I started a blog a couple of weeks ago called “50 Books for 50 Bucks.” It’s a book-review blog with all review materials purchased at my local dollar store.
Anyway, two weeks in, I have 11 official followers on blogspot, plus a handful of people who have told me they bookmarked it and intend to check in regularly. I would like to get this number WAY up, but I don’t know how to go about it.
Those of you who have successful blogs (or who just know it all), what are the most effective ways to promote my new blog without becoming a spammer or otherwise annoying people?
Not that I have scads of followers or anything, but if I’m writing regularly, I always post a link on my Facebook page, so my friends will know I’ve coughed up something new. Also if I have time, I try to participate in the Wordpress “community” by reading and responding to other blogs. The software provides a link to my blog if I’m signed in. I figure if I appear sufficiently witty and interesting in my comments, they’ll want to read more of my bon mots. Usually at the very least, the blogger I’ve commented on will give me a look-see.
I would also be interested in finding out how to make oneself more visible. I’ve never written anything before that’s been so woefully under-read as my little old blog.
I also post to my Facebook when I update, as well as in my LiveJournal. I’m considering making a separate page on FB for my blog so I don’t have to spam my friends.
Are either of you active on Twitter? It’s no good if you do nothing but promote your blog there, but if you’re tweeting fairly regularly on topics that interest you, you’ll build a following, slowly, and can then tweet when you’ve got a new blog post.
Yes, connect your Twitter and Facebook accounts so that every tweet gets automatically posted as a Facebook status. Then tweet every new blog entry.
Also, read and comment on OTHER blogs. I get hits via the comment links every time I do that–especially if I can get on the first page of comments on a popular blog.
Respond to comments people leave on your blog. People like attention.
If blog circles still exist (and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen one in my particular blog niche), join one or two.
Make blogging friends. Write guest entries for each other.
Have giveaways. Maybe offer to send each book to one lucky reader once you’re done with it.
Or, take advantage of the networking on book-reading websites like LibraryThing and BookCrossing. Promote the fact that you’re giving away these books and blogging about them, as much as those websites will let you.
Post REGULARLY and OFTEN. The more posts you have, the more Wordpress links you get and the more vibrant and interesting your content is bound to be. I’d recommend posting every day for the first year of your blog’s life.
Have good pictures. If you don’t know how to take and process good pictures, learn.
I’ve rather stopped blogging in the past year for various reasons — partially including the fact that I hoped to move it away from Dreamhost to faster hosts, but found that due to the idiosyncratic structures of Dreamhost, trained professionals can’t move the site elsewhere — but I would suggest both limited ambitions for any non-current-political blog, it’s a vast audience on the internet with very little inducement to visit one site at random, and an initial regular schedule of posting for the first year to build up a corpus of material that registers in Google’s databanks so that people come to your blog from searches.
[ Also, new blogs with nothing posted for a few months look rather sad. Just about 10 posts hanging there. Although, remember, even if people kindily visit your blog either on invitation or search, it is very very rare for them to read back beyond the first page. So if you are offering anything make explicit links to those posts either in later posts or on the sidebar. ]
Self-host to maintain absolute control; keep the platform updated regularly, and make frequent back-ups; and never spam anywhere on the internet for links. Try for aesthetic appeal and pretty pictures. It is acceptable to ask other blog-owners to swap links, although I never cared to.
In other words, don’t expect a lot from the mysteries of SEO — which exists to keep it’s promoters better off — and wait: after four years I get around 50-60 visits a day, 90% of whom are probably unhuman.
I asked for tips on how to PROMOTE my blog, not how to keep readers once they get there. If you’re going to be unhelpfully jerky, at least read the OP first.
Excellent suggestions. I already plan to do giveaways once I have a few more readers.
I don’t really think I can do more than one book review a week, but I’m planning to start making other posts on non-review days and will be adhering to the review-every-Saturday schedule without fail. I know that offering regular content on a predictable schedule is important.
This thread was a good idea for promotion. I dropped in on your blog when you started it, but was waiting until you had a couple of reviews up to commit. Thanks for the reminder. I logged in*, I read, I signed up as a follower. The reviews are well done and the hook is wonderful.
I don’t have many facebook friends, but I’ll post a promo.
I may not have followed, but I had set a bookmark.
Giveaways are a great idea. I think regular posting, and time, will get you some readers. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a good fast way to boost your readership - promoting it everywhere might come off as pushy and put people off.
All the other ideas in the thread are good ones - make your blog searchable, have links to it on Facebook, and be active in the blog community to make a name for yourself.
Ultimately, I want to make a little money, yes. I’m in talks with an online bookseller friend of mine to link to her store for people who might want to get their own copy of a given book, with a percentage for me. I don’t expect it to generate much, though.
My blog gets about 100 hits on an average day, with occasional days spiking up to 300. I recommend books all the time. I have an Amazon Associates shop… in three years I haven’t made a single sale from it.
I gave up on trying to make money from my blog. It’s a hopeless proposition until you’ve got a serious, thousands-of-hits, hundreds-of-comments kind of following.
Agreed. I was also waiting. Thanks for making a thread to remind me.
Oh, and, wow, is that in depth. I at first thought each little subsection was a different book. I don’t think I’d be able to both read a book and write that much about it in such a short time, and still apparently have time to want to create other blog posts on other days.
I think I’m missing something in the Twitter equation. I have a Twitter account, and it links to my blog; if I post to twitter, it shows up in a space I have designated (on the theory that there will be a couple fresh things on the blog even if I haven’t posted a whole post). But how does this reel in the masses?
I have about 10 people I know following me. Who else can see what I write? No one, that I’m aware of. What do you do with Twitter that makes it suitable for mass-information dissemination? (Say that three times fast.)
Start following other people, some of whom will follow you back. Become a member of the Twitter community – it’s a conversation, not just an advertisement (kinda like here, only at 140 characters at a time).
I think you might be a little. I think I am too, on my blog, so I’m going to set some time aside soon to edit the entries.
Maybe you could post a link to your review on the authors’ websites, if they have one. It would only draw in people looking for that author, which wouldn’t be many, but it’d only take a couple of minutes to do.