Blogs are a rage now; from celebrities to the girl next door, everyone is taking to the Blogsphere. But blogging is no child’s play and if you blindly start writing post after post, chances are you will be the only one reading them. If you are monetizing the blog, then exposure is necessary to generate funds. Here are a few tips useful for the beginner blogger to get more attention. They will help in earning your blog more exposure.
Know your niche
It is important for you to establish that your blog is meant for a certain niche, instead of floating about in general topics. This should be reflected in the writing style, the template of the blog and the topics. If you have a marketing blog, you should have a clean, minimal design, whereas if your blog is directed towards travel enthusiasts, it should be laden with photographs. Your audience has a certain expectation and to preserve their attention, you have to attend to those.
Consistency is the key
Your blog is representative of your personal online brand. Just like all popular brands, you need to be consistent with your pitch. The blog’s image and message should be cohesive. For example, if your blog is based on photography, writing a post on, say Linux tutorial, would seem very out of place. Also, you need to be consistent with the frequency of posting; posting twice every day for a few weeks and then suddenly dropping the rate to one post a week will disperse readers.
Visibility is appreciated
Let your readers know you. They want to be able to identify with you; if they know nothing about you apart from the posts you write, they feel detached. Go ahead and create a Facebook page or Twitter account. This works in two ways: one, your readers know a bit more about you and two, you can post links to your blog in the social networking sites. LinkedIn will bring you closer to like-minded bloggers and expand your niche.
Be inviting, not gimmicky
There is a fine line between attractive writing and a sales pitch; the moment you lose sight of it, you will lose readers. Ideally, readers flock blogs that have personal posts and not advertisements. If you want to link your readers to a product of your own, don’t write a post insisting them. Write in general about the product and provide the link at the end. Ask them to leave comments and feedback, encourage participation.
Be innovative
If you are a beginner, it’s most likely that you use a free blog hosting site like Blogger or WordPress. These sites frequently introduce new blogging tools. Take a look and if you think a new plug-in or theme would freshen up your blog, do use them.
Be persistent
Times might come when you will find the pageview counter stuck at a number. Don’t lose heart and give up on your blog. Keep posting, add more links and images. Set up more backlinks through social networking websites, comment on other blogs in your niche signing off with your blog’s link.
Make your blog clutter-free
If you think your readers like it when you provide them links to a hundred pages in your blog, you could not have been more mistaken. No matter which niche your blog is in, flickering cursors, crowding with links and pages and images will deter readers. Make sure everything has an order in the blog. Making a contents page is ideal.
SEO is a blogger’s best friend
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is regularly practiced by professional website creators for very good reason. No matter how many friends you poke and prod into visiting your website, your blog will never join the big league unless a search engine picks it up. SEO helps the blog get better rank in search engines. This can also be done by backlinking (posting links to your blog on different websites) and anchor tags (the text in the backlinks).
Following these tips may not be a sure fire method of getting more traffic, but they are certainly helpful in making your blog more wholesome. This attention to small details will surely result in more pageviews for you.
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