blog traffic

8 Top Tactics To Get A Ton Of Blog Traffic

July 31, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

More Blog Traffic Picture — Who doesn’t want more traffic?

One thing every blogger wants is more traffic. The desire of bloggers to get more blog traffic is stronger than the Cookie Monster’s desire to eat through an entire box of cookies. A strong desire to get more blog traffic comes along with a strong desire to know how to get more blog traffic and how to sustain the traffic once you get it.

Knowing how to get traffic is the first step towards getting more blog traffic and eventually making that traffic sustainable. In this blog post, I will reveal 8 top tactics you can use to get a ton of blog traffic.

#1: Write More Guest Posts On Different Blogs

Writing guest posts on numerous blogs in your niche expands your reach which allows more people to hear your message. I have written several guest posts on blogs like Business2Community, and guest posts that I wrote years ago still lead to more blog traffic for this blog. These guest posts also resulted in backlinks that help out with my blog’s SEO.

Writing more guest posts does allow you to get more blog traffic, but there is a secret advantage to guest blogging that not as many people are initially aware of. Guest blogging allows you to connect with other bloggers in your niche, and a connection can lead into a strong relationship. Having strong relationships with other bloggers may lead to more exposure for your content and products depending on how well you develop those relationships.

#2: Get On More Podcasts

Getting on podcasts serves the same function as writing a guest post, but there are some difference. The main difference is that people get to listen to you talk about your expertise, so they’ll get more out of the podcast. Writing guest posts and blog posts also allows your audience to get value from your expertise, but while many people skim through blog posts, they won’t skim through a podcast as much.

Podcasts also result in more promotion for you because when you get on a podcast, the host will introduce you by stating some of your credentials. Then, at the end of many podcasts, the host will give you the opportunity to tell the listeners where they can find you on the web and what your latest product is.

Last year, I was on dozens of podcasts, and on those podcasts, I discussed social media, blogging, and other digital marketing related topics. Getting these podcast opportunities is a combination of luck (don’t rely on it) and contacting people who have their own podcasts. Some people found me on Twitter and invited me for an interview. However, I directly contacted many of the people who had me on their podcasts prior to getting the spot. I made my quick pitch and then they contacted me saying that they wanted me as a guest.

#3: Share Your Blog Posts With Your Social Media Audience

The easiest way to get more blog traffic is to share your blog posts with the audience you have already built. Not only can your audience lead to more blog traffic, but the more often you share your blog posts on social media, the more traffic you will get.

When I was starting to get the hang of Twitter, I tweeted once every hour. As I got better and experimented, I decided to tweet once every 30 minutes (and 90% of these tweets promoted my blog). My blog traffic from Twitter doubled. Feeling confident about the results, I decided to send one tweet every 15 minutes, and my blog traffic from Twitter doubled again. As you continue sharing your blog posts with your social media audience, experiment to see what elements and posting frequency allow you to get the optimal blog traffic and social media growth. Here are some elements you can experiment with:

The picture you use for your blog post. Pictures are very important for social media engagement. Posts with pictures receive more than twice the amount of engagement compared to posts without engagement. My most retweeted tweets (the ones with hundreds of retweets and favorites) all include a picture. The color of your picture, the background, and what your picture looks like are three factors that determine how well your picture does on social media.
Word choice. Some words attract our attention more than others. Do you want a good guidebook to getting more Twitter followers or a secret guidebook to getting more Twitter followers? One word can make all of the difference, but when you use different words, make sure you use 6th grade level words. You don’t want to confuse anyone with an SAT word (i.e. propensity which means a bias or tendency).
Hashtags. The ideal number of hashtags to use in a tweet is 1-2. The total number varies for each social network, but if you use too many hashtags, it will become difficult for your audience to read your social media posts.

#4: Optimize Your Blog For Social Sharing

When you get traffic, you must be prepared to expand upon that traffic. Getting enough traffic can create a momentum that leads to sustainable traffic. The preparation for long-term traffic is to optimize your blog for social sharing. You must make it easy for visitors to share your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and the other social networks. That way, when these people share your content, your reach expands, and you get to reach new visitors. Here are some ways that you can optimize your blog:

Include social sharing buttons at the bottom of every blog post. If people enjoyed your blog post and read it from top to bottom, they will see your social share buttons which will entice they to share the blog post.
Use Click To Tweet. Click To Tweet is a tool that allows you to create a link that, when clicked on, will take your visitors to a prewritten tweet that you want them to send out. It is easy to create a tweet with Click To Tweet and also easy to get the link. See Click To Tweet in action!
Make sure people can pin your images just by clicking on them. Some blogs automatically set this up for you while a WordPress plugin will do the trick for other blogs. If people can pin your images just by clicking on them, sharing your content on Pinterest will be easy for your visitors to do, and all of those extra pins will lead to more blog traffic.

