So I was looking through our blog stats this morning for the first six months of the year and noticed that we had half a million unique visitors to the blog in the first six months of the year. The blog only started 14 months ago and we have only been seriously writing on it since last August when we changed the focus of it from a standard business blog to a central resource to help people learn about social media and share the latest trends and news.
It’s by no means a conventional agency blog but we live in a world where businesses are changing all the time because of technology and we are not a conventional agency. I wanted to write this post as a resource to anybody trying to build a big blog from scratch (that’s a lot of people at the moment) and to hopefully save you some time. Getting traffic to your blog is by no means the be all and end all of any business and for many it won’t matter at all but our blog is really front and center and something that has actually brought in well over 80% of all our business from big brands to small local businesses so we see a return on all the hard work we put in. We don’t attend any networking events or do much marketing in any other way, for us the blog is king. Here are some of the tips I would have for you in terms of growing your blog to that next level…
Don’t Pigeon Hole Yourself Geographically
The normal thing for us to do would have been to write for the Irish market being a small agency trying to crack through in Ireland when we launched but the Irish market is tiny, there are only a certain amount of eyeballs willing to read a social media blog here so we decided as much as possible not to have an Irish specific focus. We do the odd Irish related post but mostly we try and give ourselves as big an audience as possible but as you can see from the map below very little of our overall traffic as a percentage actually comes from Ireland. This tactic has already paid dividends with us opening a UK office and means we now have a serious presence there to direct people to. Who knows where else that could help with in the future are we continue to grow
Don’t Write For Search Engines
Writing for search engines is a bad mistake. I’ve written posts here in the past that people think are aimed at getting traffic from search engines but the truth is that if you write posts like that from outside your niche actually get less traffic than normal. If I write about Tiger Woods it just doesn’t get noticed in search engines at all, how could we compete with big newspapers, corporations and blogs that have been around for years in terms of ranking for content. Instead of writing for search engines write content that people are going to find useful, come back to over and over again and stay within your niche. You’ll find if the content is good enough people will link to it from other sites and you’ll start appearing organically.
Use Social Media Channels
As a social media agency we would say this but we are all lucky that we live in an age where we can use social media to give our blogs a boost that they would never have had in the old days. Used correctly social media is like steroids to your blog and will help you create and audience with some serious community around your site. Get a Facebook page and encourage your readers to like your post because as I wrote before a whopping 18% of our traffic now comes through Facebook. That’s a fifth of our traffic or 200,000 uniques a year that we have coming from Facebook alone. It’s a case of finding the right niche sites for your blog and some of the channels that we use include Linked in, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Slideshare but it really is all about identifying the right sites for your audience and where you can best connect with them.
Write Content That People Will Reference
This relates to the search engine part at the start of this post. You want to write content that is so good that people will keep referring back to it on a regular basis, even passing it on to friends and linking to it from their own sites. We find the best way to do that is by teaching others and giving as much information away as possible. We used to live in a world where everything was secretive and businesses only shared what would make them a profit but we find that creating useful resources and good content and sharing it with the world for free really is the way forward.
Build Community
This really is the hardest challenge of the lot but once you crack this you are on the way to growing a serious blog. What do I mean by community? I mean having people coming back to your blog on a regular basis, leaving comments, engaging on Facebook, emailing you suggested blog posts, linking back to your site, tweeting your posts and generally becoming involved with your blog on a daily basis. It’s not easy and there is no written formula that will make this work but some things that do work include answering comments, listening to your readers, not just broadcasting your message but really talking to readers wherever they engage with you and also getting involved in other communities and adding valuable content to other sites.
Guest Blog Post
You can be writing the most amazing and interesting content ever but if nobody finds it you really are wasting your time. Over the last year we have written over 50 guest blog posts on a variety of blogs all over the world. There are a few benefits here…1.You put yourself in front of a ready built audience on a much bigger site who will hopefully like your style 2.You get a link back to your own site 3.You build a relationship with another blogger within your niche. It takes a lot of time and you should always write content that is as good and if not better than what you write on your own blog but if done correctly this is a massive way of growing the blog.
Use Rich Media Content
Text is great and it works for a lot of people but there are so many additional ways in which you could be growing your blog by adding rich media. We created an info graphic last week for example that was featured on over 50 blogs all over the world as well as getting shared widely through social media. We produce a weekly videos show that gets our brand out to over 500 people on various video sharing sites. We are lucky that we have those sorts of resources in house to be able to produce that sort of content but you have your imagination and a host of great tools out there to help you spread the word about your blog. Maybe photos on Flickr? Some audio through audio boo? A Youtube video diary? Some presentations through Slideshare? The possibilities are endless but there is so doubt that adding a bit of shareable rich media has exposed our blog to millions of additional people some of whom have become long term readers as a result.
