MackCollier.com

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The Most Boring Answer to the ‘How Do I Build Traffic to Our Blog?’ Question

You create more content.  It’s funny how there’s usually a very simple answer to the questions that everyone has.  The problem is that very simple answer typically requires some very hard work by you.

But if we are talking about building traffic for your blog, more content is the way to go.  It doesn’t matter if your blog is your business, if you are writing it for your employer, or if you are writing it because you are the world’s biggest Game of Thrones fan.  More content = more visitors.

The Search Effect

Here’s my monthly traffic to this blog from June 2009-December 2014:

BlogTrafficTough to read, but you can see that blue line consistently going up to the right.  Also notice how low the blue line is in 2009?  This is where most blogs die, because traffic is so low and they invest a few months and really don’t see a meaningful increase.  But as you can see, it wasn’t until January of 2011 that traffic here really jumped and started moving up.  That’s about 18 months of work put into creating content before the first corner was turned.  Like I said, it’s a lot of work but if you stick with it, the results speak for themselves.

Now, here’s something really interesting.  After I’ve made the case for more content equaling more traffic, let me shoot a hole in my own advice:

Monthly traffic here in 2013 averaged over 21,000 visitors and monthly traffic in 2014 averaged over 37,000 visitors.  That’s a jump of about 80%.  Here’s the kicker: The number of new posts I wrote here actually fell in 2014.  Sharply.

I wrote 159 new posts in 2013, and only 87 in 2014.  Almost half, yet as you can see, traffic surged anyway.

So how did this happen?  It mostly happened because of an increase in search traffic.

In 2013, 60% of this blog’s traffic came from organic search.  In 2014, that percentage had increased to 78%.  This is a byproduct of blogging here for 5+ years.  As I create more content, that content gets indexed by search engines, I collect more incoming links, and my posts start to move higher up search rankings.  The cold, hard reality is that if you start a new blog today and write a post about brand ambassador programs and I write a post tomorrow about the same topic, my post will almost assuredly show up much higher in search rankings.  Which means I will get the search traffic and you won’t.  Even though I was creating less content in 2014, overall traffic went up versus 2013 in large part because organic search traffic increased.  If I had written the same number of posts in 2014 vs 2013, that percentage of search traffic would have likely been lower, but the overall volume of traffic from organic search would have still increased.

Consistency matters. 

I started off the year writing about how we needed to stop listening to people that tell us not to write unless it’s perfect.  I did so because if we follow this advice, we will write less often, which ironically means that it will become more difficult for us to improve our craft.  You should be writing new content to your blog every single week.  I’ve said in the past that you should pick a schedule that works for you and stick with that, but too many of us will pick a lax posting schedule like once a month and not even adhere to that.

Growth requires regular work.  If you want your blog to grow then you need to work on it every single week.

 

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My Content Creation Goals For 2015

One of the areas I struggle with every year is creating a consistent stream of content, especially here on this blog.  Invariably, at the first of the year I have more time to post because work is slower, and then when work picks up in the Spring, Summer and Fall months, I put the blog and really all of my social media activity on the backburner.

I bet you are the same way, right?  When we’re busy with work it just makes more sense to focus ON the work, right?  I’m the same way, but every year I watch how my blog will start out strong for the first 2-3 months of the year then lose momentum as I stop posting due to being busier.

I am determined not to let that happen this year, and I want you to help hold me accountable.  To this end, I have set some pretty lofty goals for both my blog, and my podcast.  I’ve decided to share these numbers with you, as well as my goals to not only hold myself accountable but also because for whatever reason a lot of bloggers don’t like to share their traffic numbers, so I wanted you to see what they can look like.

But above all else, I am hoping that this year-long project will prove this point: That it’s not enough to have a blog or a podcast, you have to consistently create content.  You can’t create content whenever you want, building an audience takes time, work and consistency.  I’ve talked to fellow bloggers and podcasters, content creators that are hammering out great content on a consistent basis, and they are killing it from an audience standpoint. I talked about the importance of not only building but sustaining momentum on #FanDamnShow last week, and am applying this thinking to my blog and the podcast this year.

