31DBBB Day 20: Develop a Plan to Boost your Blog’s Profile and Readership
This is Day 18 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project we are doing together in an attempt to improve our blogs and help each other become better bloggers. You can read more about it and still sign-up to participate here. Please subscribe to our RSS Feed to stay updated on the project.
- Day 16 (Monday): Breathe Life into an Old Post
- Day 17 (Tuesday): Call your Readers to Action
- Day 18 (Wednesday): How to use a Magazine to Improve your Blog
- Day 19 (Thursday): Ask a Question
- Day 20 (Friday): Develop a Plan to Boost your Blog’s Profile and Readership
- Day 21 (Monday): 17 Statistics to Monitor on your Blog
- Day 22 (Tuesday): Plan the next step for your blog
Many bloggers spend more time building their readership and profile on other websites than they spend creating content on their own blog. It could be related blogs, forums, social medias like Twitter and Facebook. That time and energy spent can lead to great returns in the future. Or not… As you probably know, it is extremely easy to waste time on the internet. It might just be aimlessly wandering from site to site or doing unrelated things that do not further your goals, wasting time is very easy to do.
Today, we are going to spend some time planning this vital aspect of blogging so it doesn’t end just being some random browsing that ultimately is a waste of time.
Assignment
- Determine how much time you have to dedicate to building your profile on other websites
- Who is your targeted reader?
- Where do they spend time gathering online? (Correct answer is on Anomalous Material
) - What are potential opportunities to build your presence? Guest posts? Comments? Forum profile and signature?
- Plan a strategy: Once you know who your target readers are and where they gather, you need to plan how you are going to build/maintain your profile.
- Analyze your current plan: Where do you currently spend your time? Is it effective?
My Current Plan
I think this is a fairly efficient and effective plan which I have used with decent results so far. I do need to be more pro-active in reaching even more new readers as I haven’t worked as hard on the pipeline of new Lambs as of late.
- Methodically visit everyone on my blogroll at least once a day
- I usually start from the top and open 3 or 4 pages at the same time
- I check for new content, if there is none, it usually ends there unless I left comments recently that might have led to further conversation
- If there is new content, I quickly scan it to see if I’m interested in reading it. If I am, I read it and attempt to leave a comment or engage others in a conversation
- Rinse and repeat until I finished visiting everyone on the blogroll. This process usually takes no more than 15 minutes
- Next (when I have time), I usually check some blogs in my “bookmarks”. If you are familiar with my method then you know what my bookmarks are for: Potential new participants for AM. I visit them, leave a few comments and see if there is any sign of life. Bloggers that do not answer their comments are immediately discarded from my bookmarks. Those who do but don’t return visits and comments on AM after a couple weeks are also eventually discarded (if I stopped commenting on your blog, that’s probably why
). From time to time, I will add new blood to sift through by working the new LAMBs - If I have more time (I usually don’t so that’s a once a week occurence), I visit the IMDb forum
- Throughout the day, give extra visits to my most faithful readers and participate as much I can
- Rinse and repeat every day
Discussion
- How do you actively build your blog’s profile and readership online?
- What new ways do you want to incorporate from Darren’s suggestions?
- Where do you find the majority of your desired readers?
8 Comments
I do a couple of guest posts on Spanish-based film sites, but I rarely get hits from them xD I spend a lot of time reading other websites, and sometimes I end up realizing that I hadn’t written my daily post, so I stay overnight. LOL
I think commenting is really important, and commenting back is as well. The biggest concern is to create readership and a sense of community, and with that create a sensible business plan that could actually get some distributors to contact you about screenings or material for reviews.
Which one is more important, though? The amount of hits you get on the site, or the amount of active users? Which one is better? 10k hits on a daily basis, or 100 comments on a post? How would you get your audience to dust off their keyboards and even actually leave a response like “thanks for the info”.
Statistically, only about 1% of your visitors are going to leave a comment. Obviously, some are going to more or less successful depending on how much work they put into it. Personally, I will take the comments any day!
yeh! Go comments!! xD
I find this to be one of the hardest things to do consistently. If I get busy, I forget to look at too many other blogs. It boggles my mind at how active some people are around the different blogs. I barely have enough free time to get my own stuff up and look at a couple… I’m workin’ on it though and it does seem to help with readership sometimes. Responding to comments is definitely a key point to connecting with people. Sometimes though, I don’t know what to say, so I don’t comment instead of saying something that doesn’t add anything.
Your plan seems well thought out, I’ll try it out for a little while and see how it goes.
Good one, Castor, but my biggest ‘enemy’ for me is time. It’s been a crazy busy week so far so I’m slacking off on visiting my fellow bloggers, but I do make it a point to visit those on my blogroll periodically if not daily. Amy makes a good point about hits vs. comments. Sometimes I get a bunch of hits but no comments and to me, hits are great but comments are AWESOME!
I really enjoy engaging with my reader and get a discussion going, whether we agree or something or not.
“Bloggers that do not answer their comments are immediately discarded from my bookmarks.” That’s why I do my best to answer every comment (I’ve made mistakes of not doing this in the past), and I expect the same from others.
Responding to comments should be a priority especially when you don’t get all that many to begin with. I think when you 5 comments a day, it doesn’t take much effort to respond to these and it is simple courtesy. Not every comments needs an answer but the blog owner needs to show he cares that you spent 5 minutes typing a comment.
Duly noted, Sir.
At the heart of my strategy at the moment is persistence and consistency. Just being around for two years has allowed us to build a reputation, and if people know what to expect from us and when we can have build a steady following. Our podcast has been our secret weapon, and to build out from that we want to have special guests more often, and to also try to be a special guest on other people’s shows.
The wild card in the plan is hounding my co-host to keep posting and responding to comments. I’m breaking out my new whip, the omni-lash to help with that.
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