All About Blogging: Traffic

(Part Two in a week-long series on blogging. Here's Part One.)

Traffic makes blogging fun and frustrating. 

People first get sucked into blogging, because it's competitive writing. You can see how many people read your stuff. You try various things to get your numbers up. You can spend hours studying the numbers on sitemeter. For those with addictive personalities (me), sitemeter is a dangerous, dangerous thing. 

It is, however, very difficult to get people to read your stuff, especially if your stuff lacks pictures of boobs. People on the Internet are there for boob pictures, celebrity gossip, and health concerns. They aren't there to read analysis about health care legislation or trips to the zoo with your kids. They want boobs and Snooki. 

From time to time, I contemplate setting up a real bottom-feeding blog that would give people exactly what they want. But I choose to use my powers for good, so I've held back. 

So what's an average blogger to do?  You've been blogging for six months and the only people who have shown up are people googling, "weird and foot and disease and severe stink." What next? 

Well, you have to network to find the right readers. The right readers are people who like your stuff, will come back again, will comment and add to the general festive spirit that you are fostering on you blog. 

You can find them by networking with other bloggers who write similar stuff. You put those bloggers on your blogroll and leave comments on their blog. You link up with them on Twitter. Then, you'll link to each others' work and pass readers back and forth. Mutual linking doesn't happen enough anymore, but it is still the best way to have a online conversation and to bring in readers. 

The mommy bloggers are really into using Facebook and Twitter to promote their blogs. I rarely use Twitter to promote the blog. I've never mentioned Apt. 11d on Facebook, because I like to keep those worlds separate. Otherwise, there would be mad political mud wrestling at the Thanksgiving dinner table. 

It's harder to get people reading your stuff than it used to be, because there isn't as much cross linking, and the professional blogs suck up all the traffic. So, new methods must be employed, like pimping yourself out to big professional websites by writing guest posts. The big professional websites will provide a link back to your blog. 

You can do a little SEO to get people to your archives. If you do a book review, make sure the title of your post is "Book Review: Title of the Book." I tend to think SEO is a waste of time, so I don't do it much. I want loyal readers who come back over and over again, because they like the topics that I cover. Random Google Searchers show up for 30 seconds and then never show up again. They don't leave comments. Because I hate them so much, I load up those old posts that bring in Random Google Searchers with ugly and obnoxious Amazon ads. 

Good content is really the best way to bring in people and then keep them. Provide interesting, funny, original, consistent material with the occasional photo. Keep typos to a minimum, but they are a hazard of the trade. One three-paragraph post per day with two or three links is a reliable formula. Link to posts in your archives. If your interests are very narrow, then you aren't going to get many viewers. If they are too broad, then you'll be lost in the crowd. 

But do not keep score. The rise of professional bloggers and writers makes it impossible to become a superstar, unless you have a useful and unusual talent or you flash your boobs on a daily basis. So just have fun with it. Blogging can be a means to another end.