Blogging is one of the most popular tools you can use to gain traffic and attention to your home-based business but only when you drive traffic to your blog.
When used correctly, it can prove very powerful and effective for acquiring customers. The key to an effective blog is traffic. If no one is reading, it can’t be effective. So how then, do you set about driving traffic to your blog?
Drive Traffic To Your Blog
Just because you set up a blog, does not mean that people show up!
There are literally thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog but here are a few:
- Often times people forget to check blogs often and a friendly reminder will nudge them over to the website. Set up an e-mail subscription form on your blog using an RSS feed and have the option to subscribe via email on your blog. They will then receive notice of a new blog post and will be more likely to go read it than if they were not subscribed.
- Submit your blog to various feeds on social sites so that others who are members of those feeds are presented with your blog posts. Examples include Feed Hopper, RSS, and FeedBlitz but there are many!
- Read and comment on other blogs in your target niche. This shows you take an active interest in the niche and that you are also aware of what others are writing. Write intelligent comments. Instead of something generic like “nice blog” or “great information”, write detailed comments that show your knowledge of the subject. They do not have to be long but they should be useful to others reading the blog and accompanying comments. Be sure to include a link to your own blog so readers can read it as well.
- Submit your blog to traditional search engines. When doing this, think of those that are the most often used such as Yahoo and Google. Remember you want to target those your potential customers are most likely to access. Make sure to submit to several. While you can’t cover them all, you want to broaden the spectrum just in case.
- Submit your blog to blog directories. This provides yet one more way for readers to find you. Keep in mind, if they don’t know you exist, they can’t subscribe, so the more areas you are able to submit, the better you’ll be all around. You can even create a form to track your submissions. This process can take several hours when you first begin so be sure to schedule at least an hour a day for submitting to the directories.
- Include a direct link to your blog in your e-mail signature. That way any time you send out e-mails that link will appear and can be easily followed. This also makes it easier for people to find your blog because it eliminates the searching process.
- Place a link to your blog on each page of your website. This way it will be highly visible and the more often people see it, the more likely they will be to check it out.
- Grab small tidbits of information from a particular post and post it on your business page or profile in all the social sites with the link back to the full article.
Drive traffic to your blog anyway you can! It is the WORLD WIDE WEB but only works if you link to your blog from EVERYWHERE!!
SEO takes effort! Links, traffic and activity on your blog will result in a financially viable website.
Put a system into place that consistently links to your blog it will start to work for you!
Deb Bixler – Blog Services
Have you been thinking about blogging and just never gotten started? Deb can set up your blog and train you to manage your blog in a week!