So here’s what I am going to do: The first week of every month, I am going to write a post like this one, recapping whether or not I met the previous month’s goals, and talk about what the goals are for the next month.  Here’s this month’s goals and the yearly goals:

For the Blog, I want to reach 50,000 visitors for the month of January, and by December I want to be averaging at least 100,000 visitors a month.  I think I can reach January’s goal pretty easily as I am already on track to hit it, but it’s going to be tough to have at least 100,000 visitors in December.  The only way I have a chance of meeting that goal is to write new posts here every single week in 2015.

Now those sound like big numbers, and they are.  But you have to realize that I started this blog at the end of May in 2009.  So it’s almost 6 years old.  For reference, here’s the average monthly traffic here for each year:

2009 – 2,131 monthly visitors

2010 – 5,428 monthly visitors

2011 – 12,426 monthly visitors

2012 – 13,719 monthly visitors

2013 – 21,239 monthly visitors

2014 – 37,626 monthly visitors

As you can see, I will have to at least double my average monthly traffic in 2015 vs 2014 in order to reach my goals.  Not gonna be easy.

Unfortunately, my goals for the podcast are even more ‘ambitious’.  #FanDamnShow really never had a chance to get off the ground last year.  I launched it in May and then in June I had some medical issues and didn’t restart it until the end of July.  I pieced together about 4 episodes through August but then hit another wall when work got busy and I didn’t put up an episode in Sept, Oct or November.

Here’s what downloads of the podcast have looked like:

PodcastDLsA spike at the left when the podcast launched, then traffic fell in June and July when there were no new episodes.  Traffic went up a little bit in August when I got some episodes up, but really low in Sept, Oct and Nov with no new epiosdes.  But traffic did go back up over the last couple of weeks as I’ve gotten new episodes up.  My guess is if I had been able to stick with getting a new episode up weekly from launch back in May that monthly downloads would now be at a couple of thousand instead of a couple of hundred.  But I did get up an episode last week, one this week, and the goal is to put up a new episode every week throughout 2015.

As for my goal…..the goal for 2015 is to hit 10,000 monthly downloads of #FanDamnShow by December.  For reference, last month the show was downloaded 133 times.  You do the math.

Here’s this month’s goals for the blog and podcast:

Blog – 50,000 visitors

Podcast – 750 downloads

After the first 7 days, I am on pace to hit my goal for traffic for the blog, and I am almost on pace to hit my goal for downloads of the podcast.  Since the podcast is having to build its audience, I think after another 3 episodes this month of the podcast, I should be able to hit my goal.

So those are my content creation goals for 2015.  For the rest of the year during the first week of each month I’ll write a post like this one recapping how I did the previous month, and talking about my new goals for the next month.  I’ll also talk about why I did or did not reach my goals and any tweaks or changes I made or will make as a result.  Hopefully this will serve to keep me honest about my content creation goals, and also be helpful to you in building an audience for ether your blog or podcast.  Or both!

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The One Thing We ALL Need to Stop Doing in 2015

Stop telling other bloggers to stop creating crap content.  I get fired up about this one.  One of the things that drives me insane is people saying that you shouldn’t create crap content.  Imagine a boy asking his dad if he can join a Little League team and the dad tells him ‘Ok son, but you have to hit a home run every at bat, or you’re off the team!’  Insanity, and that’s the same thing we are telling new bloggers when we tell them that they can’t write a post that’s ‘crap’.

I agree with the sentiment, but there’s three huge problems with this idea:

1 – There is no agreed-upon definition of what ‘crap’ content is.  The guy that’s looking for 301-level content may think a post that’s 101-level is ‘crap’, even though that same post could be insanely valuable to anyone looking for 101-level content.

2 – Everyone knows that you get better at writing and creating content by writing and creating content.  You improve your craft, any craft, by practicing said craft.  It is the same with blogging, writing and creating online content.  You can read all the ‘How to Write Awesome Blog Posts‘ posts you want, but the only way YOU will ever write an awesome blog post, is to actually write an awesome blog post.