#5: Promote Your Blog Posts Within Your Other Blog Posts

When most people think of traffic, they think of getting a visitor to come from an outside referrer. Whether that outside referrer is Google, social media, or any other place on the web, that’s where most people think the traffic will come from. When you get traffic, you want people to stick around for as long as possible. The visitors who spend the most time on your blog are more likely than any of your other visitors to buy your products.

One method to get people to stick around for a longer period of time is to promote your blog posts within your other blog posts. For example, take a look at my blog post 70 Amazing Twitter Tips. That blog post includes several links to my other Twitter related blog posts, and this strategy increases the amount of time people spend on my blog. Visitors who spend a lot of time on your blog are more likely to become returning visitors.

#6: Write Better Headlines

When people share your blog posts, they often write the headline, include a link, and then post your blog post on one of their social networks. When most people share this blog post on their social networks, the social media post will look like this:

“8 Top Tactics To Get A Ton Of Blog Traffic. [LINK]”

The more enticing your headline is, the more people will click on the link to read your content. The enticing headline will also encourage your visitors to read your entire blog post and leave a comment. Here are some methods to write better headlines.

#7: Blog Consistently

One of the most important blogging tips for success is to blog consistently. Writing several blog posts every week allows you to improve your writing and rank higher on the search engines. In addition to better writing and more traffic, your loyal visitors will know when to go on your blog to read new content. If you consistently publish your blog posts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 9 am eastern, then your loyal visitors will know when to visit your blog for the update.

#8: Analyze What Works

One of the universal truths about every blog on the web is that some blog posts do better than others. Some blog posts don’t get much traffic while other blog posts on the same blog may go viral. Every week, I take a look at my most popular blog posts to see what type of content my visitors like the most.

This analysis allows me to see patterns that let me know what my audience likes. I noticed that my blog posts about Twitter and blogging are the most successful which is why most of my blog posts are either about Twitter or blogging. I will occasionally experiment and write about other social networks and topics related to digital marketing, but I usually write content based on what I want to write about combined with my audience’s interests.

In Conclusion

We all want more blog traffic. The blog traffic allows our reach to expand, and as we get more blog traffic, the dream of making a full-time income will get closer towards realization. Getting more traffic, and eventually getting consistent traffic, requires preparation. You must optimize your blog to effectively generate more social shares and keep your visitors’ attention.

Which tactic of generating more blog traffic was your favorite? Do you have any additional tips for getting more blog traffic? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Build A Successful Blogging Empire From Scratch

July 27, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Get More Blog Traffic

Remember what it felt like to start your blog from scratch? Choosing the URL (if you haven’t done that yet, this post will help), what we would write about, and the themes we would choose for our blogs were three of the many questions we asked ourselves as we created our blogs. Once a blog is created, it can be taken in many directions. After struggling in the beginning and learning as I continued in my journey, my blog has now become a successful blog that routinely gets tens of thousands of visitors every month.

Making your blog become successful at a quick rate requires you to have direction early in the process. It took me a long time to acquire the knowledge that I know now, so I wanted to share with you how you can build a successful blog regardless of whether you have been writing blog posts for years or if you just created your blog a few days ago.

Getting Everything Set Up

Preparing yourself for success is just as important as putting in the work that will allow you to become successful. Right when you set up your blog, you must write a compelling About Me Page that tells your story, where you came from, where you are now, and your expertise.

After you write an About Me Page, you must develop a structure for your blog posts. What will they be about? How will you start them off? What will the body of your typical blog post look like? How will you conclude your blog posts? How will you get pictures on your blog (I use Canva)? How long will your blog posts be? These are some of the questions that you must ask yourself as you set up the structure of your blog posts. If you do not know how to set up your blog posts, then look at other bloggers for inspiration. I read hundreds of blog posts written by different bloggers, and after reading those blog posts, I got exposed to many different blog post structures and styles of writing, that when combined with my unique style, I came up with my own blog post structure that I go by for every blog post I write. Establishing your structure in the beginning will make it easier for you to write high value content.

