog. What that means is that the competition for traffic to your blog is strong and growing on a daily basis. After all, people can only read so much every day, so they’ll naturally gravitate to the blog content that is most relevant and meaningful to them. But even the best-written, most content-packed blogs are useless if no one sees them in the first place. So building traffic flow to your blog is at least as important as making it stick (getting people to follow you).
Especially if you’re just getting started with blogging, building traffic can be a bewildering, and often frustrating proposition. With all the advice out there on what to do and how to do it, how can you know what works best for you? The truth is, you can’t know. Mostly, you have to research and see what makes the most sense to you, then try it and adjust as you go. And once you have the formula down… well, actually, there is no formula. If you think you’ve found the perfect formula, don’t get too comfortable. It will change soon enough. All that said, below are just four simple steps you can take immediately that will begin to increase your blog traffic. It will take time to see significant results, and you’ll have to pick and choose where to spend most of your time, but these methods (as of today) will put you on the path to more traffic within 30 days.
1. Participate in forums. Forums, like the one at YoungEntrepreneur.com, are a great way to connect with fellow business people in your field as well as blog readers. If you target your efforts at forums within your target audience, you’ll often find hundreds or even thousands of people interested in exactly what you’re talking about in your blog. Get involved in the forums, offer real, useful advice, and when appropriate (and not too obviously), direct people to relevant blog articles on your site. Also include your blog URL in your signature when allowed.
2. Use social media. We’ve written extensively on this site about the benefits of using social media sites like Twitter & Facebook and others. So without going into great detail, let’s just say once more that social media is like no other medium in its ability to reach a targeted audience in a meaningful way, at little or no expense. If you’re not using these tools, you’re missing out on traffic that you could be gaining right now.
3. Comment on other blogs. You probably read other blogs right? So make it a point, whenever you’re on another person’s blog page, to comment on their posts. This will often help to build a relationship with the blog writer, which can be beneficial in many ways, and it will allow you to post a link back to your blog. As these are pretty much always no-follow links, you won’t benefit in that way, but you will benefit from the traffic generated by people clicking on your name. Of course that won’t happen if your comments aren’t thoughtful or interesting, so, “Nice post” won’t help much. For more on the topic of comment marketing, read this.
4. Make sharing easy. It’s amazing how many smaller blogs don’t offer an easy way for readers to share posts with others. Even if you don’t like Twitter, for example, or if you don’t think having a Twitter account will help your business, you have to recognize that millions of people, including most of your readers, do use Twitter. So at the very least, install TweetMeme or Topsy buttons on your posts. If you want to really optimize the possibilities and you’re using WordPress, SexyBookmarks is a great plugin that makes it easy for readers to share on over 80 bookmarking sites. Whatever you use, make sure people who love your stuff can easily tell others about it. Word of mouth is still king when it comes to getting people to look at what you have to offer.
Is there more to driving traffic to your blog? Of course there is. We didn’t even touch on SEO, SEM, backlinks, or a thousand other tools and methods you can use. But these four steps are some that anyone can take without having to do much research or decipher complex methodology. And if you start using them today, you just might see pumped up traffic in 30 days or less.
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I think so far I’ve done about 3-4 of these suggested tips! I better get started on the other ones soon. I didn’t know about youngentrepreneur.com but I’m definitely looking forward to participating in more forums that can also help me learn more things as well as build connections with other bloggers. Do you have any other forums you’d recommend as well? I’d really appreciate that! Thanks in advance, Matthew!
Blog commenting and forum participation alone can bring in immediate traffic within 24-48 hours. Continual use of these methods every day for 30 days will only increase the initial results dramatically.
I’d say that forums and Blog commenting are the two best places to start. On my main blog I built up the majority of my initial traffic using those two sources, before the site started getting natural search engine traffic.
-Paul
Great article Matthew. Your advice is especially helpful because it’s immediately applicable to any entrepreneur.
If you follow the 4 steps that are listed above, you will slowly but surely help your online presence. In effect, you have basically provided the premise of Dharmesh Sha’s ‘Inbound Marketing’ book. The tips in that book (and above) are truly useful for entrepreneurs looking to establish themselves (without paying a fortune in advertising costs).
Jason
@Credit Girl: The YE forum is really the only one I look at, but I’m a little biased I guess. There are tons out there though, so hit Google up, and you’ll find them.
@Brandon & LS 2208: I agree. Those two methods can have immediate results. If you do them for 30 days consistently, you’ll see a big boost in traffic. Of course you don’t want to stop after 30 days either!
I would like to add article publishing in article directories and guest posting to this great article. Thumbs up!
Great post! I would add that consistancy is key! Many small business owners don’t see the value in something and move on to something else. It’s important to stick with social media and blogging long enough to see results.