3 – Every ‘expert’ that says you shouldn’t create crap content is a hypocrite.  Because they’ve created crap content.  I’ve read it, you have too.  They got better by continuing to create content.  And for the ‘expert’ reading this post that is fuming thinking you do NOT create crap content, refer back to the first point.  Yeah, like I said that’s the problem.  When someone says ‘Stop creating crap content’ what they really mean is ‘Stop creating content that *I* think is crap!’

 

Like I said, I get the sentiment.  We all want fellow bloggers, whether they work for a company or themselves, to create valuable content.  The problem is, to the point of the tweet above, that most of the railing against crap content has become more about trying to win the soundbyte and get the RTs than it is about trying to help others.  We’re also scaring the hell out of companies and even individual bloggers that are just starting out that are bombarded with DON’T WRITE THAT POST UNLESS IT’S AWESOME rants.  To a new blogger that has no idea what she is doing, telling her that she shouldn’t write a post unless it’s awesome is the quickest way to scare her into dumping her blog before it starts.

 

So if you are confused by this advice, here’s mine:

1 – Ignore the ‘experts’ on this issue, simply do your best.  Until said ‘expert’ starts signing your check, tell him to stick it.  The only way you will learn how to write better blog posts is by writing more blog posts.  Do it regularly and repeatedly.

2 – Write the content that you know to be valuable.  An article that’s ‘crap’ to one person could be the article that changes another person’s life.  If you have a blog post in you that you want to write because you believe others will find value in it, then write it.  Then tomorrow do it again, and again, and again.

3 – If you are writing for a company, always consider your customer.  No one knows your customers better than you do.  What information are they looking for, how do they use your products, what questions can your content answer or what problems can you solve?  Write from the customer’s point of view, not the company’s.

 

At the end of the day, you’ll see that there are a lot of people that will happily tell you what you are doing wrong, and not very many that can show you how to do it the right way.  Critics vs experts.  Soundbytes vs instruction.

Wasting time vs investing time.  Here’s to making smarter investments in 2015.

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Legal Issues Associated With Blogging: Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic With @KerryGorgone!

Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat with Kerry!

Tonight at #Blogchat (Nov 9th, 2014) we’ll be discussing the legal issues associated with blogging with my good friend Kerry Gorgone!  Kerry is an amazing woman with an incredibly diverse skillset.  She’s a lawyer, a former college instructor, she’s a speaker, and she’s also one of the best podcasters in the world. Currently, she develops marketing training courses for MarketingProfs. It’s her talents as a lawyer that we’ll be calling upon tonight as she helps us understand the legal issues associated with blogging.

Here’s a VERY detailed look at what we’ll be discussing tonight (thank you Kerry!)

8:00-8:20PM Central – What are the legal issues bloggers need to know if they want to run a contest on their blog?

Points to consider:
–> (Giveaways or Games of Chance/Lotteries vs. Contests of Skill)
–> IRS / Tax reporting
–> Stating contest eligibility rules clearly
–> Special considerations for Canadians

8:20-8:40PM – If a blogger receives a product from a company, do they have to disclose that?

Points to consider:
–> When to call content “sponsored” or “paid”
–> Do you have to repeat disclosures every time you post sponsored content, even if the content is old?
–> What’s the best way to disclose in a tweet or other short social post? Do you have to use a hashtag?
–> Disclosure’s a pain: why bother?

8:40 to 9:00PM Breaking copyright rules can cause expensive problems. What do bloggers need to know?

Points to consider:
–> Is it okay to use other people’s content? How much of it can I take? What are the rules?
–> What do I do if someone else is using MY content?
–> Where can I find images that are safe to use?
–> How can I protect my copyright in pictures I take and images I create?

 

Also check out this post that Kerry was kind enough to write here on protecting your creative works online.  I could not be happier to have Kerry joining us tonight, please make sure you are following her on Twitter!  See y’all at 8pm Central tonight!

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Join #Blogchat Tonight, Co-Hosted By Scott Monty!

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat with Scott!

I’m very excited to welcome Scott Monty as co-host of #Blogchat tonight(8-17-2014)!  I’ve known Scott since his Crayon days and of course he did amazing work as the global head of Ford Motor Company’s social media marketing efforts.  Earlier this Summer, Scott moved on from Ford and is currently the EVP of Strategy for Shift Communications.

