How do you market your blog?
I came across a good post today on Problogger, and it’s very pertinent to what we’re talking about here so I thought I’d share it with you and and expand on a couple of things in the off-chance that you don’t read Problogger and have missed it!
The Post is called ‘Understanding the Blog Lifecycle to Prevent Common Downfalls’ and was a guest post written by Jeff from BuzzMyBlog… if you haven’t read it, you should go and have a look.
Jeff talks about the following 6 steps in a blogs lifecycle:
I know the graph doesn’t really specify the time frames involved, but personally I think the road between steps 1 and 2 should be a lot flatter. I haven’t seen too many new blogs (except those from people who already have a significant social media presence or an earlier blog with decent traffic to launch from), that don’t struggle along for the first few months before they experience sharp, sustainable rises in traffic.
A lot of new bloggers don’t use EntreCard, is it really that good for driving some initial traffic to a new blog? I know I’ve never had the desire to use it… which is kinda weird since my blog is targeted at bloggers and EntreCard is a community of bloggers. I’ve never been a fan of traffic exchange programs, but if it’s ‘better than sliced bread’, who am I to argue (note to self: signup to EntreCard today!).
I don’t think the lack of using a service like EntreCard really changes the overall steps in the lifecycle mentioned here. You can substitute EntreCard with just about any other social network (StumbleUpon, Digg etc.) and it won’t really change a lot.
There is one last thing I would like to point out - if you visit BuzzMyBlog today, you’ll notice that Jeff is making the most of his guest spot on Problogger by tailoring his current post ‘Welcome Problogger Readers’ to one that is sure-fired to grab the attention of all the new readers clicking through to check out his site. In that one post he sums up what his blog is about and points out where his best content is - a great way to capitalise on the spotlight from appearing on a popular blog.
Two things for me to do today… 1) Read BuzzMyBlog, which I haven’t seen before, and 2) signup to EntreCard (you’ll see the widget up here shortly, I’ll let you know about my experiences with it in a couple of weeks).
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Hi Martin. Thanks for writing about my post. I’m glad you liked it. For the record, I do agree that the initial curve of the graph is a lot flatter for most blogs!
See you around.