Getting Readers to Your Thanet Blog
Written by Matt B · first published 03/09/2008
Recently a number of people have brought up the topic of getting people to read their Thanet blog. Some have wondered why no one reads their blog and others have wondered why everyone reads certain blogs but not others. That's a huge topic and I am only going to scratch the surface today.
Most readers of Thanet blogs read those blogs because they discovered and liked them. The majority of traffic to Thanet based blogs is from regular readers - readers that come back time and again. Before you can have a fan base of even one or two people you need to have been found.
People will find your blog in one of four basic ways: Search, Recommendation, Social Discovery, Random Discovery.
Before we look at how people find you in any more detail we need to understand what a person will do when they have found you. Once we have a grasp of this area which can differ from site to site and even from post to post we can build an idea of what a reader interested in our content might like, do and think and we can craft our offering to meet that.
Once people are looking at your blog they will leave never to return or they will look at the page they are on. Once our fictional reader is looking at a page on your site they will at some point determine that they (a) like it or (b) hate it. If they hate it they will close the page and do something else.
Expect at least 85% of the people that come to any given page to leave that page without looking at another page. This is called the bounce rate and there is little you can do about it when you have just started out. Google analytics will actually show you your bounce rate.
Let us assume that our fictional person looked at the page they arrived at and remained there long enough to look at your content they have now formed an opinion about the site and about you. As long as that opinion is not indifference then you have made an impression. This is good because it means that should that person come back then they are less likely to leave before looking.
Very few people will actually leave a comment. I find I get one comment for each group of 45 people that visit Thanet Star on a talkative day but I might go other times with 300 to 400 people visiting before another comment is posted. Inspiring people to comment is a whole other art form and one that I am currently far from expert in.
So our person will now (a) close the page or (b) click a link. That link might be a link in the post, an internal link in the side bar or menu area or it might be an external link ("blog roll" for example).
The time with that person on your page is over and the impression is made (or not as the case might be). One thing you might notice is that at all times there s a chance in the "do I stay or do I go" that we experience on a web page that the potential reader might leave. So your first aim as a website owner (that includes us blog writers) is to remove or reduce anything that might stand between the visitor and hanging about.
That too is a topic that is for another time and a whole art form in itself. The more you can cause a person to want to stay the more successful you be with a lower number of people coming to you on any given day. Your ideal solution is to so impress your visitors that they bookmark or remember you and want to come back again to read what you have written (we call these regular readers for what I hope are obvious reasons). But how do you get people to visit you to start with?
In Thanet blogging a relatively low percentage (around 20% to 60%) of your visitors will come from search engines. This has increased slightly since the launch of Thanet Finder but it is still on the low side. Even so this is a valuable way that people that might be interested in your offerings can find what you have.
To get visitors from search engines you need to provide both things the visitor might want to see and things the search engine thinks are important. Fortunately the best search engines are trying to give people what they are looking for and so these two things overlap considerably. Both are looking for content - textual content preferably.
By focusing on a number of key points that enhance the users experience of your site you can also show the search engines what pages are about therefore ranking higher up the search results therefore getting more visitors. For example if I were to write about Margate Clock Tower I might feel tempted to only use that phrase once and use the easier to type "it" from then on. However rather than talking about it if I mention explicitly Margate Clock Tower at least once per paragraph I not only help the reader to stay away of the subject but I am also showing the search engine that the page is about Margate Clock Tower rather than "it".
In addition to this many search engines value links from other sites as an indication of value. In blogging this often means links from other bloggers. Topic is important so a link from Thanet Blog list, ECR, Thanet Star or Big News Margate is likely to be worth more than a link from some spam-a-lot site. We'll revisit this topic again shortly.
For more on this topic try This SEO Guide.
People telling other people about your "corner of the web" is a great way to get more visitors. However, you need to have significantly impressed someone with your site.
Most visitors to new Thanet blogs come from recommendations (links) from other blogs and related sites. I'd place the figure as high as 75% in many cases.
The first person you should have impressed is yourself. So tell your friends and family about your blog. mums, dads and siblings are a good source of early readership.
Do you drink in a local pub (I don't mean one of Frank Thorely's night clubs but somewhere where you can talk to someone else without screaming)? If so don't forget to mention it to friends. Better yet write a review and then you can say "did you see my review of this place?"
Friends and family will read your blog more attentively because they know you. They make good testers not because they will tell you what's wrong "it's very good, I liked it" is mostly what you will be told. However, when you start getting people you know talking to you about a topic you raised on you blog then you know you are on the right track.
If you are desperate try handing out fliers in Ramsgate Town Centre or Westwood Cross (or some other highly populated area). Yes, it'll cost you but people will know to have a look.
Impress other website owners and writers and they may mention your site in their own writing spaces. To get that sort of recommendation once more we are back to that thing of content. Good content gets people interested, makes them want to recommend you and earns you links. Everything comes back to content.
The figures seem to indicate that around 20% to 40% of visitors will arrive at a Thanet blog though social interaction on other blogs or with other bloggers. Social discovery comes in many forms and I am going to try and give the broad overview.
