It’s Time To Go Back To The Basics!

Is you blog currently treading water and you can’t seem to work out why you are not getting anywhere with it? I mean you are trying out all the latest networking tools, you are dabbling in social media and even bought a few ad spots on other blogs - but still haven’t really made any progress in ages!

This is where I find myself at the moment. Sure I just came from a competition where I gained over 80 new rss readers, but my traffic hasn’t jumped that much, my alexa rating has gone from 105,000 to 130,000 and visitor feedback (comments) have not really improved either.

I tried:

• Contests
• Entrecard
• Social Media

And none made a huge increase in my daily traffic or feedback. Now I am not saying that any of these things are wrong ways to promote your blog, I just believe that we need to simplify things. I am a massive fan of making processes as simple as possible.

So here is what I believe that bloggers (including myself) have to do, if they want their blog to take off, to become talked about in their niche (and outside), the rss count to grow dramatically, and visitor contribution to increase - plus the result of all this will be more people wanting to advertise, paying you more money, people wanting to guest post on your blog - leaving you with more time, you having more influence in your niche. It is this simple:

Go Back To Basics!

What were you told when you first started blogging? This is the tips I was given:

1. Write Quality Unique Content
2. Network by Commenting on Other Blogs, and Forums

I told you I like simple, but think about it. How many of you are even doing this well? I know I’m not.

Why are we constantly looking for new ways to promote and grow our blog, when all we have to do is start with the basics! When we master those then look at other ways to improve our blogs reach and authority, but they should be like the desert - and your quality content and basic networking is your main meal.

How many of you were told as children, “You can’t have any desert until you finish your vege’s.” Why do we try and do it in our lives as adults?

So here is what I’m talking about:

Write Quality Unique Content!

How much time do you spend on your blog posts? I know for me it is probably 10 minutes max! Which I believe is terrible. How do I expect people to want to read something I just whipped together just so people had something to read? It is like your favourite author writing a new book each day - writing what first comes to his (or her) head and not even going back over it to make sure it makes sense.

I was reading a post yesterday (can’t remember where), where they blogger said that they wrote blog posts from 6am -8am each morning! That is two hours of writing a day - you can bet that they have quality content.

I had a think about what my favourite blogs where to read, and I came up with this list:

• Blogtrepreneur
• Entrepreneurs Journey
• Caroline Middlebrook
• Winning With The Web

And one thing I realised was that each one of these had a focus on long and indepth posts, with a preference to quality over quantity. Now I am not going to get into the should we post everyday (these bloggers don’t!) but I will let their feed count and authority speak for itself!

Network by Commenting on Other Blogs, and Forums

Sure there are a heap of ways to get traffic and readers to your blog, but you have to be consistent in your prospecting.Now I’m not saying you should only comment other blogs, and post of forums. The point I’m trying to make is find a proven way of gaining traffic and put some effort into! Don’t change from one method to another - find one that you think works and stick with it. Then when you have mastered that, start looking at other methods - however keep the proven method going.

Personally I like comment on other blogs best. Why? Because I like to know what is happening in my niche, so I read a lot of blogs - why not double task and leave a helpful comment while I’m there?

Forums can be fantastic - Digital Point especially if you are in the make money online niche! I have been pretty slack with this one and really should pick up the ball. I was getting quite a fair bit of traffic from forums but for the last couple of months I haven’t really been active in any.

But I guess the main point of this post is to encourage you all to keep things simples and concentrate of the basics of successful blogging!