Matthew, I’ve definitely found for myself that participating actively, and being a real member of a community is one of the best things you can do for yourself. You want to make sure that you are indeed proving value to the forum users, you don’t wanna go in there from Day 1, and shouting to the world your advertisements, etc. But what you want to is build the relationship for the long run and then slowly you are more free to do your ultimate goal, and people will trust you more.
-Jean
@tires: You make an excellent point, Jean. If you start throwing out what appears to be self-serving forum posts, it will turn people off and have the opposite of your desired effect. Building relationships in forums – and in social media – is what works best.
And also you can make some videos on youtube to share your thought and blogs ideas. People will come to your website after watching videos.
John thank you for the kind words :)
-Jean
Thank you for the good points. I would like to share one more point. Guest posting is also one of the best way to promote yourself and also your blogs.
Linkbuilding is definitely important! Spending time reading other’s blogs and commenting will make people more interested in yours. Another key to increasing traffic is to make sure your blog’s always updated so that people have something new to come back to.
@Carlton: You’re right! YouTube marketing is becoming more and more important. It’s become a social network of its own. Great point!
Social media is really helping a lot of people to grow their business. Nobody thought about that few years back.
@Carlton yeah you can make some youtube videos, but you gotta make sure you have some sort of message to lead your viewers to your website. The cool thing now on youtube is that you can add annotations, so it’s awesome in terms of older videos that don’t have that call to action to get them to your website.
Till then,
Jean
Very simple tips, but these are the basics of blog marketing that all bloggers should understand. For me personally, blog posting (just as I am doing now) helps give my magazine free publicity to a targeted market, as well as a quality backlink. My other big traffic driver that was not mentioned here for me is article submission, specifically to ezinearticles.com and goarticle.com
I agree its very important to keep the blog updated with fresh and meaningful content and not just filler. I try to find what’s lacking out there and fill that gap with content that I hope is unique to most people and something they can take a genuine interest in.
HI John,
it’s nice to see a simple list of easy yet realistic steps to take. Jean does make a very important point about participating versus blatant self promotion. I’f I may suggest, i think folks would find a blog post with examples on how to participate in a way where you don’t shoot yourself in the foot very helpful.
Thanks. I look forward to sharing this post with my network.
Elge
Those are worthy ways to gain traffic to your blog. I’m pretty sure you are ALSO targeting the right readers and possibly fans to your site.
While I have tried all your mentioned ideas, as well as some mentioned in some of the above comments, I don’t really get a ton of traffic. At least not form people clicking my blog from these mentioned ideas. I have found that unless I am very active in the forums, and post frequent comments on blogs my traffic is not sustained. I have had pretty good success with article writing.
@Brandon But I guess those methods are temporary without building the foundation of SEO, which is linkbaiting and writing compelling contents to your readers.
Thanks for the 4 ways on how to boost blog traffic. What I love is that they increase traffic by direct clicks and also ad back links which will help with seo. We really do live in a world of unlimited possibilities. They key really is to explore options, find ones that you really link then consistently apply them….and NEVER give up!
@free seo: An article with some concrete examples is a good idea. I’ll pass it on to Adam and Matthew. Thanks!
Really great tips that will help to drive more traffic to blog.
I think twitter and facebook are the main player that can play the key role in it.
Those are worthy ways to gain traffic .Your advice is especially helpful because it’s immediately applicable to any entrepreneur.
Having a blog is great for businesses but how do you focus on promoting both your blog and your website?
Fully agree with you. I would add that consistency is key! Many small business owners don’t see the value in something and move on to something else. It’s important to stick with social media and blogging long enough to see results. Great article. Very well-written. I am always interested in learning something new.
So far the best results in getting traffic i had from submitting “how to” articles. Unfortunately, when i look at the stats of those articles on sites where i submit, i see that only around 20% of people who read the article comes to my blog. As for these 4 methods, posting in forums in my niche is by far the best one.
30 Days? Now, that’s a real challenge as I have just started writing my blog and tweet my way in the twittersphere. Thanks for sharing that link on the forum posting. Like you said, commenting on blogs matter which is what I’m doing right now. See, I’m learning real fast and I think I’ll have to bookmark your post so I’ll get reminded every now and then ( this is my indirect way of saying thanks for a great post ).
It’s tough to get traffic and all of these things can really help. 30 days is a short time frame, but if all done properly, you can reach that goal. I started to participate in social networking sites more and comment on other green blogs and was able to bring additional traffic to the site. I think participating in forums and continuing to be active on others blogs will take me to the next level.
I saw tremendous results with Forum Commenting. I had taken it rather lightly, till that one thing alone replaced my primary income.
This is powerful, especially in niches which are still waiting to be tapped.
Step 3 is essential to create traffic to a specific blog. Building relationships is key to successfully promote content.