DISQUS

GeekMommy · 1 year ago

Or there's the old "get in a debate with a prominent blogger where you are dead wrong" trick! ;)

Seriously - another great post Chris, thanks again.

Someday I'll put all of these tips together and become a decent blogger, but for now, I'll just send people here. :)

miamism · 1 year ago

"be as human as humanly possible" - I think that's the most important bit of advice.

...and for the record, I got here through Twitter. ;)

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

Hey Lucretia- You've done great posts, so don't some day me, miss. : ) Thanks for stopping by, and I'm grateful for the kind words. In all seriousness, did the "get in debate" strategy work beyond a few days? Inquiring minds want to know.

Eric Miltsch · 1 year ago

Chris...

I had to do something different with our blog. Most automotive blogs don't have a personality; those that do - have a strong footprint within this niche already.

The opportunity also presented itself to create an automotive blog which shared some actual behind the scenes activities within the industry.

With that...I try to offer relevant facts, current content, inject some levity and of course, include some great (car) images.

Max Gladwell · 1 year ago

Thanks for the great tips. Nothing beats quality content (like this). It attracts readers and keeps them coming back.

Rahsheen Porter · 1 year ago

I got here through Twitter as well, and you caught me with the wording of the Tweet. I like that.

I started reading and thought this post was just like the others I read today on getting traffic and growing my audience, but then you got to the meat and potatoes.

I guess I will not be re-activating that Twitter wordpress plugin, it would just seem "wrong" to use it at this point.

I also liked the part about starting with the important stuff. I have a major issue with trying to build up to something.

Great Post!

Clara · 1 year ago

This is the blog post a lot of people are looking for. Thanks again, Chris!

Erika · 1 year ago

Great post...and I got here from your tweet as I did one last check of Twitter before shutting down for the night. (Thanks for delaying my bedtime...just kidding.) Great post, well-written and informative. I have to add to Clara's comment, this isn't just the post that people are looking for, it's the post that many need. (And stuff, that I too need to remember. Why I remember to do it when I'm guest blogging and blogging professionally, and not at my personal blog?--I don't know.) I will add to your list...either get a hosted blog or mask the subdomained URL w/a dedicated URL(for those using WP.com and blogger), that is...and my brain is fried, so I forget what that process is actually called.

Rahaf · 1 year ago

Another interesting way that people might consider are other sites where you can actually push your RSS feed right on there. An example of this is Facebook (Flog is a good application) It's an alternative to dropping your URL everywhere, since it actually pulls little snippets of your posts to entice readers. I've gotten quite a few readers to my blog through that method. :)
Great post Chris!

elodie Le Gendre · 1 year ago

Thanks for this great and inspiring post, which gives me a lot of energy to re-start writing and developing my brand on the web!!

As a certified strategist in personal branding, I appreciate a lot your "serie" on "personal branding". This recent post on "growing your audience" is highly connected to it. For sure, it is fundamental to define clearly your "target audience" before adressing a personaly branded message on your blog. It's always good to read it again and again, to keep "focus", clarity, coherence and consistency in time.
best from Paris

Tris Hussey · 1 year ago

This is excellent advice. I'm going to be passing it around the "office".

Hmm, maybe I could twist your arm to chat soon on this.

@Stephen Productivity in Cont · 1 year ago

I wrote a few posts on how to incorporate the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and pushed it all over the place. I got over 100 new subscribers from that series!
My audience is fairly niche-specific, and they tend to respond well to actionable information. Less so on conversation-oriented pieces.
Perhaps some of your readers would like to take a look and I am sure they'll have something to say. I am open to suggestions!

Pawel Szulencki · 1 year ago

@GeekMommy “get in a debate with a prominent blogger where you are dead wrong” - i've never heard of that before, but it may work actually.
Great post and good advices.

Liz · 1 year ago

Interesting points. I have mixed feelings about having a larger audience because my blog is Seinfeldesque rather than professional (more personal and observational). Right now, I can write whatever I want without worrying about what potential readers would think.

Having more readers would make me self-conscious about what I say...although it might make me a better writer, I don't know. Less self-absorbed but more censored.

Leo Bottary · 1 year ago

Great post today! As I've recently returned to the blogosphere with CSI Season 2, I can attest to the fact that it takes quite a bit of work to re-estabish traction and readership.

You offer some great suggestions. To your point though, while their are many audience building techniques, you have to care about your subject and your audience. If you do, then over time the rest will take care of itself. This blog is a great illustration of that.

mitchjoel · 1 year ago

Thanks Chris.

It's very kind of you to include me in this type of discussion. I think there's another element: make whatever it is you're Blogging about actionable.

"Actionable" to me is either something anyone can check out and do right away, or something that inspires them to think differently and creates a "spark".

I think Bloggers today keep trying to outdo the other Bloggers... that's a messy swamp. Blog as a way to inspire, share, build and grow community.