Getting Traffic

Your best bet to getting traffic in the beginning is to use social media. Twitter alone led to the transformation of this blog. In 2013, this blog almost got 15,000 visitors for the year. In 2014, this same blog almost got 250,000 visitors for the year, and Twitter led the massive transformation. SEO traffic also dramatically increased, but the main reason my SEO traffic increased was because my Twitter traffic dramatically increased. The best and easiest way to increase your SEO traffic is to get more social media traffic because social media plays a big role in how much traffic you get from the search engines. The more active you are on the social networks, and the more time your content gets shared on various social networks, the more search engine traffic your blog will get.

Based on my experience of accumulating hundreds of thousands of social media followers, the best thing you can do for your social media strategy is to focus all of your time on social media towards growing one of your social media accounts.

Optimizing Your Blog For Subscribers

One of the things you should focus on right from the start is growing your email list. This is the one factor I missed for a long time, and it cost me thousands of subscribers. Because my blog was not optimized for getting subscribers, my first 150,000 visitors only resulted in 300 subscribers. I knew that I could do better than that, and I was reading more and more blog posts that included the famous phrase, “The money is in the list.”

After reading enough of those blog posts, I decided to create an account on iContact, create an emailing list, and then optimize my blog for getting more subscribers. The advantage of using a service like iContact or Aweber is that you have more control over what emails get sent to your subscribers, you can use tools with these services that you can’t use with a free service, and you get access to powerful email marketing features such as autoresponders and segments.

A few days after I joined iContact, I had my own landing page. I used Optimize Press to create my first landing page and the other landing pages on my blog. Optimize Press makes landing page creation simple, and right when I had my landing page, I promoted it on social media. In a few weeks, I found myself going from gaining no subscribers every day to gaining 10 subscribers every day. The quick transformation occurred in part because I already had over 100,000 Twitter followers at that point, and I gained a steady 200-500 new followers every day.

Getting Sales

The first way most bloggers promote their products is by displaying those products on the sidebar. Although product placement on a blog’s sidebar does lead to some sales, most of the top bloggers rely on email marketing and state that email marketing is more successful at getting sales than a blog’s sidebar by a long shot. This is why growing your email list is so important.

As you grow your email list, you must communicate with the people on your email list. Set up a week long autoresponder that automatically sends a series of emails to anyone who joins your email list. In this autoresponder, you should let people know about your story, provide advice, and then do a product pitch at the very end of the email.

Not only can you get more sales with an autoresponder, but you can also send an email blast to your list in which you do a product promotion. You should be routinely communicating with your email list once per week and providing them with value, but every 6-12 weeks, don’t feel shy to promote one of your products. Part of the reason you build your email list is to accumulate more revenue so your message can survive and spread. You get that revenue by promoting your products and getting sales. Whether you choose to rely on affiliate marketing, your own products, or both of them is your call, but I recommend creating at least one product so you have more control over how much revenue that product generates.

In Conclusion

Building a blogging empire from scratch requires you to know just enough about building a blogging empire from scratch. The other requirement is that you implement the knowledge and learn along the way. You just need to start out with enough knowledge in the beginning because you will acquire enough knowledge later in your journey that will allow you to turn your blog into a massive success.

Did you just start your blog? Do you remember the first blog post you published and how you felt? How is your blogging empire going? What tips do you have for us so we can grow our blogging empires? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Go From Zero Blog Traffic To A Global Audience

April 8, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

How To Get More Blog Traffic

Every blogger started with no traffic. Some bloggers are at that point right now and are looking for ways to get more traffic. This is the learning process, and it is a necessary process to go through if you want to have a successful blog. Some of these bloggers now generate full-time incomes from their blogs, and some of these people get hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors. Those are the crazy numbers that everyone aspires to achieve for themselves.

So the question people ask when they are not getting many visitors is, “How do I go from zero blog traffic to a global audience?” Having a global audience requires the combination of multiple factors working together.