The simplest form of social discovery comes wen other bloggers discover you. They are the most likely to comment and will also form a large part of your efforts towards gathering links if they like you or your blog.
So take the time to visit other blogs and comment insightfully on things they have to say. Good comments are just as much a joy to an established writer as to a new writer. Do not rush your comment but take the time to present your best face.
The same goes for links. If you are considering that you would like people to discover you by recommendation then a link is a very good recommendation indeed. By linking to other Thanet bloggers you are saying you value their blog and it is likely that many might want to reciprocate.
Stumble Upon is a social web application that allows you to explore web sites that are of interest to you and to share them with others. It's two greatest features are hat you can teach it your definition of "interesting" and you can recommend pages for others to enjoy. Recommended pages can gain between 300 to 5,000 visitors over the days that follow.
The exact amount of visitors that stumbleupon.com will send depends on the votes of other users when they are taken to the page you recommend. For this reason it is a good idea to "friend" peers and friends with similar interests who can offer a "thumbs up" or a review for your best work.
That leads me nicely to...
Taking time to make friends with people in Thanet, both on line and off can yield great benefits in terms of finding people willing to read what your write. While I am not going to try and offer tips on real life networking online Thanet has a few options that are worth considering.
Live in Thanet - a Thanet based social networking site. Here you can make friends and talk about you site (not to mention have the blog feed published in your profile for those extra links).
Facebook - a small number of bloggers from Thanet are also to be found on face book. Off the top of my head I can name ECR, Tony Flaig (Big News Margate), Myself and Zumiweb as having a profile. While it is not the biggest group ever it is still a space where you can meet other Thanet bloggers (if you try).
MyBlogLog - this was the site where I first spoke to local reporter Thom before he was a reporter. I don't know of any other Thanet bloggers having membership here (yet) but some of the services might be worth a look (detailed blog stats, for example).
Sometimes people make a wild guess at a URL they think might have something. Sometimes they search for random things or click random links looking for new things. The better connected your Thanet blog is to other Thanet blogs the more likely it is that someone will randomly arrive on your page.
Not everyone does it but some people like to check out the people who have commented before them and so leaving a link when you comment means that people might randomly visit you. How many people might come to you this way is unknown but what is known is that the more you make sure you are easy to find the more likely it is that a somewhat random click will send people to you.
What conclusion, if any, can we draw from all this? Perhaps it is the lesson that the only way to get noticed is to get out there and participate. Do you have other ideas?
Any thoughts, tips, suggestions for new bloggers in Thanet? Share them with us.
Most readers of Thanet blogs read those blogs because they discovered and liked them. The majority of traffic to Thanet based blogs is from regular readers - readers that come back time and again. Before you can have a fan base of even one or two people you need to have been found.
People will find your blog in one of four basic ways: Search, Recommendation, Social Discovery, Random Discovery.
Before we look at how people find you in any more detail we need to understand what a person will do when they have found you. Once we have a grasp of this area which can differ from site to site and even from post to post we can build an idea of what a reader interested in our content might like, do and think and we can craft our offering to meet that.
Once people are looking at your blog they will leave never to return or they will look at the page they are on. Once our fictional reader is looking at a page on your site they will at some point determine that they (a) like it or (b) hate it. If they hate it they will close the page and do something else.
Expect at least 85% of the people that come to any given page to leave that page without looking at another page. This is called the bounce rate and there is little you can do about it when you have just started out. Google analytics will actually show you your bounce rate.
Let us assume that our fictional person looked at the page they arrived at and remained there long enough to look at your content they have now formed an opinion about the site and about you. As long as that opinion is not indifference then you have made an impression. This is good because it means that should that person come back then they are less likely to leave before looking.
Very few people will actually leave a comment. I find I get one comment for each group of 45 people that visit Thanet Star on a talkative day but I might go other times with 300 to 400 people visiting before another comment is posted. Inspiring people to comment is a whole other art form and one that I am currently far from expert in.
So our person will now (a) close the page or (b) click a link. That link might be a link in the post, an internal link in the side bar or menu area or it might be an external link ("blog roll" for example).
The time with that person on your page is over and the impression is made (or not as the case might be). One thing you might notice is that at all times there s a chance in the "do I stay or do I go" that we experience on a web page that the potential reader might leave. So your first aim as a website owner (that includes us blog writers) is to remove or reduce anything that might stand between the visitor and hanging about.
That too is a topic that is for another time and a whole art form in itself. The more you can cause a person to want to stay the more successful you be with a lower number of people coming to you on any given day. Your ideal solution is to so impress your visitors that they bookmark or remember you and want to come back again to read what you have written (we call these regular readers for what I hope are obvious reasons). But how do you get people to visit you to start with?
Discovery by Search
In Thanet blogging a relatively low percentage (around 20% to 60%) of your visitors will come from search engines. This has increased slightly since the launch of Thanet Finder but it is still on the low side. Even so this is a valuable way that people that might be interested in your offerings can find what you have.