Simply put, you can't go wrong. I think your Blog (including this post) is a brilliant example of this. Just look at the comments :)

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

@Mitch - you've hit on a great one. I can't believe I didn't cover it, because I make a strong effort to ask questions with that action-taking in mind. Crud. Well, that's why they pay you the big pixels.

Side note: Julien took me to a cafe/bar right near your office on Saturday. Rumor was you were in the States, talking with the President or something, so I'm sorry that I missed you.

Mark Salinas · 1 year ago

Great post! Nice insight and detail!

Tammy Lenski · 1 year ago

Chris, I experienced an interesting juxtaposition this morning between your post and a consciousness I had as I worked through feeds over coffee.

I realized, before getting to your post, that I regularly skip reading posts that do any one of the following things (I read articles in Google Reader and open tabs for blogs, like yours, that I like reading on the site itself):

1 - Load a large (scale, not bandwidth) photo as the first thing I see before the article. I want to be able to scan the article quickly to see if it merits my attention, and large graphics stop me because they push the text way down.

2 - Have vague titles that tell me little about why I should read the post. I'm moving fast through feeds, looking for gems to read over coffee, and obtuse titles stop me from bothering to find what could be a gem.

3 - Have long paragraphs right from the get-go. I'm willing to read a long article, but it has to be chunked down in the way you describe in order for me to find it digestible.

For some reason, I was really conscious this morning of these choices I make while I read, and then I got to your post. I realized that I tend to focus on blogs that feel like they're respecting my time by not putting barriers in front of my reading.

Your post helped me gain that clarity and makes me want to go back to my own blog and see what barriers I may be putting up inadvertently!

jackst · 1 year ago

I am learning day by day. That's with different tech people around the net, one is you. Great post in here. I guess I have to apply what I miss in getting my blog a good look. Thanks to friendfeed, I came across to this informative and interesting post.

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

@Tammy - thanks very much. I appreciate your thoughts on it, and I agree with your perspective.

Mike Desjardins · 1 year ago

Wow, Chris, thanks for the advice! I'll be the first to admit that I've always had a hard time deciding what I want my blog to be about... it seems like half of my posts are highly technical things (how to do X with language Y and framework Z), and half are more general, Jeff Atwood-esque ramblings on software development. I probably ought to decide on one or the other, or perhaps even have two blogs?

I found that the technical stuff gets a lot of direct hits from Google, while the general stuff ends up doing well on social aggregation sites like reddit. But neither ever seem to generate a lot of subscriptions.

Geoff Livingston · 1 year ago

Great post, Chris. It's really all about the audience and serving them day in, day out religiously. Too many people try to be the hero, try to be smart, and grow the biggest tribe possible. The reality is it's better to have the right tribe of 30 than one of 30,000.

Daltonsbriefs · 1 year ago

Chris, thanks for the reminders, I chanced upon your post this morning while reviewing my feeds and your "shared" feeds is one of my subscriptions. And by the way, yes by all means share your own posts!

My traffic and readership has grown pretty consistently on my sites, but the big bumps have come at times that we've added guest bloggers. It seems that they have their own following who come over to read their favorite author and in some cases if they like the site, they stay and become regulars on our site too.

Merlyn Sanchez · 1 year ago

Found you on Twitter and I'm glad I stopped by. Attracting more readers has been a slow process for me. The way you formatted your article really caught my attention and made it clear that my longer articles aren't "reader friendly".

Thanks for the great tips and I look forward to more!

Ryan · 1 year ago

I just found your blog. I'm a new blogger, and your words are encouraging, especially those about constant improvement. And look at me! I'm commenting on great blogs. I mean, this is a great blog, right?

mark_hayward · 1 year ago

Nice post, Chris! It's funny, when I first started to jot my ideas down online, I thought,..."I need to comment on other blogs, interact, etc..."

However, once I realized that all I really wanted to do was have some place to download my thoughts about lifestyle design and entrepreneurship, interact with people who are pursuing goals and are motivated the rest sort of fell into place.

I don't have near the traffic that you have, but even getting a couple of people to react and comment on what you have written is still pretty good at the end of the day...

Luis Sandoval · 1 year ago

Excellent advice. My problem as a blogger has always been wordiness. I'm in the process of working on a novel, so I'm used to describing scenes and laying out the story, so blogging has been a new challenge for me.

Many a times I find myself being long winded (case and point :) ), so I'm having to go back and hone my words.

Some of the blogs you listed above I have already been following but you listed two new ones for me. Thanks.

Question though, do you have a general limit in your mind on how long a post should be? What are your methods to reducing the amount you've written?

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

Hi Luis--

Great questions. I don't exactly have a word count in mind, nor do I ever check my word count, unless I suspect a post has accidentally become epic. If that happens, I look for ways to chop that into a few parts, because I believe (and this is ONLY my opinion, because there are millions of ways to do it) that blogs should be a little more of a brief reading experience than a long experience.

How do I chop? I work in paragraph chunks. When I'm done writing, I go back and see if there's any slack. Sometimes, I can kill entire sentences that just re-tell the old sentence.