The first thing you must do is grow your social media audience. Having a large social media audience serves the following benefits:

Social proof. People will take you more seriously if they see you have a large social media audience. If one person with 10,000 Facebook fans came out with a book containing Facebook tips and another person with 1 million Facebook fans came out with a book containing Facebook tips, and both books were sold at the same price and had the same number of pages, which book would you buy? Many people would go with the book written by the person with 1 million Facebook fans.
Better SEO. Search engines take social media very seriously in their ranking algorithms. By growing your social media audience and getting more traffic from your social networks, you will also get more search engine traffic. For this blog, increases in my social media traffic almost always result in more SEO traffic. Having a big audience on social media means more social shares which is an area of social media that search engines take into strong consideration when ranking blogs for certain keywords.
Visibility. Social media is the most valuable free platform on the web. Many people on social media have gone from no audiences to audiences of thousands for the affordable price of $0. Social media makes it easy for you to interact with your audience. Interacting with the people in your audience will allow you to strengthen the relationships between you and various people following you on your social networks. Some of these people may become your future customers.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1zS7uU5″]Having a large #SocialMedia audience boosts your social proof, #SEO, and visibility.[/tweetthis]

You have the ability to use social media to promote your blog to an ever-growing audience. Twitter is where most of my social media audience is, and I typically send 100 tweets of various blog posts on my blog every day. I get over 100,000 blog visitors from Twitter alone every year, and that number continues to grow. I also get thousands of blog visitors from Pinterest every month, and that also improves my blog’s SEO.

If you want to reach a global audience faster, then you need to implement multiple things at the same time. While you grow your social media audience, build your email list. I wrote a free eBook about getting more subscribers which you can download here. You must use an emailing service such as iContact or Aweber to grow your email list. These two services and others make it easy to do the following:

Communicate with your audience through email about your latest blog posts, products, etc.
Create custom list and autoresponders for each of your free prize giveaways
Fix problems. iContact has superior customer service, and from what I have heard, Weber’s customer service is top-notch as well.

The money is in the list. Don’t make the mistake of waiting until your blog starts to get hundreds of daily visitors before using an emailing service. My blog got over 150,000 visitors before I started taking my email list seriously. It was a mistake that cost me thousands of blog subscribers. Don’t make the same mistake.

Finally, there’s SEO which at times can be a mystery. However, SEO works. Not only does it work, but it can be very effective. Neil Patel, who regularly gets hundreds of thousands of monthly blog visitors, reported that 40.51% of his blog’s traffic came from Google. His email list and social media were also big contributors to his blog traffic.

SEO works if you know how to use it. I created an entire infographic that goes into detail about how you can improve your blog’s SEO. The Yoast SEO plugin is the best WordPress plugin to have for boosting SEO. Blog speed and backlinks are two other SEO-boosting factors, and both get discussed in detail in the infographic. One method discussed in the infographic is using your new content to link back to your old content, but you can also use your old content to link back to your new content.

In Conclusion

Social media success, a big email list, and SEO success are the three critical components that you must achieve in order to go from zero blog traffic to a global audience. Going from no audience to a global audience does take time, even if you have the necessary knowledge to get there. You must take social media, an email list, and SEO seriously for more than one day. If you want a global audience, you must take those three things seriously for months and years to come.

Even the most successful bloggers are trying to reach more people. They are looking towards social media, their email lists, and SEO among other things. A blog’s success is not just about the blog. It is about the rallying forces that support one another. Those rallying forces acting together are what result in successful blogs.

What were your thoughts on the methods discussed in this article? Do you have any other tips to grow an audience? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

11 Ways To Promote And Market Your Blog Posts

March 20, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Blog Post Marketing

Do you want more traffic for your blog? So many people look for the answer to this question. They focus on bringing traffic to the blog in general. However, it is not the actual blog people are interested in. It is the blog’s content, the blog posts, that people are interested in. Yes, it is important to focus on getting traffic on our blogs, but our attention also needs to shift to getting more traffic for individual blog posts. If you get more traffic for individual blog posts, then you are also getting more blog traffic. It is simply a better way to strive for blog traffic. If you want to get more traffic for your blog posts, and therefore more traffic for your blog, here are 11 ways to promote and market your blog posts so they get more traffic.

#1: StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit

StumbleUpon, Digg, and Reddit are the three most underrated ways of getting more blog traffic, but at the same time, these three methods of getting more blog traffic are like hit-or-miss opportunities. Some of my StumbleUpon posts got me a grand total of five blog visitors. Others Stumble Upon posts got me thousands of extra visitors to my blog in a few hours. I occasionally use Reddit to promote my blog posts and products. Most of them are swings and misses. However, when I used Reddit to promote a big discount for my Twitter Domination training course on Black Friday (and Reddit was basically the only way I promoted the course at the time), I got over 100 on that day. I have not used Digg yet, but many experts say that Digg is another great place for blog traffic. This blog post explains it really well.