Be Patient
It’s never going to happen over night. The first couple of months on this blog were slow. Very slow. Building an audience takes a lot of time and people often give up way too early. The easy option is to say forget it nobody is leaving any comments so I’ll just go for a beer and write a post tomorrow. Patience is the key and you can see form our example that although it takes time things can take off pretty quickly once you do get going.
Keep A Posting Schedule
Its really hard doing 2 posts a day for this blog but that is the schedule that myself and Lauren set ourselves last year when we decided to make this a serious pursuit and key part of our business. We never write the posts during work hours and always try and do them in the evening ready for the next day. You need to get in to a routine because once you do you’ll find it a lot easier and you’ll miss less posts and as a result keep people coming back. Our readers know to check in a couple of times a day because they’ll get the content they are looking for. I often stop reading blogs specifically because every time I go back there is no new content or the schedule is so sporadic.
Forget About Twitter
People obsess with Twitter as a traffic driving tool but here is a little secret for you that will surprise you…..It contributes 1.3% of our overall traffic. That’s tiny! We add Twitter buttons on all posts to encourage people to share the content and we tweet all posts from the Simply Zesty Twitter account and sometimes form my own but it just doesn’t do very much at all. Even when Twitter traffic does arrive unless it is a very specific type of post people are not going to hang around for long. Twitter is a tool for meeting like minded individuals and engaging with people in your niche but as I wrote here in the past Retweets will do very little for you and the best bet is to just build your community by talking to people on Twitter, throw the odd link out and they might just become readers but certainly don’t make it your main marketing stream for your blog because that just won’t work.
It’s Not Rocket Science
People think there is some sort of dark art to growing traffic or to taking your blog to the next level but the bad news is that there isn’t. The one area that 90% of blogs fall down on is that the author simply doesn’t put in enough effort. Now that is not a problem if it is a personal blog or if you want to simply keep a small blog with sporadic updates but if you want the blog to be a main focus as it is here on the site then you’ll need to put in some serious effort. We never write posts during work instead writing late in to the evening and building the community until the small hours. You might have to give up nights out in the pub or your favorite soap opera or football match because it is going to take a huge amount of effort. In terms of where the blog goes to from here it really isn’t that complicated in that we will just repeat what we have done for the last year for the next 12 months and I’d be pretty sure we should grow the blog by at least the same margin again. The really good news is that once you get over that little hump where things are quiet at the start things actually get a lot easier and the traffic starts to look after itself as the community and natural search elements take over.
www.simplyzesty.com
It’s by no means a conventional agency blog but we live in a world where businesses are changing all the time because of technology and we are not a conventional agency. I wanted to write this post as a resource to anybody trying to build a big blog from scratch (that’s a lot of people at the moment) and to hopefully save you some time. Getting traffic to your blog is by no means the be all and end all of any business and for many it won’t matter at all but our blog is really front and center and something that has actually brought in well over 80% of all our business from big brands to small local businesses so we see a return on all the hard work we put in. We don’t attend any networking events or do much marketing in any other way, for us the blog is king. Here are some of the tips I would have for you in terms of growing your blog to that next level…
Don’t Pigeon Hole Yourself Geographically
The normal thing for us to do would have been to write for the Irish market being a small agency trying to crack through in Ireland when we launched but the Irish market is tiny, there are only a certain amount of eyeballs willing to read a social media blog here so we decided as much as possible not to have an Irish specific focus. We do the odd Irish related post but mostly we try and give ourselves as big an audience as possible but as you can see from the map below very little of our overall traffic as a percentage actually comes from Ireland. This tactic has already paid dividends with us opening a UK office and means we now have a serious presence there to direct people to. Who knows where else that could help with in the future are we continue to grow
Don’t Write For Search Engines
Writing for search engines is a bad mistake. I’ve written posts here in the past that people think are aimed at getting traffic from search engines but the truth is that if you write posts like that from outside your niche actually get less traffic than normal. If I write about Tiger Woods it just doesn’t get noticed in search engines at all, how could we compete with big newspapers, corporations and blogs that have been around for years in terms of ranking for content. Instead of writing for search engines write content that people are going to find useful, come back to over and over again and stay within your niche. You’ll find if the content is good enough people will link to it from other sites and you’ll start appearing organically.
Use Social Media Channels
As a social media agency we would say this but we are all lucky that we live in an age where we can use social media to give our blogs a boost that they would never have had in the old days. Used correctly social media is like steroids to your blog and will help you create and audience with some serious community around your site. Get a Facebook page and encourage your readers to like your post because as I wrote before a whopping 18% of our traffic now comes through Facebook. That’s a fifth of our traffic or 200,000 uniques a year that we have coming from Facebook alone. It’s a case of finding the right niche sites for your blog and some of the channels that we use include Linked in, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Slideshare but it really is all about identifying the right sites for your audience and where you can best connect with them.
