The other night I was chatting with The XBroker, Jeff Corbett and he was sharing with me how he was stunned by the amount of traffic his recent post, Survey Says...Realtors Suck! In less than 48 hours, the post had over 10,000 views. As I began writing this post, it had been viewed, 11,951 times and clicked on to be read, 11,483 times. Personally I was blown away by these stats!
When I was selling Myrtle Beach Real Estate full time as a real estate agent and had just a personal website, the highest amount of traffic my website ever received was just over 3,000 hits in a month! So, I began to investigate my blog to see what kind of traffic my posts receive on ActiveRain. This is post #474 for me. I started looking at the statistics on my blog to see what kind of traffic my posts have been receiving. For the sake of time, I used my last 25 posts to figure out my average number of clicks and views.
The last 25 posts I have written have received 40,699 views and 9124 click thru's to be read. This averages to over 22% click through rate. Or, 1 out of every 5 visitors to my blog is clicking into my post to read it. Rainmaker accounts on average receive around 500 views per post. But, let me show you a few tips to increase traffic even more and get them reading your posts.
First, you need to have a catchy title. Having a title that peaks someones curiosity will always be more effective than a good descriptive title. If Jeff had written his title as, "California Association of Realtors 2008 Home Seller Survey Results" instead of "Survey Says...Realtors Suck!" the activity would have been much less. Remember, over 10,000 views in less than 48 Hours! Here is a free tip to all the members on how to increase your chances of getting featured.... TITLE TITLE TITLE! I view over 300 posts daily and if your title doesn't make me click on the post, your chances of being featured go way down.
Next, be consistent! A consistent blogger is a successful blogger. before I go any further, let me insert this caveat. Consistency is different than just placing up a bunch of blah blah junk on your blog 3 times a day. What I mean by being a consistent blogger is someone who writes on a regular basis (daily or every other day) good quality content each post. When you read through a post by that person, you find a new nugget of information that is important. Writing a short 3 line blog is a waste of your time and mine. Something that short is nothing more than an over sized Tweet and needs to be used in that forum.
Remember, the consumer has showed up to your blog hungry to learn something. If you are not feeding them the nutrition they came in search of, they will move on to someone else that will satisfy their needs.
Thirdly, Be as committed as a Major League Broadcaster. Last week one of my favorite announcers, Harry Kalas the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies passed away suddenly. While it was a rather tragic and very sad event, one thing I learned from Harry was to be committed. He was the Phllies announcer for over 30 years. He became well known for his great "outta here" calls. But his commitment to a team that has the most losses of any other professional team had to be hard at times. But Harry knew that it was only a season and that the Phillies would return to greatness which happened last year as they won the world series.
When it comes to blogging, we need to have that same level of commitment. I talk to people on a daily basis that say blogging is a waste of time. Whenever I ask, how long have you done it, they normally respond with, "oh, 4 days, and I did 2 posts with no leads! As Brad Andersohn says, "It isn't a sprint, but more like a Marathon!" Give it time, and whenever you want to throw in the towel, watch this clip.
Live on the edge but don't fall off! My father used to tell me all time, "Jeremy, there is a difference between being cutting edge and bleeding edge" When you are writing your posts, using some "edginess" will start conversations among your readers. One of the main points in writing a blog post is to get interaction with your readers through comments. Be Cautious though to not push the envelope too far and go from that cutting edge to bleeding everywhere. If that happens, your readers will disappear.
Share your expertise in a "No Holds Barred" manner. One of the things I have been gifted with is the ability to learn new gadgets quick and implement them into a business plan. Many of these items I have learned I have shared with members here on ActiveRain through multiple tutorials. As I stated before, interaction is an important between your consumers/members is an important aspect to the success. The posts that continually get comments on are the posts of tutorials on how to do this, or how to use that.
Don't get consumed by comments! Did I just contradict myself? I think I did! When I say don't be consumed by comments, what I mean is this: Do not give up and think your blog is not working just because you do not receive a gold star or 100 comments. As I began looking back over my stats I noticed that the posts that had the most views & clicks were not my featured posts. Nor were the posts with over 100 comments or even the one with 791 comments! Instead, it was the posts that were consumer oriented & Localism. Several of my Localism posts have been viewed well over 3,000 times!
I know I made it sound super easy to get a good level of readership to your blog, but in all honesty it really is! If you take the time and put forth the effort, your end results can be amazing!
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I am the Co-Founder of 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors. If you would like more information on any of the topics discussed in this blog, please contact me directly. Also, please visit my other online consulting blog for more social media tips, tricks and enhancements.
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