Maximising blog readership

[Alan Waterman]

Hello, I do a blog, originally it was set up so that more than one person (me) looked at my photos. It soon developed into a guide with lots of photos (all mine) to the area of France in which I spend a lot of time. It has had 9,000 hits in 8 months. Is that good average or poor? I do not know. I use wordpress and the blog address is a bit longwinded it is http://poitoucharentesinphotos.wordpress.com It could be shortened to leave out the wordpress bit but that costs a small amount. I add tags to all my posts I also produce pages and put a post on every 2/3 days. P
lease have a look and make criticisms/suggestions.

I really want to know if there are things I could easilly do to increase readership. I sometimes see blogs where 50 people have clicked to say they like it..... Best I have ever had is probably 15 and normally its 2 or3.

Thanks. Alan W.

[celtex]

Re: Maximising blog readership

Hi Alan,

OK I have a bit of experience here. OK, so you have had 9k visits in 8 months, that averages about 1100 a month - which on the face of it is not so many, but, these things take time and would have started with a few, then a few hundred and slowly climb etc - to get to 9k in 8 months is actually pretty good I would say.

I have a blog (nothing to do with photography, but my area of expertise, rather boringly, tiles and stone) here :www.tileandstoneblog.co.uk _ have run this since about 2004 (it seems to begin at 2008 but that is when we switched servers and things got reset).

for ages (and I mean years) the monthly visitors were in the low hundreds however in the last 4 years, the readership has doubled every year. I am now at circa 9 to 10K per month and growing. 10K per month for such a niche site as mine, is actually pretty good. If it was a successful 'make your fortune on the internet' type site then nothing less than 100K per month would be considered really 'good' Your site ought to have more appeal than mine and that is why I think yours is growing seemingly at a reasonable rate - so I think you could achieve numbers like mine in very short time - 1 to 2 years.

What can you do to accelerate it?

1. tell people about it - like posting about it here. go on as many forums and blogs as possible where this will be of interest so that includes photography sites, and travel sites, plus specifically sites interested in this region
2. Give before you recieve - contribute to conversations on all these forums and blogs without dropping your blog name every 5 minutes, in fact dont mention it at all at first, have it inyour signature if the moderator/site owner will allow it and help people with advice and free contributions to build relationships - this takes taime but is worth it
3. post regulary - ok you are doing that, 2 to 3 times per day is great (I barely manage 1 per month) but after a while you will run dry for content so pace yourself, aim for 1 a week and keep some in reserve. (2/3 a week is fantastic if you can keep it going)
4. write naturally - not to key word forumlas- you seem to do this anyway
5. you have some stats, but are you using google analytics? if not it is a must, you get so much more information about your readers and why they visit, so this helps to guide future subject matter - I now get 5 to 10 comments a week, all on terracotta and slate - even though I have written about lots of other things, these are the popular topics - so I should wirte more posts about them
6. consider using online directories - some you have to pay for but they can considerably increase your numbers
7. use social media, Face Book, Twitter and G+. when I post to my blog, it automatically 'tweets' to my twitter account - you can automate this with FB and G + also.
8. Use plugins in the wordpress blog - I use all in one SEO - really helps, also there is the wordpress to Twitter one that i use for the above. Also one for techncrati tags
9. get on Google plus - the 'masses' are saying there is noone on there but they are wrong - it is a thriving under the radar comunity and it is especially good for photographers - I spend far more time on there now than on FB, Twitter and forums put together
10. invite guest speakers - I do this, when I cannot think of anything to write (and even when I can) I invite other 'experts' to write a bit, they get a little bit of subtle publicity for their products, or blog etc, and they get all their contacts to read it = new readers for yours (you get them to submit articles to you, you then edit/approve before deciding to publish)
11. encourage feedback, comments, do surveys, votes etc - invite readers to submit their fav photos of the region along with anecdotes and stories etc - it is all about adding content that is relevent to the reader
12. don't go off topic - you seem to have created an identidy that is now, photography travel blog for a particular region in france - stay on or close to this subject (broaden it out to neibiuring regions for sure, but dont sudenbly introduce sports photography from the UK, hoping that photography is enough of a link - if you want to write about this, start another blog.)

hope those few tips are of use

Ian

[Alan Waterman]

Re: Maximising blog readership

Well thank you for taking the time to reply with lots of helpfull hints. I only post every 2 or 3 days not 2/3 per day, though from some of the blogs I follow it seems that some people put something on every few hours but I think a lot of that is reblogging other peoples stuff.
I do use face book, and have upped my 'friends' from 5 to 150 in order to get the message out but from the wordpress stats it seems most of the hits come from people who are not following it in any way but just typing 'blue flowers in France' or 'Angouleme churches' or whatever into google and then get my site, that is why I was wondering if I should make the site name simpler.

Anyway many thanks and hopefully your answers will be of help to other folks who are blogging apart from me.

Alan W