#2: Tweet, Pin, Post

You can use your social networks to promote your blog. One of the biggest mistakes blogger make is abiding to the 80/20 rule where they only promote their blog posts 20% of the time. I practically promote my blog posts all of the time on my social networks. Not only does it result in more traffic, but people appreciate the value (I can tell based on the interactions I get), and many of my followers promote my content. You should make it a point to grow your audience on one social network and post consistently on that social network. I focus most of my time on Twitter which is why my Twitter account is the most successful social media account that I have.

#3: YouTube

Even though YouTube is the third most popular website on the entire web, and over 1 billion people go on it every month, I still believe it is an underrated social network. I feel as if most of the people who go on YouTube either go on it to watch other people’s videos or barely put in any effort to create and promote their videos. In some of your YouTube videos, you can talk about individual blog posts and then promote them at the end of your YouTube video. At the end of your YouTube video’s description, you can add related videos and articles, and all of those videos and articles can either point back to your YouTube channel or your blog.

#4: Guest Blogging

When you write a guest post, be sure to include a link to one of your blog posts in the guest post (you need to check if that’s okay with the person you write guest posts for). Including a link to one of your blog posts will boost your blog’s SEO and also give that blog post more exposure. When you promote your blog post in a guest post, you must make sure that blog post is related to the guest post. Don’t just add a link to one of your blog posts for the sake of adding a link to one of your blog posts.

#5: Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are mutual relationships between you and another blogger in which you promote each other’s content. You can use joint ventures to get more visibility for your products and individual blog posts. If you believe one of your blog posts is related to your partner’s niche, ask that partner to promote your blog post. You don’t want to turn this into a daily habit because your partner may get annoyed, and your partner will definitely want you to promote something for them in return. Regardless of how you use your joint ventures, they are great to have.

#6: Hubs

Hubs are great places to write niche-related content and promote your blog posts at the same time. Normally, I would recommend Squidoo, but since they merged with HubPages, HubPages is now the best place to publish hubs on the web. I occasionally publish hubs related to digital marketing that then point back to some of the blog posts on this blog. You can see some of these hubs in action here and here.

#7: Forums

Forums are one of the most underrated ways to get more blog traffic. If you join a forum with like-minded people, you can promote one of your blog posts and then get more traffic that way. Before you jump in and promote one of your blog posts, take some time to see how the people in the forum communicate with one another. See how the community accepts promoted blog posts and what they like to talk about before you jump in. You don’t want to look like the outsider of a forum filled with like-minded people.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1DrfL7e”]Forums are the most underrated ways to get more #blog traffic.[/tweetthis]

#8: Related Articles Section

At the bottom of your blog posts should be a related articles section. In this section, you should display 3-5 articles related to the article your visitor just finished reading. This serves two major benefits:

Your individual blog posts get more traffic
Your bounce rate decreases which is helpful for SEO

If you get people to stay on your blog for a long period of time, chances are those readers will come back to read your new content. This is the most effective way to get more traffic: keep readers on your blog for a long period of time so they frequently return to your blog, and as a result, increase the traffic for individual blog posts.

#9: Popular Articles Section

On your blog’s sidebar should be a popular articles section that allows your visitors to see which of your articles are getting the most traffic. Most visitors associate the most popular content with the most valuable content. That means when people see your most popular articles section, they will visit those blog posts expecting to get wowed by valuable content. This is yet another reason to make sure all of your blog posts have the valuable content that could wow your audience.

#10: Promote Blog Posts Within Blog Posts

Some of your older blog posts can add value to the newer blog posts that you wrote. Not only can this strategy add value to your content, but your individual blog posts get more traffic, and this strategy will decrease your blog’s bounce rate. Similar to promote your blog posts within guest posts, you want to make sure the blog posts you add relate to the newly written article. If I wrote an article about increasing SEO, I would add a link to an article that explains bounce rate, but I would not add a link to an article about entrepreneurship. Only include links to the older blog posts that provide value to your new content.

#11: Fix Big Media Outlets’ 404 Error Pages

Believe it or not, the big media outlets have 404 error pages. While some 404 error pages such as the 4-0-Forbes error page are creative, other simple display 404 error messages. Regardless of what happens when someone encounters a 404 error page, it can be frustrating, and most visitors won’t know what to do from there. Some visitors may simply leave the site.

If you find a 404 error page on a big media outlet’s website (or anywhere for that matter) that relates to your niche, you can offer the solution. You can tell these big media outlets that they have a 404 error page and you know of a blog post that could be used instead (a.k.a. one of your blog posts).