Write Content That People Will Reference
This relates to the search engine part at the start of this post. You want to write content that is so good that people will keep referring back to it on a regular basis, even passing it on to friends and linking to it from their own sites. We find the best way to do that is by teaching others and giving as much information away as possible. We used to live in a world where everything was secretive and businesses only shared what would make them a profit but we find that creating useful resources and good content and sharing it with the world for free really is the way forward.
Build Community
This really is the hardest challenge of the lot but once you crack this you are on the way to growing a serious blog. What do I mean by community? I mean having people coming back to your blog on a regular basis, leaving comments, engaging on Facebook, emailing you suggested blog posts, linking back to your site, tweeting your posts and generally becoming involved with your blog on a daily basis. It’s not easy and there is no written formula that will make this work but some things that do work include answering comments, listening to your readers, not just broadcasting your message but really talking to readers wherever they engage with you and also getting involved in other communities and adding valuable content to other sites.
Guest Blog Post
You can be writing the most amazing and interesting content ever but if nobody finds it you really are wasting your time. Over the last year we have written over 50 guest blog posts on a variety of blogs all over the world. There are a few benefits here…1.You put yourself in front of a ready built audience on a much bigger site who will hopefully like your style 2.You get a link back to your own site 3.You build a relationship with another blogger within your niche. It takes a lot of time and you should always write content that is as good and if not better than what you write on your own blog but if done correctly this is a massive way of growing the blog.
Use Rich Media Content
Text is great and it works for a lot of people but there are so many additional ways in which you could be growing your blog by adding rich media. We created an info graphic last week for example that was featured on over 50 blogs all over the world as well as getting shared widely through social media. We produce a weekly videos show that gets our brand out to over 500 people on various video sharing sites. We are lucky that we have those sorts of resources in house to be able to produce that sort of content but you have your imagination and a host of great tools out there to help you spread the word about your blog. Maybe photos on Flickr? Some audio through audio boo? A Youtube video diary? Some presentations through Slideshare? The possibilities are endless but there is so doubt that adding a bit of shareable rich media has exposed our blog to millions of additional people some of whom have become long term readers as a result.
Be Patient
It’s never going to happen over night. The first couple of months on this blog were slow. Very slow. Building an audience takes a lot of time and people often give up way too early. The easy option is to say forget it nobody is leaving any comments so I’ll just go for a beer and write a post tomorrow. Patience is the key and you can see form our example that although it takes time things can take off pretty quickly once you do get going.
Keep A Posting Schedule
Its really hard doing 2 posts a day for this blog but that is the schedule that myself and Lauren set ourselves last year when we decided to make this a serious pursuit and key part of our business. We never write the posts during work hours and always try and do them in the evening ready for the next day. You need to get in to a routine because once you do you’ll find it a lot easier and you’ll miss less posts and as a result keep people coming back. Our readers know to check in a couple of times a day because they’ll get the content they are looking for. I often stop reading blogs specifically because every time I go back there is no new content or the schedule is so sporadic.
Forget About Twitter
People obsess with Twitter as a traffic driving tool but here is a little secret for you that will surprise you…..It contributes 1.3% of our overall traffic. That’s tiny! We add Twitter buttons on all posts to encourage people to share the content and we tweet all posts from the Simply Zesty Twitter account and sometimes form my own but it just doesn’t do very much at all. Even when Twitter traffic does arrive unless it is a very specific type of post people are not going to hang around for long. Twitter is a tool for meeting like minded individuals and engaging with people in your niche but as I wrote here in the past Retweets will do very little for you and the best bet is to just build your community by talking to people on Twitter, throw the odd link out and they might just become readers but certainly don’t make it your main marketing stream for your blog because that just won’t work.
It’s Not Rocket Science
People think there is some sort of dark art to growing traffic or to taking your blog to the next level but the bad news is that there isn’t. The one area that 90% of blogs fall down on is that the author simply doesn’t put in enough effort. Now that is not a problem if it is a personal blog or if you want to simply keep a small blog with sporadic updates but if you want the blog to be a main focus as it is here on the site then you’ll need to put in some serious effort. We never write posts during work instead writing late in to the evening and building the community until the small hours. You might have to give up nights out in the pub or your favorite soap opera or football match because it is going to take a huge amount of effort. In terms of where the blog goes to from here it really isn’t that complicated in that we will just repeat what we have done for the last year for the next 12 months and I’d be pretty sure we should grow the blog by at least the same margin again. The really good news is that once you get over that little hump where things are quiet at the start things actually get a lot easier and the traffic starts to look after itself as the community and natural search elements take over.
www.simplyzesty.com
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