This Guest Post was written by Wendy Piersall from eMoms at Home.
When I look back over the last 11 months of how my own blog has grown, it’s safe to say that the person who has had the most influence in my traffic and growth has been Darren. Getting to meet him at Elite Retreat was incredibly cool, and at dinner one night we chatted about his Group Writing Projects. I mentioned that they had made a massive impact on creating long-term readers, links, and was the key to several very strong partnerships I have made along the way (especially when I first started out). The conversation got me thinking about all of the ways I have leveraged the audience of this site to grow my own blog.
Big blogs wouldn’t be big if they didn’t have a big audience – and on ProBlogger, Darren has created massive opportunities for you to share his fame, traffic and exposure.
Group Writing Projects are the easiest and best way to tap Darren’s audience. Here are my tips for getting the most out of these week-long traffic festivals:
- Get your entry in the first day
- Spend more time on your headline than you do on your post
- Make a splash by submitting your best work
- Keep your post on the short side, preferably under 600 words
- Make it easily scan-able with subheads and bullets
- Spend 30 minutes or so each day visiting other submissions, and be sure to comment
- Actively link to the posts that are most relevant to your own blog
- Stay active in the project the entire week
You don’t need to wait for a Group Writing Project to start tapping each others’ resources. Other ways to leverage the ProBlogger audience are:
- Visit the bloggers that leave comments here, and consider introducing yourself to them
- Link to each other frequently – Darren’s readers are a goldmine of knowledge!
- Join Darren’s MyBlogLog Community, and use his widget to find others in your niche (I ALWAYS click the mom avatars!!)
- Comment on his readers’ blogs, letting them know you found them through ProBlogger
- Answer each others’ questions in the comments on this site
- Praise each other in the comments on this site (I assure you, that will get you noticed!!)
- Subscribe to the blogs Darren links to and leverage their traffic in the same way
Blogging is one of the few marketing mediums on the planet in which it’s not only ok to try and steal readers, it actually helps everyone when you do. Darren has a vested interest in your success – and has created a community on this site that can help you as much as he can directly. Leverage it to your advantage and watch everything grow.
Edit: Sorry everyone – somehow I turned comments off of this post! I’ve turned them back on now. *sheepish grin* -Wendy
