I need and audience an how I’ll get one

Martin • 20th Apr 2011 • Musings • audience, Blogging, traffic

As I write this post I lay on my bed at 751am with my mobile in hand looking at my google analytics amazed at how I’ve experienced a 3000% increase in visits to this blog. Unfortunately the numbers don’t always say the truth as you can see below, this increase is nothing at all. So now I ponder on how to get an audience.

The number one killer of new blogs is lack of traffic and all over the Internet you’ve got tonnes of bloggers providing you free courses on how to gain traffic. Personally I’m not much of a reader especially when it comes to reading things online. I spend already much time killing my eyes working on my projects hence reading more might just damage them. I’m more of a take action guy, I’ve got a short attention span and I believe lots of people are same. So what I’ll try to do will be to provide only actionable content on this blog. No fancy headlines. Just the core material or lesson.

First….

Why do I need an audience?

I need an audience to subscribe to my newsletters
I need and audience to subscribe to my RSS feeds
I need an audience to comment on my blog posts telling me how great or bad I write
I need an audience to form a tribe ( seems to be the new in thing)

Seriously I don’t care if you don’t comment on my articles what I care is if you really find my content enticing enough to make you want to take action and subscribe to my feed to hear me speak every morning when you get up. Comments are good though but most importantly is getting an established audience in the form of RSS feeds subscribers.

What I will like most of all is to provide value to my readers. Content which they will feel excited about. I’ll try to keep things short , sweet and straight to the point ( I’m on my mobile so this will be quite easy)

So how do I intend to get an audience ?

After reading a couple of posts and making some observances I realised that the only way to get this “audience” is to be were they are and go where they go. Earlier I got to know a blogger called James from infopreneur. He inspired me a lot because of his can do attitude . He held down a full time job but still managed to be everywhere on the internet, commenting , retweeting making videos and writing some powerful content. And it worked put quite well for him as he grew his subscriber list, his twitter followers and the number of comments be got on each post were tremendous. So I’ll do exactly what he did.

1. Research, find my target audience:

I spent a while day looking for blogs with authority and trying to compile a list of 100+ blogs I’ll be visiting, commenting and sharing their articles. Trust me this wasn’t easy at all.( now I know how it feels pike to be a VA)

I started by creating an excel file and only filled it with two types of information : website + twitter and occasionally Facebook . This is because most bloggers have those three online presences.

Next I went to the most popular bloggers I know about that is the SPI’s , the viperchill’s etc. I went to bloggers I trust and bloggers whom I like they way they operated. Given that I liked those community of theirs I knew I could find other like me there.

I scanned through their posts with the most comments and started adding the details of those who commented on those posts to my excel file. So now I’ve found my audience, what next ? ( by the way I came up with a list of around 148 blogs, not bad)

2.Now I need to get them to notice me!

By noticing me I mean comment on my articles, share my articles to their community and so forth.

So how will I do that ?

a. Blog commenting :

Yeah, yeah nothing much I can say about this tactic as it is quite straight forward together with the other tactics I’ll be using. I think when you comment on Someones else’s blog there are three things they are most likely to do :

1. Visit your blog and read your about page
2. Comment on one of your articles
3. Share one of your articles

And it works kind of like a circle , the more you comment on their articles the kore they’ll return to your blog and probably do 2.,3. again and again till you form a relationship with them. This relationship is built up through what you present ie your personality, our principles and your goals.

Note not every blogger will do this or return this favour because they are flooded with similar people like you, especially “big” bloggers, they are less likely to do this. So my list is full of up and coming bloggers like me together with mid established blogs . The latter are more likely to return the favour especially if your comment ADDs value to their post. I stress on the value part as it is really really important. You don’t need to write a 500 word comment to add value , just simply pointing out something you disagree with, or will like to change, or even spotting an error ( by error I don’t necessarily mean spelling mistakes) will add more value.

b. Share their articles

This is another killer move (I think) . Sharing articles of other bloggers show that you care and really appreciate the hours they spent penning down that article. It’s your own way of saying “thank you , for this post and I’m going to tell my friends about it”
Again this will lead to these people visiting your blog and returning the favour as above required that your post is of value too.
This will most often not work with “big” bloggers because theyve already got thousands of people doing this for them already, so how do you differentiate yourself from the other thousands to get yourself noticed?