But what you might not know about Scott is that he’s also a huge Sherlock Holmes fan and has co-founded an all-in-one blog for news and discussion of all things Sherlock.  Since many #Blogchat participants consider themselves to be  ‘personal’ bloggers (or a blogger that writes about their hobbies and passions), I wanted Scott to talk to us about how he can balance an incredibly successful career with also publishing and maintaining a wonderful personal/hobby blog.

Here’s what we’ll be discussing tonight:

8:00pm Central – We’ll talk to Scott about why he started I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, and the process for starting a blog that’s focused on your hobby or passion.

8:20pm Central – How to find the time to have a successful career and still maintain a successful blog.

8:40pm Central – Scott will share his advice for anyone that’s thinking about launching a blog that’s focused on their favorite passion or hobby.

 

This should be a wonderful hour as I’ve been wanting to get Scott on to co-host #Blogchat for a long time.  Thank you again to Ann Smarty and the team at MyBlogU for sponsoring #Blogchat this month!  You can learn more about MyBlogU here.

To prepare for tonight’s #Blogchat please make sure you are following Scott on Twitter and check out both his professional blog and I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere.

See you tonight on Twitter!

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@ProBlogger Co-Hosts #Blogchat on How to Build a Blog Worth Monetizing!

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat with ProBlogger, officially the BIGGEST #Blogchat ever!

BONUS: Here’s a FREE hour-long webinar that Darren recorded that teaches all he knows about monetizing blogs!

This Sunday (8-10-14), Darren Rowse, better known as ProBlogger will be co-hosting #Blogchat!  Darren is one of the true blogging pioneers, having blogged for well over a decade.  For much of that time he’s been doing something a lot of bloggers wish they could: Make real money from his blogging!  Darren has been making well over 6 figures in yearly blogging income for a while now, and he’s going to share some of his secrets with us during #Blogchat!

Specifically, Darren is going to help us understand how we build a blog worth monetizing.  There’s a lot of planning and prep that goes into creating a blog that can drive real income, and Darren is going to walk us through that process.

Here’s what we’ll be discussing starting at 8pm Central on Sunday:

8:00-8:20PM – What does a blogger need to do before they launch their blog to get ready to make money? What planning is involved, what does the blogger need to consider?

8:20-8:40PM – What should a blogger do during the first 3 months or so of the blog to start monetizing it?

8:40-9:00PM – What comes after the first few months?

 

So if you have wanted to make real money from your blog, Darren is going to tell us how at the next #Blogchat! Please follow Darren on Twitter, and also check out ProBlogger, it’s an amazingly educational site for bloggers!

And don’t forget to check out this month’s #Blogchat sponsor, @MyBlogU!

See y’all tomorrow night on Twitter, just follow the #Blogchat hashtag!

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The Art and Science of Blogging With John Wall at #Blogchat!

Here’s the transcript for this #Blogchat with John.

I’m excited to announce that John Wall will be sponsoring the next two weeks of #Blogchat on 3-9-2014 and 3-16-2014!  For John’s sponsorship, he’s come up with a pretty cool two weeks of blogging topics.

Over the next two weeks John will teach us about The Art and Science of Blogging.  This Sunday, 3-9-2014, we’ll cover the 4 Keys to the Science of Blogging:

1 – Follow the Rules

2 – Build the System

3 – Measure Everything

4 – Always Be Testing/Closing/Selling

And to prepare you for Sunday’s chat, John has written an excellent post over at his blog outlining exactly what we’ll be discussing.  Next Sunday (the 16th) John will cover the Art of Blogging.  Over the next two weeks, John will teach us about several areas of blogging that have long been requested topics by #Blogchat members, such as responsive design for your blog, design with an eye toward improving your blog’s readability, and user experience and interface.

It will be a fabulous two weeks of #Blogchat discussions to please head over and read John’s prep post on the 4 Keys to the Science of Blogging for this week and also make sure you are following him on Twitter.

Also, check out John’s book B2B Marketing Confessions on Amazon!  And finally, John is co-host of the excellent Marketing Over Coffee, one of the very best business podcasts!  See you on Twitter Sunday at 8pm Central for #Blogchat!