To get visitors from search engines you need to provide both things the visitor might want to see and things the search engine thinks are important. Fortunately the best search engines are trying to give people what they are looking for and so these two things overlap considerably. Both are looking for content - textual content preferably.
By focusing on a number of key points that enhance the users experience of your site you can also show the search engines what pages are about therefore ranking higher up the search results therefore getting more visitors. For example if I were to write about Margate Clock Tower I might feel tempted to only use that phrase once and use the easier to type "it" from then on. However rather than talking about it if I mention explicitly Margate Clock Tower at least once per paragraph I not only help the reader to stay away of the subject but I am also showing the search engine that the page is about Margate Clock Tower rather than "it".
In addition to this many search engines value links from other sites as an indication of value. In blogging this often means links from other bloggers. Topic is important so a link from Thanet Blog list, ECR, Thanet Star or Big News Margate is likely to be worth more than a link from some spam-a-lot site. We'll revisit this topic again shortly.
For more on this topic try This SEO Guide.
Discovery by Recommendation
People telling other people about your "corner of the web" is a great way to get more visitors. However, you need to have significantly impressed someone with your site.
Most visitors to new Thanet blogs come from recommendations (links) from other blogs and related sites. I'd place the figure as high as 75% in many cases.
The first person you should have impressed is yourself. So tell your friends and family about your blog. mums, dads and siblings are a good source of early readership.
Do you drink in a local pub (I don't mean one of Frank Thorely's night clubs but somewhere where you can talk to someone else without screaming)? If so don't forget to mention it to friends. Better yet write a review and then you can say "did you see my review of this place?"
Friends and family will read your blog more attentively because they know you. They make good testers not because they will tell you what's wrong "it's very good, I liked it" is mostly what you will be told. However, when you start getting people you know talking to you about a topic you raised on you blog then you know you are on the right track.
If you are desperate try handing out fliers in Ramsgate Town Centre or Westwood Cross (or some other highly populated area). Yes, it'll cost you but people will know to have a look.
Impress other website owners and writers and they may mention your site in their own writing spaces. To get that sort of recommendation once more we are back to that thing of content. Good content gets people interested, makes them want to recommend you and earns you links. Everything comes back to content.
Social Discovery
The figures seem to indicate that around 20% to 40% of visitors will arrive at a Thanet blog though social interaction on other blogs or with other bloggers. Social discovery comes in many forms and I am going to try and give the broad overview.
Give what you want
The simplest form of social discovery comes wen other bloggers discover you. They are the most likely to comment and will also form a large part of your efforts towards gathering links if they like you or your blog.
So take the time to visit other blogs and comment insightfully on things they have to say. Good comments are just as much a joy to an established writer as to a new writer. Do not rush your comment but take the time to present your best face.
The same goes for links. If you are considering that you would like people to discover you by recommendation then a link is a very good recommendation indeed. By linking to other Thanet bloggers you are saying you value their blog and it is likely that many might want to reciprocate.
Stumble
Stumble Upon is a social web application that allows you to explore web sites that are of interest to you and to share them with others. It's two greatest features are hat you can teach it your definition of "interesting" and you can recommend pages for others to enjoy. Recommended pages can gain between 300 to 5,000 visitors over the days that follow.
The exact amount of visitors that stumbleupon.com will send depends on the votes of other users when they are taken to the page you recommend. For this reason it is a good idea to "friend" peers and friends with similar interests who can offer a "thumbs up" or a review for your best work.
That leads me nicely to...
Network
Taking time to make friends with people in Thanet, both on line and off can yield great benefits in terms of finding people willing to read what your write. While I am not going to try and offer tips on real life networking online Thanet has a few options that are worth considering.
Live in Thanet - a Thanet based social networking site. Here you can make friends and talk about you site (not to mention have the blog feed published in your profile for those extra links).
Facebook - a small number of bloggers from Thanet are also to be found on face book. Off the top of my head I can name ECR, Tony Flaig (Big News Margate), Myself and Zumiweb as having a profile. While it is not the biggest group ever it is still a space where you can meet other Thanet bloggers (if you try).
MyBlogLog - this was the site where I first spoke to local reporter Thom before he was a reporter. I don't know of any other Thanet bloggers having membership here (yet) but some of the services might be worth a look (detailed blog stats, for example).
Random Discovery
Sometimes people make a wild guess at a URL they think might have something. Sometimes they search for random things or click random links looking for new things. The better connected your Thanet blog is to other Thanet blogs the more likely it is that someone will randomly arrive on your page.
Not everyone does it but some people like to check out the people who have commented before them and so leaving a link when you comment means that people might randomly visit you. How many people might come to you this way is unknown but what is known is that the more you make sure you are easy to find the more likely it is that a somewhat random click will send people to you.
What conclusion, if any, can we draw from all this? Perhaps it is the lesson that the only way to get noticed is to get out there and participate. Do you have other ideas?
Any thoughts, tips, suggestions for new bloggers in Thanet? Share them with us.
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