When researching for my 150+ audience I noticed that most articles that were shared were most often than not “tweeted” only . So what I’ll do is go the extra mile and :

-facebook share the post
-tweet the post
-digg the post
-bookmark the post on delicious

Doing this for absolutely 100+ blogs?! I must be crazy right ? Yes but this are one of the things that will differentiate me from you!

Other tactics I could use will be guest posting but I find this quite hard to do as I work from my mobile plus I’ll have nothing much to say since I don’t want to be one who teaches others how to make money/traffic/blogging/commenting/etc if I can’t do it or perfect it myself (I’m not saying I can’t write this posts or I’ve got nothing to teach, I’m just saying it is not yet the right time to do such)

To conclude this , I’ll leave you with a couple of things I discovered on lots of blogs when “finding my audience”

1. Where the hell are your social media links?

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past decade you would have noticed that social media (Facebook, twitter, YouTube, whatever you’re into) is the new way to keep in touch. Many people like myself will like to follow you but when you make it as hard as he’ll to find you, there is no way I’ll do so. Given that I went to those sites specifically to find those links I must admit I had a hard time finding them. Imagine how other visitors who just happen to land on your site my feel like when they can’t find those links? They wouldn’t bother looking any further as it’s your fault you didn’t do your job properly!

Most blogs I four which had their social media presence put on a prominent position in their blog had a higher number of followers, readers etc compared to those who didn’t.
Also , those who made it easier to follow them, subscribe etc also had more opt-in’s than those who didn’t .

Take action :

- display your social media presence prominently at the top o your blog. Make it the first thing people see when they land and look at your sidebar or header.

- Make it easier for people to subscribe, follow, add on facebook or whatever you want them to do without having them to leave your website. Because

1. They might just leave and leave for good.

2. Your giving them time to think about if they really want to. Basically your given them time for different things to interrupt their decision making process.

3. Some may have a slow Internet connection and waiting for your page to load might not be high o their priority list at the moment.

2. Blogger influence

Though this in fact is good that your influenced to take action as a result of what “they” are doing, it shouldn’t take away YOUR CREATIVITY / PERSONALITY.
I scanned through lots if blogs and I came across lots of “niche site competitions” etc yeah its cool, it’s a great way of making some passive income but it is not YOUR WAY. Don’t follow the pack and do what they do, LISTEN, LEARN and do it your own way. There are thousands of other ways to make money online, there are thousands of other competitions or challenge you could hold and behold there are millions of other things you could do rather than a challenge.

Take action:

- get your old inky pen and some twisted paper, jot down the various things you are good at. Add on a other crumply paper the things you will like to learn to do. And on a other one, add the things in common between those two papers which can be used to make money online.

- Go to my old friend google and search for places were you can learn this specific or general skills. Learn the basics, one at a time. Apply it to what you’ll like to do to earn money (3rd paper) .

- Document your progress on your blog, this will create a sense of accountability and will help you do things your own way. ( do this and get back to me with the results)

3. Get your RSS feed sorted

The were lots of websites and blogs I visited which didn’t have their RSS feeds set up. Again lots of visitors will like your content and will be more than happy to wake up each morning and read what you have to say. But how is this possible, when you haven’t given them the opportunity to, yet you complain of not having any person read your blog?

Take action:

- go to www.feedburner.com sign up for a gmail account and set up your rss feed. They’ll even provide you step by steps o how to do that and even a free plugin to use on your wordpress blog.

4. What ever happened to being creative?

I’ve noticed that since the prominent rise of lots of prominent bloggers , other new comers can’t seem to abstain fro using part of these bloggers names I their own domain names. This is something which obviously you can’t change now as it will require you to buy another domain name , transfer your files etc so this will most probably apply to you , who have not yet set up your blog. Be creative, be remarkable try and make a difference and make your blog name stick in my mind long after I’ve left your website.

Take action:

- I will love to tell you what name to choose but this will go against what I’ve been saying about been creative.

Finally am off, I’ll be trying during the next couple of weeks to carry out the plan outlined above in a bid to build an audience and I’ll report back to you if this was successful or not. If possible my target is to comment and share 100+ posts daily. “impossible is nothing” (credit : adidas)

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