Bring in web users with Blogging

Want Site Traffic? Learn How Blogging Lures Visitors to You

Producing great content is a strategy that a few businesses overlook.  Let’s take this example: you just had your site designed (or redesigned).  You’ve got all of the features where you want them, the copy is crisp, the coloring is smart, and the back-end is search optimized.  Now what?

If no one is coming to your site to look at it, then it’s not doing its job.  Luring traffic in, whether for the first time or a repeat, is an important step in the process.  And the key to doing that is to show how valuable you are, how great your ideas are, how generous you are with solutions.  Providing content is a killer way to do just that.  Even better, a collection of great content builds on itself.  It compounds and expands.  As long as you keep adding content, you’ll have some great momentum going.

Consider these ways that you can use content to get attention and draw people to your site.

Blogging

Posting blogs that your audience agrees are useful is a great way to attract traffic to your site.  How do you find out what they think is useful?  Talk to your customers or clients and find out what their biggest worries and problems are in your expertise, and blog about those things.  The result: you’ll be the reliable, approachable, smart source that takes care of them.

Don’t be afraid to give away your whole process for free on the blog—if someone reading it has a DIY mindset, then they wouldn’t buy from you anyway.  Or, alternatively, they try what you do and realize that it’s easier just to hire you.  Your customers or clients ultimately want to pay for you to tailor your offerings to their situation—after all, you’re the expert here!

Aggregating

One option is to search the internet for topics that your readers care about and post a collection of those resources on your site.  There are three main benefits to this approach:

1. You are recognized as a thought leader.
2. You build a community who follow your posts and are eager to see what you choose to include.
3. You get the attention of the original authors, who may share your content with their audience in turn.

But remember to post your reactions with a link.  Give credit to the writer, attribute the piece, and link back to the article.  Don’t, under any circumstances, copy and paste the entire article and post that on your site—even if you give credit.  It’s bad for SEO, and it’s generally seen as malicious.

Offering to Guest Post

Guest posting is where you reach out to another blogger that your audience might read and offer to write a post for them.  These blogs could be local or community blogs as easily as they might be interest blogs.

When you offer to write for them, the blog owner gets to take a break and let you teach the audience something that they wouldn’t be able to.  You, of course, get exposure with their audience.  The result is cross-pollination in the blog world, and everyone is happy—the audience learns more, the blogger looks well-connected by bringing you in, and you get to talk to folks that you might not have been able to otherwise.

Are you thinking about ways that you can share your knowledge, cultivate recognition, and bring traffic to your site?  What topics does your audience care about?  What topics will you write about?  Tell us what you think with your reply