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\f0\fs24 \cf0 Hey everybody, Mike here from Black Dog Education with today's installment
of Office Hours today's question came in from Alison via Facebook and the question was "how
do I improve the readership of my blog?" and I think that I'm gonna read little more into
that, but I think what she's asking is how do I increase the readership or how to find
more people to read my blog? Allison if you're watching this and I didn't quite get that
please let us know but what I when I take a look at blog readership or really the quality
of the blog I'm taking a look at three particular pieces of information and if you've watched
any of these other videos I like to break things down in to threes because it's about
all of my brain can handle but the first thing I like to take a look at is the foundation
of the blog itself. When we start talking foundation were talking about you know in
your blogging platform easy to use? Does your blogging platform automatically submit your
information over to the search engines does it do things like automatically create Google
site maps does? Are you using tools that will help you with search engine optimization because
that's an important piece, that's one of the reasons why we like to use wordpress is because
the number of plug-ins you know right now is probably 14,000, 15,000 different plug-ins
and each one of those serves a distinct or specific purpose once you're set up now you're
ready to go and move on number two which is the actual content now when we start talking
about content what we're really concerned about it is what are you putting out there
for people you know what's the voice are you putting out there? First and foremost my big
thing is write good stuff you know if you're writing good stuff even if it takes a little
bit of time for people to find you once they find you, they're going to know this person
is legit and I need to pay to in his person the other thing is, is make sure that you
post frequently. Write well and write often the more often the people see some of your
stuff, if you post once or you if you post 10 blog posts in a week and then you go away
for three months and do 10 more that's not going to work if that's kind of the amount
of time that you have the better solution would be write 10 blog posts and then post
one every week with WordPress or something like that you can go ahead and schedule those
guys out, but make sure you're being consistent with it. Some other things that you can do
to help beef up your content a little bit are adding photos you know or graphics or
something. If you go out and take a look at just a page of text it's his dull and it's
boring and uninspiring no matter how good the content is the first thing you look at
you now in this busy world we got is do I have time to sit down and read seven paragraphs
that are nothing? If you throw a nice little graphic in there, stock photography something
to kind of break it up a little bit, work on your structure maybe try to use more bullet
lists so people can get in and get the information quicker, those are the types of things that
are going to help you with your content. So then the last thing we want to talk about
in this is probably what Allison's question was originally about was, how to get more
people to read my blog? And really I classify that as marketing or distribution so with
marketing of your blog there is quite a few things that you can do. We talked about one
of them, structurally make sure that your blog is being submitted to the to the search
engines you can do that via using Google sitemap creators and then using something like Google
Webmaster tools to make sure your site is submitted over Bing has something similar
that's a really good way to make sure that your content is getting out in the search
engines and they're doing that. Some other things that you can do is when you're writing
your blog make sure that your linking out to other people, make sure that you give some
love to some other people that are in the community. There's always going to be people
that are already talking to your target market find out who those people are and introduce
yourself and so this is why I really respect what you're doing you've got some really great
points this is what I'm doing you know maybe invite them over to do a guest blog post if
what you do is kind of a cohesive. Say for example for us, we're web developers but you
know I could easily go out there and talk to online marketers who is going to be a twitter
expert or a LinkedIn expert or something like that and say hey look what you do is fantastic
I want your expertise I want you to be able to come out and talk to my people about this,
for me I wanna make sure my customers or my clients or my community has the best information
available for the expert what that's going to do is open him up to additional people
so it's kind of a win-win for everybody. The other thing you can do is get proactive, hustle
a little bit go out there and find people you think are a good match and offer yourself
up and say this is who I am, this and what I'm doing, I think I can help you here here
here I would be more than happy to do that you know try to find a potential partnerships.
And the last thing I probably want to talk about is on this one, obviously there's a
million different ways to do this you can go out with any kind of traffic getting programs
or tools and there's a million different ways to do this with what it all boils down to
me is to try to do good things for good people. Don't try to scam things don't try to do the
link farms or buy this or buy that because you know what can and does happens is you
get poor quality leads and you know is not about quantity and you know if you have 1
million really bad leads what good is that I'd much rather have 10 leads that are actually
purchasing or interested in my content so don't focus so much on the actual number that
you have, on focus on the quality of the people that are there with your blog and and really
engage with those people, that's how communities are built. Start small and work your way around
so really focus on that you don't need millions of people, make sure that you do good stuff,
this is Mike Linville from Black Dog Education, I want to thank you for the question and for
anybody else out there is watching this video if you have additional questions you like
us to address in Office Hours you can either e-mail them over to us at officehours@blackdogeducation.com
you can just throw up on our Facebook wall will go and pull those off, or send them over
to us via twitter @blackdogedu make sure to use #officehrs. If you guys could do me a
huge favor, I really want to know what you think about these videos do we need to change
something? So if you can put your comments down below to let us know what you think about
these I would absolutely appreciate it. Again this is Mike Linville of Black Dog Education
thank you very much and we'll talk soon}