5 ways to find more readers for your blog
Blogging
| Written by Ahson Rafiq on 8 February 2008 - Tags: Better Blogging, Blogging, Finding more rss readers, Rss Readers, RSS SubscribersFinding the right kind of readerbase is really hard for bloggers i have a few techniques that worked really well for me, and here they are.
Find the right social networks
Finding the right social network that best suits your blog is crucial if you want to be big on social media marketing, for example:
- Search Engine/Blogging related articles do great at Sphinn
- ‘Best of’ and extra ordinary/breaking news kind of posts do great at digg
Just like that you need to find the right social bookmarking site for your blog and go all out on it!
Participate on other blogs
aIts important for you to go out of your blog once in a while and go around to other people’s blog and let them know what you think about the topic at hand, don’t act better then them, you are just like any other blogger, you have an opinion and a blog 
Participating on blogs gets you a link and some traffic sometimes, but most of all what you are looking for is “come-back” traffic or what you would want to call ‘readers’ so be polite and courteous and as professional as possible.
Remember, a little courtesy goes a long way!
Using forums and communities
If you go to forums that are of the same niche as your blog then you should volunteer to either explain a term or a trick or write a tutorial or a how-to on a topic that people seem to talk about alot and/or want to read!
This is the highest form of user interactivity a blog can have, this way you are not just guessing what users might want but you know what they want and you have informed them that there will be a certain article on a certain topic at a particular date which will not only get you a reader but maybe a contributor/commenter as well!
Trackbacking the top dog
Every niche has that one blog that you look up to alot, although its a good choice to comment on it but why not send a trackback and blog on the same topic but with your point of view on it?
Every trackback leaves a comment on the trackbacked blog with a linkback to your post, that sends you some really targeted traffic, now the oinly thing left to do is for you to write a great post on your point of view, something that will keep every single reader from the target blog!
Converting traffic to rss readers
If you have lets say “1000 visitors per day” but you only have “50 readers” then that means you are losing on all that potential reader traffic, the best way to convert that traffic to readers is to either:
- Do-Follow your comments
90% of the readers online are webmasters, webmasters that want links!
If you announce that you are going to do-follow all your comment links then that will convert at least 60% of the traffic coming your way to commentors and they will subscribe to your feed so that they could get the first comment on future posts! - Holding a competition
If you value your blog’s strength you won’t pull a “do-follow” instead hold a competition something like:
“The person with the most comments this week gets a free copy of my e-book”
“The highest commentor this week will get a free sponsored review on my blog!”
“The highest commentor this month will get a 3 month sitewide blogroll link!”But theres a drawback, as soon as the competition is over the readers will want to go away and in alot of ways the traffic and boom might die out so have something really good planned like money making guides or something that people really want to read/learn!
There are more posts on this topic to come, Subscribe to my updates for instant notifications!
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February 8th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
[...] 5 ways to find more readers for your blog [...]
February 9th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
We all know that no one likes to read neutral, boring posts, they like passion. Whether or not they agree with it is something else, but it definitely encourages comments and interaction.Also social networks are definitely one of the great ways to get the word out. It’s exactly what it says.. social network… you shouldn’t blog in your own world if you want readers
February 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Great tips you have there, I agree that the best way to get return traffic is from RSS feeds, especially if you have lots of subscribers.
February 9th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
I find social bookmarking helps quite a bit, so if you can, get other readers to social bookmark your blog for you, as then that brings a lot more traffic rather than the same person bookmarking the same blog over and over again. Also the competition idea sounds like it would work great for a while, but as you said afterwards the readers would die down. Overall I like the do-follow idea the best, as it sounds like it would work well for as long s you would want it to.
-Commes
February 10th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Great advice, i will definatley be taking all of this into account some time soon.
February 10th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Great guide. It has a lot of very interesting information. I would have never thought that participating on other blogs or holding a competition could increase readers. I always learn something new with every article of yours I read.
February 10th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
How to hold competition if there is nobody coming to my blog? lol, I mean, in what condition should we hold competition?
February 11th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
nice tips.
thanks for the article
=]
Well, i think if you’ll have a competition make sure 25% of the visitors are always visiting your blog and make sure the competition is easy. so that all the visitors are capable of doing the comp.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I didn’t really think about promoting my blog on other blogs, but it is a very good idea.
I’m not sure about competitions though, I think it’s best to do competitions in a more forum like environment where you know who is who in the community.
February 15th, 2008 at 1:17 am
Good tips for up and coming bloggers…
Def don’t over do social marketing in one network all by yourself, the early Bloggers had it easy, all they had to do was make good content to be found.
Now a days bloggers need teams to help, or at least a few friends
February 18th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Thank you very much . I am creating a website at the moment and these tips will really help me to get more users into site .
February 20th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Your tip about holding some kind of a prize for loyal commentors is nice. You again make me think.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
[...] blogged alot about how to get readers, one of my most talked about post was the 5 ways to get more rss readers but like i said earlier in my seo tips post that trends change with time so you have to change with [...]