Traffic to your blog

[Laurie Bridges]

Hi all!

I started this blog because I'm a longtime blogger. Recently a few librarians and I started a new blog: infodoodads.com

Of course I'd like to learn from others. It's boring to write a blog if nobody reads it, so how did you get traffic? What are some tips you have for other librarian bloggers?

[Connie Crosby]

Good for you, Katie!

Honesty and a real voice are definitely key in blogging. You can totally tell when something has been written by an advertising/corporate person. Nobody wants to read something that reads like advertising/self promotion. And we want to hear the good with the bad, to know you are a real person.

[Connie Crosby]

Another hint, this one from Chris Brogan one of the originators of Podcamp unconferences
: when people have blogged about you or your blog post, go to their blogs and respond with a comment. That way you are reinforcing the relationship with the person who has taken the time to read your blog and comment on it, and continuing the conversation. Especially if yours is a popular blog, that will show the person you taken the time to care about what your readers have to say. If you haven't done so already, you will want to claim your blog on Technorati and check frequently for links back to your blog.

He also recommends when reading and commenting on blogs, include a link back to your own blog. I have found this can drive a fair bit of traffic back to me, especially if I post a comment on a very popular blog.

[Laurie Bridges]

Good advice Connie. I also review problogger.net whenever I'm looking for ideas.

One thing that is interesting about our (infodoodads.com) LIS blog is how many subscribers we have (determined by feedburner) vs. people visiting the site directly. We don't have many direct hits to the site, but a lot of people subscribed through feedreaders.

Then, on my personal blog it's the exact opposite. I have VERY FEW subscribers and almost all direct hits. It goes to show that the LIS group is very up to date on technology, where most people visiting my personal blog probably don't even know how to use a feedreader (that's my guess...)

[Connie Crosby]

Yeah, problogger is a good site. I'm not so interested in making direct money from my site so don't follow all the conversation there, but he has a lot of good information.

I was amazed at the recent Podcamp I went to: I expected to perhaps be seen as "second class citizen" as a blogger since I wasn't podcasting, but I discovered the opposite: podcasts need to be posted to blogs, and the expert podcasters are some of the most expert bloggers around. A number of their sessions were all about driving traffic to their sites. Some of them are bloggers extraodinaire, and didn't see me as any less "hard core" than they were. We can learn a lot from podcasters.

[Laurie Bridges]

Interestingly, one of my husband's friends just started a podcasting blog and after only three entries was picked up by the Patagonia website!
http://thedirtbag.libsyn.com/

[Laurie Bridges]

Oops, this was supposed to go under Connie's post.

[Connie Crosby]

That's great. Libsyn seems to work well for podcasters. What a great podcast name!

[Bill Drew]

Content! I am not an A-list blogger but my two blogs, babyboomerlibrarian.blogspot.com and wirelesslibraires.blogspot.com get lots of views. The feeds must also be easy to see. Claim your blogs on technorati as well. Use lots of tagging and allow comments and trackbacks. Be controversial from time to time as well.

[RefLibrarian]

I agree that it helps to claim your blog on Technorati. I also recommend joining the blogging communities of MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog. This really increases your visibility. Social networking is also very helpful - especially on Library2.0 on Ning and the library groups in Facebook. If you have the time, making useful comments on posts from popular blogs can also get your blog noticed - since some people will click on your name and then see your blog. Writing a blog post response to a popular blogger's post may also help people to find your blog (by using the trackback feature or comment of the popular post).

[Adam Paszternak]

Hi Everybody!

I think a very good way to make people returning visitors to your blog is to share your RSS Guide (as an .opml file), which - of course, and that's the point - containes your blog as well. So when folks check the new posts they'll definetly see your blog's posts marked as "unread"...
Another hint is to provide as many types of feeds - RSS, Atom, "add to whatever"-buttons, FeedBurner, etc. - on your site as you can.

OFF > Thanks for the Libloggers' network, Laurie!

[Raj]

In fact I would like to learn this from you........
I request you to read the contents of my blog...... http://indialibrarian.blogspot.com/

Raj
India