By David Joel Miller MS Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.
Writing.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
Does it matter if anyone reads what you write?
Unless you are Buddy Holly, the last thing you want to hear one you start posting to your blog are crickets. (Did you get that allusion? If not google him, or better yet ask your grandparents.)
Unfortunately, many blogs experience precisely that problem. You write something, you set back and hope. Thinking about how people will find your blog during the planning stage increases the chances you will be successful. Here are a few of the possible strategies for getting readers to your blog.
Write content that will rank well in search engines.
Often this is very hard to predict. You can spend a lot of time hunting for keywords that would rank well but if it’s not consistent with the rest of your content, even if you get people to your blog they won’t stay. Some of the posts I wrote years ago, by pure accident, have ranked well and year after year I continue to get reads for these posts. This can be a fantastic way of driving traffic to your blog, but it can disappear just as quickly.
An example of accidentally ranking well in searches.
Let’s say you are an enthusiastic gardener, always on the lookout for new and unusual plants that might grow well in your climate. You start writing a blog about your gardening experiences and how hard it is to find plants suitable to your locale. On one trip to the nursery, you discover a new, unusual variety of salvia (Sage.) I know from personal experience there are about 350 varieties of Sage, when I tried to grow them in my yard, only a few varieties thrived.
So, you write a blog post about this very unusual Sage and how it does so well in your yard. It turns out your post is the only one on the Internet about this species. Suddenly your blog goes from two readers a day to hundreds. People from all over the planet are finding you because of this one post. You are suddenly so happy with your blog.
Everything goes along fine until one day you discover no one is looking at that post anymore. What has happened? What you find out is that the nursery which grew this plant has a gardening website, and because of the sudden increase in demand, demand you created, they feature an article on the front page of their website about this unusual plant. Other nurseries in your state rerun that article or write articles of their own for their websites. Suddenly your post drops from the first position the search results to number 87, and you stop getting hits.
Search engine traffic is terrific if you write in a very narrow field and you write a lot of posts, but your position in rankings can change suddenly and dramatically, especially every time a search engine changes their algorithms.
Social media can help promote your blog.
Many bloggers spend a lot of time on social media. If your primary goal of writing is to develop relationships and have conversations with others, this may work for you. Social media can take up a lot of your time which is one reason I probably do less social media than I should. If your goal in developing a blog is to introduce people to your writing, you could find that your spending so much time networking that you never get your book written. It’s important to be clear who you want to read your blog and how you’re going to connect with them from the start.
Encourage readers to follow your blog.
Make sure you have a follow, or follow by email, button on your page. You don’t have to turn into a computer programmer to do this. The blog platform you use should make this easy for you. We won’t talk about the technical part of this today but put this on your “to-do” list.
If you write a tightly focused blog, you can develop a core following of people who really like what you have to say. Make it easy for them to subscribe and many of them will come back week after week to read your post. If you count on readers finding you again by accident among the billions of web pages out there you’re making it hard for your readers to ever find you again.
There are some thoughts on making your blog discoverable, so you don’t find yourself talking with no one listening. Drop back again next week for what has become writing Wednesdays or better yet subscribe to the counselorssoapbox.com blog, so you don’t miss an episode.
You’ll find more posts on this topic under – Writing.
Staying connected with David Joel Miller
Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!
My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.
Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.
Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.
As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.
Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.
Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.
Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.
Planned Accidents The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.
Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.
What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?
Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.
For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller
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