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Is Your Blog a Ghost Town?
July 12, 2008
You know what I’m talking about. None of us know or even heard of the ghost town blogs. That’s because we’ve never seen them. They simply were created and just . . . left there. The only traffic they receive is from their lazy owners who won’t bare the thought of putting some elbow-grease into advertising. I don’t know about you, but I’m not too fond of ghosts . . .
When it comes to having a blog a lot of great things come to mind as to what it takes to make a high quality blog. The obvious will come to mind; things such as: quality content, good writing skills, and proper monetization. But there is one variable that can make everything I just said above irrelevant.
What is this variable you speak of?
Traffic. Without it nothing really matters. If no one comes to your site to see what you wrote then your content will simply sit in the archives, and will eventually be buried in the archives.
How can you fix this problem?
Before you begin using your traffic strategies make sure you have: unique quality content, good writing skills and proper grammar, proper monetization, and a pleasing theme design. All of these things will impress your new visitors, and at the same time you earn some money from monetization. You want to impress your new readers because you want them to become loyal readers; that later become subscribers–or vise-versa, either way is fine.
Why is this important?
Well the point of this is you want whatever traffic that ever does come to your site want to come back, and read some more. This way the little bit of traffic you start off with can be returning visitors that keep your site alive, and keep you motivated. So it definitely helps to have everything nice and pretty before you start any strategy or campaign to send traffic to your site.
Where does the part about getting traffic come in?
Right now.
There are many options for you to choose from: social networking, bookmarking, and social media sites, article submission, link exchanges, guest blogging, directory submission, design galleries, and several others. Today I’m going to Focus on 3 that are the most effective in my opinion.
Social Networking
FaceBook, and MySpace are the king of the crop. Join these sites, add as many friends as humanly possible, keep contact with them through bulletins–simple as that. Believe it or not, but people make a living off traffic from these 2 social networking sites.
Social Bookmarking
Sites like StumbleUpon and Digg rain champ in my opinion–I’m sure someone would beg to differ, but I like these 2 best. The way this works is by submitting your content into StumbleUpon; members from the site see it, and are able to give a review about it, or give it a stumble or thumbs up. On Digg, you can also submit your site; members from the site will see it, and they are able to give a digg if they like it and comment on the submission.
The stumbles and diggs are simply votes; the more you get the faster your submission moves up to the front page, in effect getting tons of traffic. Like Facebook and Myspace, it’s a good idea to add as many friends as humanly possible on social bookmarking sites as well; it’s also important to message them asking for a stumble or digg but don’t dare think about spamming!
Guest Blogging
This is great for those of you who can write well and are well rounded on a certain topic. If you can find a blog that’s related to yours that’s already an authority in the niche, and gets tons of traffic every day, then you should be preparing a series of guest posts to let loose on their blog (with their permission of course).
Find out what they haven’t been covering lately on their site, or something they haven’t written about in a while, and write something about that; a fresh new version with all the latest updates since the last time it was covered. It’s even better if you can come up with a completely new topic that relates to the blog and what it’s about in a savvy sort of way.
Find more sites that are: related to yours, receive tons of traffic, and have your same target audience. Write several guest posts that you know they haven’t covered in a while then email the webmaster with the first one. If what you wrote is any good chances are they won’t say no; just write well, and know what you’re talking about.
If you use these 2 methods it’ll kick some life into your ghost town of a blog; I don’t know about you, but I’m scared of ghosts, so go on ahead and apply these strategies, and I might just end up at your blog 
Yeah, I have been guilty of the ghost town effect. When I first started blogging, I just plopped stuff out there and waited for traffic from search engines. But, then I realized I had to come out of my shell and mix it up and socialize with people. It definitely had an effect on traffic.
Great post! Good informationa and very sound advice. This post reminds me of the importance of social networking. - Thanks
Clickfire - Likewise, tumbleweeds rolled across this blog once, and you could see the sun setting in the horizon.
Donna - You’re welcome, and thank you!