Situation: You have a new blog. You want to get some traffic to the site. You’re frustrated that everything seems to be happening at a snail’s pace. Nobody seems to care about what you’re writing.
What do you do?
I’m going to boil this down to absolute basics. Because I think too many people forget to look at the big picture and instead get mired down into the mechanics of it.
When you first walk into a scene, nobody knows that you exist. We could be talking about being a new blogger, or we could be talking about being a new employee at a company. It doesn’t really matter. The common denominator is that there is an existing, operating environment there and you are a brand new arrival.
To those people already operating in that environment, you do not exist. So, what do you do?
First, if you haven’t already done so, iron down your target market. In other words, what kind of person is going to find your blog interesting? For example, my blog will appeal to bloggers looking to grow their traffic and income. What is YOUR target market?
Good, next, you go out and find all the people who already exist in your target market. Get onto those people’s radars. So, if I were brand new to the market of “problogging”, what would I do? I’d immediately get myself onto the lines of every other leader I can find in my market. Darren Rowse, John Chow, Yaro Starak are obvious. But, you want to get onto every line you can find. So, I’d find any blogger who blogs about blogging, and if their site looked even halfway decent, I’d become a regular on that site.
Once you track down all these people, you want to make sure they know who you are. Be a regular commenter. Author quality guest posts and submit them to those sites. Feature them on your site (bloggers are vain, face it). Ask them for an interview. Don’t be needy, but you want to put yourself onto those sites. Not in a parasitic way, but in terms of adding real value. That’s what you want to be known for, and that’s what will attract readers to your own blog.
As you contact more people and get them onto your own blog, you remain in constant contact with them. You continue to author great content. You actively engage with them in comments. In your email list. You keep giving people what they ask for.
What can you do differently than the leaders in your market? What shortcomings can you fill? You find this out by asking people what they most want from YOU. And then you get busy providing it.
These initial contacts are highly important to you as a leading blogger in your market – whatever that market is. You want to be telling these contacts what it is you’re up to. If you have a really killer piece of content for your blog, let these market contacts know about it.
In short, you’re setting yourself up as a player in your market by simply putting yourself onto the lines of communication which ALREADY exist in your market, finding out what is needed, then giving them THAT.
Period. End of story. That is how you launch a new blog and go from nobody to “guru”.
So, if you are in this boat, with a blog which hasn’t really gotten anywhere yet, what are you going to do right now? What’s your next move, after having read this post?
Copyright © 2008-2012 PC Media, Inc. All rights reserved.
