Now tell me who doesn't want more traffic? Who has already got enough traffic and you’re overwhelmed and you shout “NO” to traffic? Is there such thing as too much traffic? You bet!
Let’s accept this simple fact and let’s say out loud: I want more traffic. Yes, MORE.
No matter whether you receive 100 visits to your site per day or 100K visits per day, you still need more traffic, don’t you?
YES is the answer.
So in this post I am not going to give you the usual traffic generating tips. But I am going to talk to you keeping the big picture in mind – the strategic approach to getting more traffic. Let’s dive in.
#1 Build a community
I can say that Ileane is pretty good at it 🙂 She consistently worked on building a strong community for her blog. Building a community is like building a strong base and an asset for your blog. This is something you build for your blog with the long term benefits in mind. This is not a thing you think about for now and forget.
So how do you build a community?
You can do so in many ways. Usually blog commenting works great for building a community. Now, don’t immediately jump into your blog commenting campaign before you finish reading what I started. Blog commenting, if done correctly, can get you amazing results (apart from building a community you can also get free promotion of your site plus a bunch of backlinks).
But if you do it incorrectly it can bite your back. If you start spamming other blogs with keywords in your name field, “great post” sorta comments and too many comments leaving no room for the others, you will make it work reversely for you.
This recent post by Darren Rowse is a nice guide on how to do it right > The ultimate guide to leaving comments on blogs.
Apart from blog commenting, you can also indulge in conversations in social media, on forums etc. But don’t make this thing overwhelming for you. Just pick up 1 or 2 things that work for you and things that you can handle, and stick with them. Be consistent.
You won’t see a difference overnight. It will take quite some time. But by being consistent you will see you have an awesome community to back yourself up and your blog over the time.
Other than Ileane, other women who rock it are Adrienne Smith and Harleena Singh (and here's the post where Harleena shares commenting tips at Adrienne's blog)! Look at their comments on other blogs. They are long and insightful. And visit their blogs to see how people rush in to leave a comment as soon as they publish a new post! You not only get comments in return, but people share your content and support you when you launch something. That’s the power of having` a community.
#2 Connect with your readers
Stop working on improving inanimate and lifeless things like SEO, rankings, numbers etc. and focus on real living people – your readers. Your readers are the ones who listen to what you say and they are the ones who are going to do business with you.
You are not going to sell your product to the Google spiders, but to your readers.
So in an attempt to mastering SEO, please don’t disrespect your readers. Let your content be created for your readers and make everything about your business useful to them. Make them your priority.
So how can you connect with your readers?
Again, there are many ways to do this. Rather than running a blog by putting yourself behind a wall, put up a photo (a real face of yours) on your blog. Let the readers see the real human being behind the blog they are reading.
I’ll be surprised if you haven’t yet signed up for a free account at Gravatar.com which makes integrating your avatar in many places easy by connecting your avatar with your email. Whenever you leave comments on other blogs, your face shows up. And when people come to your blog, they can see the same face and it is much easier for them to “get” you this way.
Have an About page on your blog that is not all about you but still has some personality injected into it.
And when you create content use a conversational voice. I usually speak out my blog posts as I write them – I imagine my audience sitting right in front of me and that I’m talking to them.
People tend to check out links from real persons and become repeat visitors (sticky traffic) to blogs where they easily feel a connection!
#3 Be honest and open
People love honesty and it is easy to trust people who are honest. What many bloggers try is just the opposite. They try to showcase themselves as successful bloggers and fake things until they make it. This is totally unnecessary and will only hurt their reputation.
Rather by being honest and open you can earn fans for life.
Did you try out something and it failed? No problem! Just share it with your readers honestly. They’ll love you for it and you’ll save them the trouble of going through the same mistake!
This also applies for affiliate marketing in particular. If you find a product to be crappy, don’t write a “Buy it now coz its so good” kinda review. Honestly point out what’s wrong with the product and what’s nice about it.
By being honest you can build a solid base of customers/followers who will trust you. And, the word of mouth is a great marketing tool to get you all the traffic you dream of!
#4 Help others and be accessible
By helping others, you send out good waves. You see, when you started out, you had troubles right? You had obstacles. There were so many things that you couldn't figure out and you were stuck.
At those times, you either sought out the help of other fellow bloggers (lucky you!) or you figured them out yourself.
Now think of other emerging bloggers the same way. Just put yourself in their shoes. When they’re in need of help and if you offer them help, you’re earning fans for life. You are not only going to get “just” traffic but traffic from your fans for life.
Get blog traffic strategically: Takeaway
I know you might have been disappointed after reading this post. You might have expected tips like “do blog commenting”, “do guest posting”, “promote posts on social media” and so on.
But the tips I've shared here are the core factors that will provide you with long term sticky traffic. You've got to try these out to believe me!