This December will mark 15 years since I started blogging. I started with the now defunct site Themestream, and shortly after it went down, I moved to Blogger. Actually, in a sense, I’ve been blogging longer than that. For 3 years prior, I was writing articles for a weekly ezine.
Anyhow, over the years, I’ve learned a few tricks for driving traffic to blogs. One key to building a community around your blog is writing compelling content.
What you write should make people think, answer their questions, or provoke them to comment. If someone stops to think about something you’ve written, it will help them remember you in the future. If they came to your blog after typing a question in a search engine and your blog post answers that question, they’ll see you as an expert.
Either way, they may feel prompted to comment. Compelling content engages people and helps them find value in it. And if they find value, they may be prompted to tell you.
Another way to be compelling is to take a strong position on a topic. Be bold. Take a stand. Write with authority. And don’t be afraid of controversy. Taking a strong position on a controversial topic will position you as a thought leader, but it will also attract people who agree with you and those who don’t. Take a strong position, but be prepared to back it up.
A side benefit of writing compelling content is that it also improves your search engine optimization, improving your long tail search results in the long run.
Compelling content is one of the best ways to build a community and drive traffic.
It’s pretty bad yellow pages want to build me a new one. I need help with Facebook.
Drop me an email at info@hotpepper.ca and we can talk about what you need for Facebook. :)