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Five Proven Ways to Build More Engagement On Your Brand’s Blog

One of the biggest struggles that blogging brands face is creating engagement with their customers.  It’s tough to sell your boss on how effective your blog is if none of your customers are reading your content.  Here’s five proven ways to not only build readership, but convert passive readers into active participants on your blog:

1 – Create customer-centric content.  I’ve written in the past about how much I love the content strategy of Red Bull and Patagonia.  Both brands do an amazing job of creating content that resonates with its audience.  For example, on its blog The Cleanest Line, Patagonia rarely blogs about its products, instead Patagonia creates content about the activities that its customers engage in, and the causes they support.  Patagonia understands its customers well enough to know that if they create content that actually interests them, that it will not only give those customers a reason to engage with the brand on its blog, it will give them a reason to buy from Patagonia as well.

Patagonia

For your blog, think about how you can create content that relates to your brand, but that isn’t about your brand.  If you want the science behind why this works, Facebook actually did a study a couple of years ago of their most popular brand pages, and the type of content being created by these brands.  Facebook found that, across the board, the type of brand-created content that did the best job of driving customer engagement was content related to the brand but not about the brand.  In other words, write about the activities that customers love that are related to your brand.  For example, if your brand is in the hospitality industry, create content that helps your customers be better travelers.  If your brand is an automaker, write more about driving than your cars.  Write about the topics that matter to your customers, and then your blog will matter to your customers.

2 – Post regularly and on the same core topics.  This is very easy to do and few brand blogs follow this strategy.  The idea with posting regularly is to ‘train’ your readers to know when new content is going to be up on your blog.  So if you only write one new post a week for your blog, write it the same day every week.  That way I know that every Wednesday there’s a new post on your blog.

And as for topics, the best approach is to pick 2-3 core topic buckets that you write about.  I wrote before about the process for using topic buckets for a business blog, but the process is so find 2-3 sub-topics of your blog’s larger topic that you can blog about.  For example with Patagonia’s blog above, some of its topic buckets are outdoor activities, protecting the environment and sustainability.  These are three of the topic buckets that Patagonia creates content around.  Notice that each topic bucket is also focused on a topic that’s relevant to its customers (again tying back to the first point).  By simply creating a few topic buckets for your blog, it makes the content creation process much easier.  For example, if you want to write one new blog post a week, and you have 3 topic buckets for your blog, you can easily map out your posting schedule for the month by writing one post from each topic bucket!  That gets you three week’s worth of posts, and then for the fourth week you can write an additional post for one of those topic buckets.

3 – Write better headlines.  The cold, hard reality is that most customers won’t read your blog, the best case scenario is that they will see a link to your blog with the title of your post pass by them on Facebook or Twitter.  Which means your post title has to be compelling enough to, in 2 seconds or so, convince the passive reader (who is literally scanning their social feed) to become active and click your link.  So in some respects, writing headlines is the most important skill you can possess as a blogger.

HeadlineI’ve written about how to write better headlines in the past, but I’ll share a couple of tips here.  In short, the biggest mistake that I see brand bloggers making in respect to headlines is writing a headline that summarizes the topic of the post, instead of focusing on it.  For example, a headline that summarizes this post could have been ‘Getting engagement on your blog’.  While that headline is somewhat specific, it’s also a bit boring.  You have to remember that the headline you write is going to be competing against headlines written by sites specifically trying to steal attention.  Your headline is going to be in the middle of a stream of links (and linkbait headlines) like this:

“This Man-Eating Tiger Stood Ready to Devour This Child, But What Happened Next Was Totally Unexpected And Will Break Your Heart”

” Free Download: How Twitter Can Solve 3 Major Challenges for Sales”

“Getting engagement on your blog”

“That Record-Breaking Selfie That Ellen Took at the Oscars? Here’s What Samsung Doesn’t Want You to Know About It”

See what I mean?  You have to learn to write amazing headlines to even have a chance of getting clicked in a stream such as this.  But the good news is that most bloggers are woefully bad at writing headlines.  So if you can learn how to write good headlines, it gives you a huge advantage versus the competition.  When you write your headline, review it with ‘The 2-Second Rule’.  Take two seconds to read your headline and then consider that’s at best what someone on Twitter or Facebook would give your headline.  So if your headline can’t grab your reader’s attention in 2 seconds and compel them to click the link, then it’s not a good headline.