Best advice for a fiction guy like you? Read Shipping News once every six months whether or not you need it. : )

Luis Sandoval · 1 year ago

Chris,

Thanks a lot for the recommendation, I just jumped on Amazon and ordered the book. I'm an avid reader, so any recs you have are always appreciated.

Thanks for the response too. Blogs should be a brief rather than a novel. In order to assist with sticking to the point, do you recommend highlighting other sites or posts where a topic is discussed further? Also, can this fragment the material by making people jump to another page or site in order to digest that material in order to understand what you're writing in your post?

I think that is my downfall, the need to have to explain everything to the reader as opposed to directing them to other articles if they want more of the story.

LisaN · 1 year ago

Wow, great post. One item I might add is the use of blog directory or services like BlogBurst. Yesterday, my blog made it to Fox News, and was there most of the day and was still there today. It got several hundred reads and hits to my site. It's exciting to see your writing hit main stream media..............:)

Adam Singer · 1 year ago

Thanks for this post, Chris...

I guess perseverance is what it takes, I'm at a bit over 100 readers and would love to be at a bit over 1,000. But my path has been consistently (if slowly) moving upward.

Do you think there will be a tipping point (maybe a redesign or something) that would help me really get a flood of new readers? Or is it going to just be persistence?

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

Adam - I had 50 readers for YEARS. I remember celebrating 100. And then 1000. Now, I celebrate every thousand.

Heck if I had a few hundred more subscribers (tell your friends?) , I'd top 5K. : )

david usher · 1 year ago

Great post Chris
And the perfect example with Mitch and Six Pixels of Separation. He gave me the 'red pill, blue pill talk' that lead me into this crazy social media world:)

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

David - excellent, and you know, I never discount the fact that I have a true Canadian rock god commenting on my site. Thanks for being you. I visited Montreal the other day and someone mentioned you on the radio (might have just missed hearing a tune). Cool that you're part of the contribution, and such a great contributor in your own right.

cherylsmith · 1 year ago

Great post Chris, again! Lots of good food for thought.

Currently, my blog (new as of 4/08) is not the homepage of my website. My marketing materials list my homepage only. I use social networking sites to promote specific posts, but so far haven't included separate links for the blog itself. I would welcome thoughts on that from you and your other blog readers.

david usher · 1 year ago

next time you in montreal message me and we can grab mitch and go for lunch:)

Sinoun · 7 months ago

wow i sure wish i could go for lunch with david usher! you are one lucky guy chris brogan!

but apart from that, this is a great article.

Joseph Thornley · 1 year ago

Break it up in chunks. Use headlines.

Great practical advice Chris that I and many others too often forget.

chrisbrogan · 1 year ago

Hi Cheryl- The only problem I see with making your homepage up front and center is that it doesn't change. People will view it once, assess whether they want to be your client, and then move on. A blog is a chance to invite repeat visitors.

What does anyone else say?

Patricia - Spiritual Journey O · 1 year ago

I visited your blog today because of your interview done by Stephen Hopson. Great interview. I will be back to read more. I appreciate the information in this article. I just celebrated my first anniversary as a blogger on June 1 and am still in the process of building my subscriber foundation. I recently passed the 150 mark. Consistently I am between 130-150 daily subscribers. It has been a slow, but constant upward climb. Mine is a small niche blog about my spiritual journey and recovery from incest so my story line doesn't always a happy setting. I write to reach out to other survivors to give them hope and let them know that the world can be a safe and loving place.

I read a few technical based blogs to learn how to stuff about computers and blogging. I have been a fan of Stephen's for less than a year. Heck, 2 years ago I didn't even know what a blog was. So to use an old commercial saying for myself, "You've come a long way babe." Have a glorious day. I intend to.

groonk · 1 year ago

i knew i kept up with your posts and twitter for a good reason. :)

thanks for the tips here. i'll have to work on implementing them.

Morghus · 1 year ago

The first thing that needs to be caged for further use is motivation. How do you go about that? That's always been a problem with me. Motivation comes after success, not before - and it's a huge failing, I know, but a major problem nonetheless.

So how do you get to the point where you focus on your points? =)

Tracksuit CEO · 1 year ago

Love your use of Twitter to promote your posts. It works while adding value to your blog and Twitter both.

Jay Ramirez · 1 year ago

Chris, another thought is to put something into the design aspect. Make it easy to find topics, subscribe, search, follow the comments, etc. If it's easy to find the community, people will be more likely to be back.

jodyreale · 1 year ago

Chris, thanks for this. I'm from the school that says, "You can't get it wrong." In other words, as long as you're doing the blogging, you're learning and growing, and therefore working your way to whatever you call success. Where are you on the experimentation spectrum?

Rebecca · 1 year ago

Thanks for the great tips!
babywalters.blogspot.com

robbritt · 2 weeks ago

Great tips. I love it when someone give useful information rather than fluffy vagueness.