The time it takes to find a 404 error page and make your blog post the solution has very rewarding results. The first benefit is that you can say your content was featured on a big media outlet which adds to your social proof. The second benefit is that blog post will get more traffic when people click on the link, and when these people decide to share it on their social networks. The third benefit is that your blog gets a very valuable backlink which increases the blog’s SEO rank as a whole. This is an underrated way to get more blog traffic, and if you find a 404 error page on a big media outlet that was supposed to lead people to an article about promoting and marketing blog posts, I hope you’ll suggest this one 🙂

In Conclusion

Many people focus so much on the big picture that they forget to focus on the smaller parts of the picture. Many people strive to get more blog traffic, but it is a series of blog posts that generate traffic that results in a popular blog. If you can increase the traffic to your blog posts and get your visitors to read multiple blog posts on your blog, then more of those visitors will become returning visitors.

Which method of promoting and marketing blog posts was your favorite? Do you have any additional thoughts or advice on promoting and marketing blog posts? I want to hear from you.

7 Ways To Get Your Blog Visitors To Engage With You

January 19, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Blog Visitors Engaging

Are you writing valuable blog posts, but you wish more people would leave comments? Do you wish some of your visitors would share your blog posts more often?

The most successful blogs are the ones that get readers to engage with the content. The more readers engage with the content by reading and sharing it, the more likely those readers are to come back, view more of your content, and eventually buy your products. However, the majority of blogs on the web are not getting the amount of engagement they deserve.

Some bloggers are writing valuable content, but that valuable content does not have any comments or social shares to show for it. Even though some of these blog posts may be getting traffic, conversations are not developing, and visitors are not sharing them enough. In order to boost engagement in your blog posts so more people comment and share them, follow these seven methods.

#1: Have A Good Headline

Many people read a blog post’s headline to determine whether that blog post is good to read or not. Visitors who get confused by the headline don’t bother reading the rest of the content. It is the catchy, informative, hilarious, stunning, and headlines with numbers/statistics/case studies that bring forth attention. You can either focus on one of those elements or combine multiple elements together. It is possible to write an informative blog post headline with some numbers included. It is also possible to write a blog post headline that indicates a hilarious case study.

One of the easier ways to write better headlines is by looking at how the top people in your niche write their headlines. What are the common patterns that the top people in your niche use? Once you identify top patterns, see how you can replicate these top patterns while putting in your own personal touch.

#2: Ask Questions In Your Blog Post

Did you know that asking questions is a great way to perk up a reader’s interest in your content? Asking questions throughout your blog posts, especially at the beginning, adds the conversation component to your blog posts.

Many bloggers write their blog posts like one-sided conversations that basically say, “Do this. Do these other things. Here’s a nice summary of what I said. You’ll do fine.” Some blog posts forget the 4th part because the typical blogger is so focused on providing value. The 4th part is having a conversation with your reader.

Asking questions allows the sense of having a conversation to return to our writing. When you have a conversation with a reader through your writing, that reader will be more likely to continue the conversation by leaving a comment. Maybe the reader enjoyed the conversation so much that the reader will share your blog post on one of her social networks.

#3: Encourage Comments In The Final Paragraph

Ask, and you will receive more times than not. Why not give it a try? That’s what I thought when I added a final paragraph that encouraged comments, and I have been pleased with the results. In this final paragraph, you can simply summarize the blog post, ask a few questions, and then ask your readers for their opinion about your article or if they would like to contribute (does the reader have another tip that she would like to share?).

#4: Respond To Comments

Asking questions in your blog posts brings back that sense of having a conversation. Commenting allows your readers to continue that conversation. However, many bloggers make the mistake of turning the comments section into a one-sided conversation. These bloggers simply approve each comment they get without responding.

Some of your readers want to have conversations on the web, and if you have a big audience and great credentials, people will enjoy having a conversation with you. There are a group of people with incredible credentials that we would all want to have a conversation with. The people in this group differ for every individual, but we have that group of people who we would like to talk with. Some of your most devoted readers will regard you with such high esteem that, for the reader, you may fall into that special category. When you respond to all of the comments you get, there is a chance that you respond to a reader who greatly appreciates what you do.

You may notice that I make it a point to respond to every comment I get. Responding to comments allows me to build stronger connections with my readers, know who visits often, and even have long conversations with one person about one blog post. Having a conversation with your reader is like giving them the free prize they didn’t expect. Many of them will come back, read your blog often, and comment on other blog posts that you write (and therefore have more conversations with you).

