One of the common misconceptions that some new bloggers start out with is that in order to find readers for their blog all they’ll have to do is regularly write quality content.
- “Great content will market itself” – a statement I heard one speaker make at a blogging conference last year.
- “Write it and they will come” – a motto I’ve heard a number of new bloggers sharing as a secret to their yet to be found success.
- “Quality Content = Readers” – an ‘equation’ I saw being written about in one online blogging course recently
Each of the above statements has elements of truth to it. Many bloggers have built successful blogs on the back of great content. However there are almost always other factors at play.
The reality is that many blogs produce quality content that doesn’t get read. The reason isn’t that the blog’s not worth reading – but in many cases it’s because nobody knows to go read it.
Here’s the thing…..
Letting your content market itself DOES work IF you already have an audience to help with that process by spreading word of it through word of mouth – but if you’re just starting out and don’t yet have a readership the reality is that YOU are the only person who knows your great content exists.
Word of mouth can still play a part in your finding of readers – but as YOU are the only person that knows about your great content YOU need to be the one who starts the process and starts the process of getting the word out.
It’s time to hustle and get word out about your content.
Seeding Content
Later in the week I want to highlight 9 methods to do this – however today I want to start with a more general suggestion that comes from my own experience of getting content read
Seed it – Don’t Force it!
Perhaps it’s just my personality or style – but I find that sometimes less is more in the blog post promotion game. Here’s how I’d chart the effectiveness of my blog promotions vs the amount of effort (or aggressiveness might be a better word) put into the promotion.
Let me flesh this out a little:
- In my experience if you only put little effort into your blog promotion you get little results. This is what I talk about above – if you don’t let people know about your posts how will anyone find them?
- If you put in too much effort into it and get too aggressive with your promotion you can also get little results. In fact sometimes when you’re too aggressive you can actually go backwards and hurt your site.
- For me it’s about putting in some effort – but not getting too full on about it. It’s a real balancing act at times.
I like the term ‘seeding’ to describe how I try to promote my content.
I’m not really a great gardener but I do know that in order for me to have a new plant grow in my garden I need to go to some effort – but that if I do too much I can actually hurt the growth of the plant.
To have a plant grow I need to plant a seed, I need to ensure it gets water, I can give it some fertilizer, I need to give it a little protection from my kids digging it up…. but after that it’s up to the seed and the environment to make it grow. It takes some effort – but there comes a point where I need to step back and let the seed do it’s thing.
This is similar to my experience of promoting content on blogs. Often it takes me getting the ball rolling but if I force things it can actually have the reverse effect.
As I look back on some of the biggest traffic events on my blogs there’s been a real mix of my own promotion (usually to start the process) and a more organic thing happening. Sometimes I push too hard and don’t get results – other times I don’t push enough and get little return also – however getting it right can lead to incredible days of traffic.
Update: read the continuation of this post at my next post in the series – 9 Things to Do to Make Sure Your Next Blog Post is Read by More than Your MOM
I completely agree with you Darren. Maybe this were great mottos back in the days but not for today. If you create a great blog with a great design and great content but no readers then you’re wasting your time. SEO has become so difficult that good content won’t matter if no one is reading that content.
It’s easier to find newbie bloggers that are looking for link exchange and want to build a blog community than spending hours writing good content that no one will read.
I love your articles man!!
Its great
because it reviels the truth
That’s interesting about not putting in ‘too much’ effort. How do you know if you’re putting too much effort in, if with less effort your results are nothing special? I’ll be tuning in tomorrow for the continuation.
I agree. I have a couple of blogs, some have to do all means to get readers, some just have natural readers.
But the blogs that I have are all of different niches.
Great information, I can’t wait for tomorrow when you post about the 9 things to get traffic.
Content that get readers naturally (I think) works best. Putting too much of an effort to get readers actually turns into failure.
Darren,
Great points, I have heard of a concept called sowing and reaping and it is definately true in this case.
I have an example with my own blog. I have been consistant at writing my posts and then one day recently one of the biggest Forex Sites ( I have a Forex Blog) came and announced that I would be one of their featured writers.
It happened be being consistant not pushy. If I would have never approached them in the first place they would never have found out about me.
Good article, thanks
Great post with very helpful insights (I am a newbie blogger). I look forward to reading your follow-up posts on this topic!
