Developing a blog audience that’s hungry for your content
by Sapphire (April 11, 2008)
For the past few months, I’ve let Project B-2 Bomber coast. It was clear to me it wasn’t going to become a big earner in the foreseeable future, so why keep putting in the effort to build it?
As a result of this coasting, six weeks went by during which my team and I posted maybe 6 articles. Traffic dwindled.
Then we had a spat of several posts in one weekend, and the response from the audience was astonishing. Lots of comments, lots of traffic. Some new commenters chimed in - people I know have been reading for a while, but never responding. It was like they were hungry for the content. I realized I had inadvertently created a site with really passionate users.
Having merely stumbled onto this, I’m not claiming any expertise. But here are the things I did which might also work for you:
- I picked an opinon topic I was passionate about. (In fact, I had no idea anyone else cared, but it turned out they did.)
- I took the time to write better quality articles.
- I didn’t allowed the team to post more than twice a day because it felt like the audience was overwhelmed by more posts than that.
- I moderated comments rather heavily. I don’t regard my blogs as part of your free speech arrangement under the Constitution. I regard them as a site I’m building, which needs to contain good stuff. So trolls and rude people aren’t the only ones who never see their comments appear: I also moderate people who clearly didn’t read the article yet took the time to post a 500 word heated argument against what they imagine it said. I moderate trackbacks that don’t lead to something I think my visitors would like to stumble across.
- My team and I participated on other people’s blogs and forums. If we had time to do more of this, I’m convinced we could really grow our traffic. I definitely advise spending time on this.
But remember: just because your audience is hungry for your content doesn’t mean that’s going to translate into money. Advertisers have to perceive value in your niche. Your readers have to see the ads without being annoyed by them. It’s a tough line to walk. But there is value in a site like this one. Even just the experience of running it has taught me tons.
Posted in Blogging, Traffic
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