Some readers may feel encouraged to comment because they know I will respond to them. Responding to comments also doubles the total number of comments my blog posts have. If 10 different people comment on one of my blog posts, the blog post actually shows up with 20 comments because I respond to all of the comments.

The higher number builds social proof (a blog post with 20 comments must be getting more attention than a blog post with 10 comments) that leads to more people reading that particular blog post and then leaving their own comments as well.

#5: Post Valuable Content

No matter how many questions you ask in your blog post, readers are only going to read a blog post from start to finish if that blog post provides value. The value is ultimately what makes readers read entire blog posts and want to comment at the end. You have no control over whether the reader comments on your blog post or not. The only way your reader is going to comment is if that reader wants to leave a comment.

Valuable content will encourage the reader to leave a comment, often out of gratitude. Then, follow through by responding to the comment, and you may end up having a long conversation with one of your readers. These long conversations are good because some readers who have long conversations with you may feel inclined to buy your products.

#6: Make Your Visitors Stay On Your Blog For A Longer Period Of Time

Some of the visitors who stumble across your blog may decide that the first blog post they read is not the right one for them. If a reader interested in Twitter advice first stumbles across about Instagram advice, then the Instagram blog post is not the right one for that particular reader. Many readers who feel as if the content is not the right content for them will look for something else to read (either another article on your blog or someone else’s blog).

It is at this point when many readers click on the back button. On blogs that are optimized to solve this issue, readers who initially did not find what they were looking for don’t click the back button. Instead, they find a desirable article on your blog before clicking the back button. These optimized blogs make it easy for visitors to view categories, popular articles, and the archives. The more organized your blog is, the longer people will stick around.

Another factor that will make people stick around for a longer period of time is the length of your blog posts. Longer blog posts get people to stick around for a longer period of time. In less than one month after writing longer blog posts, I was able to get my visitors to stay on my blog from an average of one minute and 20 seconds to an average of two minutes and 10 seconds. That is a dramatic increase in the blogging industry. Readers who read your content for a longer period of time will be more likely to comment on your articles.

#7: Make Visitors Appreciate You

I believe this method is one of the most forgotten methods to get more comments on blog posts. There are some readers who comment on certain blogs because they like the blogger. This is one of the best ways to get more comments on your blog because it establishes a powerful connection between you and the reader. These are the types of connections that lead to returning visitors, subscribers, customers, and opportunities.

In Conclusion

Getting more people to comment on your blog posts no longer has to be impossible. Although implementing these tactics may not bring forth overnight results, these methods will help your blog posts get more engagement over the long-term. This engagement is crucial towards strengthening the relationship between you and your readers. You can tell who your most devoted readers are based on the number of comments they have left in the past.

How did you like this blog post? Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any additional tips for us to boost the engagement we get from our blog posts? Please share below.

How To Make Your Blog Hit A Tipping Point

January 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Blog Tipping Point

The tipping point is one of the most desired points to hit for any blogger. The tipping point represents a giant surge of traffic that increases beyond expectations. It is the type of traffic that takes a blog from a few hundred visitors every month to thousands of daily visitors in a relatively short period of time.

When my blog hit its tipping point, it originally got 500 views every month. Then, month by month, my viewership doubled until this blog got to 25,000 monthly views. It only took a few months to make that big transition. While this transition was taking place, I was utilizing many tools and resources to grow my presence, but I did not know everything that I know now. In order to make your blog hit a tipping point, these are the six things you need to focus on:

#1: Provide Valuable Content

Promoting your content only goes so far. One thing that determines your success as a blogger is how many people promote your content. Few people are capable of making content go viral on their own. Only the Oprah types can accomplish such a feat. 99% of the time, content goes viral when the people in your audience share that content with their friends, and those friends share the content with their friends. Repeat the process a dozen times with each friend, and then you have viral content.

However, people are not going to talk about your content just because it is there. People primarily talk about extremely poor or valuable content. The poor content gets bashed while the valuable content gets praised. Valuable content is the content that wins on the web and gets shared the most. Valuable content results in more returning visitors and stronger relationships between you and your readers. Don’t be afraid to provide free value on your blog. In many cases, it is the free value that encourages the sale. So you’ll make more money anyway.

#2: Grow Your Email List

You have to listen to me on this one. I started focusing on my email list a few years after creating this blog. That was by far, undoubtably, without question the biggest mistake I made with this blog (I’m emphasizing this for a reason). Out of the first 100,000 visitors who visited this blog, I didn’t even get 300 subscribers because my blog was poorly optimized to get more subscribers. Your email list is so important because it gives you an easy way to communicate with your subscribers, and the click through rates are incredible. Even if you only get a 5% click through for your emails, that is a much higher statistic than the percentage of click throughs you would get on social media (almost always under 1%).