Focus on making your headline as specific as possible, so the reader knows exactly what they are getting if they click.  Note the headline to this post, it’s very specific, and promises to give you five proven tips for building engagement.  So if you write for a brand’s blog and building engagement is a problem you are trying to solve, the headline of this post will probably (hopefully) compel you to click the link.

Remember, your headline has 2 seconds to work its magic.  Make it count.

4 – Use amazing visuals.  This goes along with writing a great headline, but consider that every time your post is shared on Facebook, it pulls up the lead image and attaches it to the link.  So if you write an amazing headline and have a visually-grabbing photo to go with it, you’re already halfway home to getting that person to click the link and read your post.  You have to constantly be aware that most people aren’t going to read your blog post by coming to you blog, they are going to read it from seeing someone else share a link to your blog.  So writing great headlines and adding amazing pictures works wonders.  

My favorite source for finding amazing photos for your blog is still Flickr, in particular the photos that have the Attrition License via Creative Commons.  You can use these photos, you can even adapt or build on them (like in a Powerpoint presentation), the only requirement is that you attribute (link) to the source.  Now recently, Getty Images has made waves by making a lot of its images free for the first time, and embeddable.  I was really excited about this at first, but unfortunately there are two big caveats to this move:

  1. Most of Getty Images photos of celebs, sporting and entertainment events are still off limits.  IOW many of its most desirable images.
  2. The images that are free to use cannot be used for commercial purposes.  And while I’m no legal expert on social media like Kerry Gorgone, I think that pretty much means your brand can’t use them.  I certainly won’t be using them and I’d advise you to check with your legal team before you do.

5 – Respond and be grateful for the engagement you do get.  The two most powerful words in social media (and probably life as well) are ‘Thank You‘.  Simply responding to and thanking readers for existing comments and engagement is a great way to get more of the same.  You want to reward the type of behavior that you want to encourage.  So if you want your readers to comment more on your blog or signup for your brand’s newsletter, or download that white-paper, you need to reward them when they engage in these activities.  When it comes to commenting, simply replying and engaging them back signals to them that you value their input, and appreciate it.

And we tend to stick around when we feel appreciated!

So there you have it, five proven ways to build engagement on your brand’s blog.  If you apply all these methods you *will* see readership and engagement on your brand’s blog increase.  And remember that now more than ever, your blog is your most important piece of social media real estate because you own it.

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How to Turn Your Blog Into A Platform, Tonight’s #Blogchat Topic!

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Here’s the link to the transcript from tonight’s #Blogchat

Tonight at #Blogchat (2-16-2014) we will discuss how to turn your blog into a platform for your ideas.  Many of us blog because we want to share our ideas and our voice with the world.  But if you are truly committed to having your ideas reach as many people as possible, then you need to build a platform.  That’s what we will talk about tonight at #Blogchat.

To turn your blog into a platform, there’s certain steps you need to take:

1 – Understand that it will take a LOT of work to build your platform.  Look at the most successful bloggers, the one that have built a platform for their ideas.  They blog almost every day.  They create content in multiple forms.  Many of them also have podcasts, they are active on Twitter and Facebook, as well as other tools.  The point is, there is a lot of hard work involved in building a platform.

It’s great to want to see your blog grow and reach readership milestones, etc.  But you need to be honest with yourself about the work involved in reaching those goals.  Granted, as you reach your goals, more doors will open for you, but you have to first invest the work necessary to get there.

2 – Decide why you want a blogging platform.  What’s the end goal here?  Do you want to leverage your platform to launch a public speaking career?  Do you want to eventually write a book?  Why do you need a platform?  What goals are you trying to reach?  Once you’ve figured out why you need a platform, that will help you greatly in developing your strategy for building one.