Great content is not the end all be all. It is necessary. In fact highly necessary. But it needs to work hand in hand with many other elements to succeed. SEO, the author’s involvement in those communities interested in the content of the article.
For instance. I have great content on a music site I own, but that alone doesn’t guarantee traffic.
I visit certain music forums online related to my niche, and when a question comes up in the forum and I have an article on my site that addresses it, I will point people to it.
If I DON’T have an article I’ll create a draft in wordpress for a new article. Thanks to the forum I’ve just found a need that can be answered with an upcoming article! Hooray!
Thanks for the article Darren.
Don Makoviney
I’m curious for tomorrow lesson and I agree about the fact that content alone is not enough initially.
I’ve had several articles picked up by bigger blogs without them even contacting me. They just published them on their blog with a link to my blog and a disclaimer from where they got them. I was a little peeved about it at first but then I saw the traffic I started to get and I was okay with it. One of them was a big veterans site. I’d published an article about a couple of women who stole vets benefits and they liked it. How they noticed me, I have no idea. I know it only happened after I eased off the marketing and just began to do a little writing and a little marketing and SEO, so I think there is something to what Darren is saying.
I think I’ve gone into the realm of “too much” effort. I am stagnant, so either I’ve already found everyone who is going to read my blog (that would be sad!) or I’m doing something wrong…over-thinking something. Hopefully tomorrow can help me!
Darren,
Good points. Also, I think it adds a lot more credibility if someone else is pointing out your content as opposed to yourself.
This is something you don’t hear often but has the ring of truth to it. I constantly get comments about the quality of my posts but largely attract the same devoted crowd with very few new recruits. I look forward to the rest of this series!
At a conference panel I was moderating, I recently said, “Writing well is not enough anymore.” In context, the audience nodded and agreed, as the panel was about finding your “tribe.” But then they went home and quoted me on their blogs and, as you can imagine, their readers tried to hunt me down and kill me.
Everyone is in love with the romantic notion that their amazing writing will bring in the masses. Apparently because the masses are psychic and these URLs just pop into their heads.
Marketing feels dirty to so many in my genre, which is heavily weighted toward mothers.
Time to get over it, ladies.
I’ll link my name to the post I ended up writing in response to the absolute horror of my saying that writing well is not enough anymore. Frankly, I don’t think I ever believed that it ever was enough, but I was willing to play along for argument’s sake.
Of course, now that you’ve said it, I think they just may believe me.
Darren,
I agree that good content by itself won’t draw readers, but I think it is also worth pointing out that great promotion of bad content has an even worse effect.
Sure, if you write tons of good content and no one sees it, that doesn’t do anyone any good. It’s like masturbation, satisfying but lonely.
However, if you take the time to write quality content and then do a small amount of promotion, I truly believe that your efforts will pay off in greater magnitude.
Once again, thanks for providing such great advice and insight…
~R.W.
By the way, when are you going to get around to reviewing my site? ;)
This is true. I have seen some blogs where they have copied text from offline magazines – good quality content of course… but no one reads it… no comments on the articles.
Good content is necessary but not enough :)
wow……. nice post. Thanks for sharing.
Shajib
http://www.livenetcafe.com/
Ahhah!!! Marketing this is the information I have been searching for. I realize writing is one thing but finding and grabbing folks to read it is a whole other animal.
I’ve got you in my reader and will be looking forward to the 9 Examples tomorrow.
How true, Darren. I know that for sure. I read something similar in Copyblogger sometime back – Why No One Links To Your Best Posts, http://www.copyblogger.com/no-links/.
I’m looking forward to this series. I feel as though my blog has hit a plateau of traffic…with over 800 quality posts and growing…seems as though I need a new approach to take the traffic to a new level.
The content should atleast be decent I would think. :)
It’s hard to know when you might be over-promoting yourself. It seems the one thing that can really drive traffic is being promoting by just the right people. I’ve seen some great content with little popularity. I’ve also seen mediocre content with great popularity due to the right people promoting it.
Darren;
I’m just starting up the curve, but it’s good to hear the voice of experience laying out what is ahead.
Perhaps an exception and not the rule, but it is possible to let your content speak for yourself. If Google ranks the page highly then people will come regardless of any other marketing efforts.
If a lot (not all!) of “super affiliates” and “probloggers” were honest they would reveal that they are where they are today thanks to getting there first.