Some marketers go as far to say that the size of your email list indicates your income. Most of the successful bloggers who make six figure incomes have over 10,000 subscribers (although having 10,000 subscribers does not guarantee a six figure income, having that many subscribers is very helpful). These blogs get a surge in traffic when an email blast gets sent to subscribers promoting the latest article. Imagine having a list of 10,000 email addresses, and 7% of those people clicked on the link. That’s an extra 700 visitors just from that one email. Some of those visitors may decide to share the blog post on social media (very helpful for SEO) or write a blog post about your blog post. Most of the blog posts that I promote on this blog (that aren’t mine) are blog posts written by Seth Godin. I’ve been reading his emails every day for over two years. That’s not a coincidence. I typically share links to blog posts that I read in my inbox first.

Don’t make the same mistake I made. Build your email list now. It is your number one priority for turning blogging into a full-time income.

#3: Grow Your Social Media Audience

Once you write valuable content and have landing pages set up to collect email addresses, those pages need visibility. The web is a noisy place with millions of blogs. Someone finding your blog (or anyone’s blog for that matter) is like finding the needle in the haystack. Some needles in the haystack get found more often than others. In order for your needle (blog) to be found in the haystack (the web) more often, you need to promote your content on social media.

Not only is building your social media audience a great way to promote your content, but it is essential towards establishing your authority on the web. Having a large social media audience gives you better social proof. Think about it this way. Would you rather buy the Twitter guide from the person with 100 followers or the person with 100,000 followers? Would you rather take the Facebook course from the trainer with 1,000 Facebook likes or the trainer with 1 million Facebook likes. When you grow your social media audience, you can use the social proof to boost your credibility.

No matter what you do, never resort to buying fake followers. Not only does it hurt your credibility, but the fake followers will never engage with you. They will also make your real followers feel uncomfortable. Here is an interesting case study from Social Media Today about someone who bought 50,000 Twitter followers (and was disgusted by the results).

#4: Boost Your Blog’s SEO

To many bloggers, SEO is still confusing. The main reason SEO seems confusing is because there are so many factors that go into a search engine’s ranking system. Some search engine tactics such as adding alt tags do not necessarily improve the value of your blog posts. Those types of search engine improvements are the ones that get done behind the scenes so search engines can understand what your blog is about.

My recommendation is to only learn a few SEO methods at a time and implement them one by one. Focus on improving your blog’s bounce rate, linking to your other blog posts, including alt tags in your pictures, growing your social media audience (that helps with SEO) and writing longer blog posts (while keeping the value). My recommendation is to master one of these tips at a time and then move on to a new set of tips. You can start with any five tips you desire. I wrote a blog post that contains a few more tips about boosting your blog’s SEO.

#5: Put In More Work Than You Already Are

If you want to make it to the next level in anything, then you have to put in the next level of work. The more time you commit to blogging, the farther you will go. If you spend twice as much time researching different tactics you can use to boost SEO, get more subscribers, and grow your social media audience, then you will have twice as much knowledge in those areas. If you spend twice as much time writing content, then that content will probably be longer and more valuable.

It is possible to reach a tipping point for your blog, but reaching that tipping point (or anything important and worth the time) is not an easy task. I wrote blog posts every day even when I knew no one would see them. It was the process of writing every day that allowed me to get better, learn new tricks, and turn my blog into what it is today.

#6: Persistence

A blogger’s journey is one of persistence. For the average blogger, it takes a few years before his efforts turn into a full-time income. Every blogger, even the most successful ones, started out with no audiences of their own. Successful bloggers had to fight their way through the noise as they grew their email lists and social media audiences. It takes months of research to master SEO and a few weeks of research to learn what happens when Google comes out with a major search engine update.

If you are persistent, and you learn new techniques along the way, then you will become a successful blogger. Be patient, continue to put in the work, and success will greet you on the other side.

In Conclusion

Tipping points take a lot of work to pull off, but any blogger can experience a tipping point, the moment when traffic soars more than ever before. Even the most successful bloggers experience tipping points in their social media audiences, blog traffic, and the number of subscribers they get.

The key to becoming a successful blogger is by being persistent and learning new techniques along the way. Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any additional tips for bloggers who want to reach their tipping points? Please share your thoughts and advice below.