3 – Narrow your focus.  It’s almost impossible to build a platform around 5 different topics, even if they are complimentary.  Focus on 1-2 core topics that you want to build your platform on.  Or think of it this way, if someone mentions you to a friend, that friend would say “Oh I know her, she’s the ______ gal!”  What would go in that blank?  Do you want to be known as “The WordPress gal!” or “The Facebook gal!” or “The #TwitterChatNameHere gal!”  Think about how you want others to know you.

4 – Build the Castle first, then the kingdom.  What will be the foundation of your platform?  In many cases, I think your blog is a great choice, so focus on first building your blog.  Think about how you can build your blog and turn it into a platform to help spread your ideas.  Think about how you can create better content and MORE content.  Simply writing better posts and blogging more often will be huge drivers in helping you grow your blog’s audience.

5 – Build a support network for your platform.  How can you use other tools to help build your platform?  For example, I use Twitter extensively to drive traffic back to this blog.  In the last year I’ve also started growing an email newsletter that helps send people here.  You want to think about how you can use other tools AWAY from your blog to help build out your blog.

 

So those are some of the areas we will cover in tonight’s #Blogchat when we talk about building a platform for your ideas.  #Blogchat will start tonight at 8pm Central.  I think this is an incredibly important topic, and here’s one reason why I think building a platform for your ideas is so important.

Since my book Think Like a Rock Star came out, I have become enamored with not only my book’s progress, but I also watch when other books are released by people in this space.  I want to see what I can learn from their efforts, but I also want to compare their results against my own.

One thing I began to notice a few months ago was that even though TLARS had excellent reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads, some books that didn’t have as many positive reviews were selling better than mine.  I started trying to figure out what they were doing differently, then I realized that in every instance, these authors had a bigger platform to promote their book from than I did.  They had the popular blog PLUS they had 100,000 followers on Twitter PLUS they had 50,000 people on their email list PLUS they had a popular podcast, etc etc etc.  It helped me realize that simply having a great idea/book isn’t enough, you need to have a platform in place that helps carry that great idea to other people.

Tonight let’s talk about how you can build the platform that your ideas deserve.  See you at #Blogchat!

Pic via Flickr user PhotoAtelier

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Sharing Your Voice Versus Building a Platform

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Yesterday was the best traffic day ever on this blog.  I checked and the 2nd best traffic day came in January of 2011 and the 3rd best in July of 2009.  In other words, it took a long time and a lot of work to reach yesterday.

Something else I noticed as I was going through my Google Analytics yesterday was to look at how the day-to-day traffic increased.  Today I would immediately know that something was ‘wrong’ if I ‘only’ got 500 visitors tomorrow, but back in 2010 or 2011, that would have been cause for celebration.  Hopefully in 2-3 years, if I get the same amount of traffic as I did yesterday, I’ll be disappointed as well.

Whenever we talk about the significance of blogging, people always offer that they blog because they want to share their voice.  I’m a huge believer in the power of blogging for this very reason.

But there’s also incredible power in sharing your voice and using your blog to build a platform for your ideas.  And I mean ‘build’ literally as it is a LOT of work to build a blogging platform.  Since June of 2009, I’ve currently written 655 posts here.  So many hours spent on creating content.  But that content is helping me to build a platform.  In June of 2009, this blog averaged about 84 visitors a day.  Currently I get that here every hour.  That’s a huge increase in exposure for my ideas.  And yet, as I was giddy watching my traffic go up yesterday, and as I saw yesterday’s post top 250 retweets, I realized there are many bloggers that see every post get that type of exposure.

Your platform has incredible value.  Yes, it takes a ton of time and energy to build it, but that platform can open doors for you.  It brings your ideas to more people.  If you are a brand, it expands the reach of your content to more potential customers.  It becomes ‘proof of concept’ if you want to sell a publisher on why they should buy your book idea.

Want to know a secret?  Many of the people that are viewed as thought leaders today in this space started building their platform 5-10 years ago.  No one knew who they were then, but today they have a blog that’s read by 100,000 people every month, they have 100,000 people following them on Twitter and have an email list with 50,000 names on it.

All because they invested the time and work to build a platform that would allow them to share their ideas with more people.  Isn’t your voice worth the same attention? 

Pic via Flickr user nigelhowe