My biggest success was just that, I got the first site up about a new trend that became massively popular. I didn’t have to spend a second on marketing it, Google just ranked me well from day one and with that momentum people linked naturally and the site grew.
But like I said, maybe that is an exception and not the rule! Good luck out there bloggers :)
I can’t wait to see your 9 examples. I have never thought of the fact that you can over-promote.
So what you are saying is that we don’t want to just leave people finding our blogs to chance but at the same time we don’t want to market them so much that we start ending up on blacklists?
You can count on me to be reading that post tomorrow. I am especially interested in it. I have been running my blog for a few weeks and haven’t gotten a single comment. So yesterday I did a search for it using both the key words and the actual name of the blog and not once did I find it before page seven of the results. That’s a blog to anyone’s ego – to buried like that. So no wonder no one was commenting – no one is reading because they’re not finding it – I mean how many people look that far into the results when they search for something?
So it seems I really need the info you will be giving tomorrow. I look forward to reading it. Thanks for having such a great blog. I’ve been following you for a little while – and my heads been spinning a bit with all the info you have available. Thanks so much for maintaining this site!
I have facing the exact problem.
I am told by those who read my articles that they love it. They say I write useful information for my niche.
But it doesn’t always produce more readers.
Only when I actively promote a post (not necessarily the blog site), do I see a spike in readership and subscriptions the next day.
I look forward to tomorrow’s post with the 9 methods from Darren.
-Arif
Great article Darren! It is indeed a very delicate balance and I find myself struggling to find the correct amount of “planting” on a pretty regular basis
Nice Intro / Teaser, and a good primer on what thigns to think about when writing a blog. As others have mentioned, being at the right place at the right time is always a good thing.
When you can’t time it perfectly, writing good content coupled with some timely tweets, email signatures, comments on other blogs, forum posts, etc… will help get things started, but I’ll leave that to tomorrow’s post. :)
– Rob – LexiConn
I like your way of developing post. The flower and seed example was really good and more important trick in this post, you do as always is you made us wait for the next.
Anyway waiting for the next post. Enjoyed reading.
http://www.bloggeruser.com
Hi Darren! I completely agree with your advice.
Especially this part: “If you only put little effort into your blog promotion you get little results. If you put in too much effort into it and get too aggressive with your promotion you can also get little results.”
I think some promotion is good. But too much promotion can reek of inauthenticity. That said, a little bit of marketing goes a long way.
The best way to grow an audience, in my opinion, is to give to others – to help others, to encourage others, to provide valuable information. Building relationships is crucial.
I’ll look forward to your post tomorrow.
Link building with a content to kick off is not bad. focusing on only readers but nothing to offer is simple lame, I can’t wait to read more about this 9 great tips you are talking about.
I think good content is the most important part of any blog and yes, to a certain extent, if it’s good enough it will eventually be found but I see it more about playing the odds. The more you promote yourself, the more likely people will find your content and speed the process up.
Looking forward to reading more about seeding.
BTW, today (at least in North America still August 31st :) is Blog Day http://www.blogday.org
Thank you for this post Darren, blog promotion is important especially to new starters, but you do need to good content to go with it… I’m looking forward to those 9 tips you mentioned.
Hi,
I’m a believer that quality content does count; of course that marketing is needed, namely creative marketing.
However – I only skimmed through your article – one thing is quite important : quality is not enough, content must be relevant. it’s this relevancy that will keep readers engaged and coming back for more.
A blog must give something useful to its readers.
Best regards,
José Carrilho
I’ve seen this effect personally so I CANT WAIT to see your next few posts about how to do it well. I look forward to the tips.
Content obviously matters, but promotion is critical – as you point out. What has worked best for me is using Twitter to build a loyal group of friends that will generously help spread my work.
Making it simple to read, easy to subscribe via RSS/email and mindless to share via social bookmarking/twitter widgets also play a big role in helping the promotion go further. Making it easy for reader to spread your content is key.
Thanks Darren
http://twitter.com/franswaa
Look forward to the follow-up posts, and agree that being too aggressive with promotion can actually end up hurting you–particularly in terms of being excluded from promotional channels due to negative user reaction.
So it boils down to a good balance of good quality content plus being a marketing ninja?
This is the hurdle I am facing right now with my blog. My blog is under a year old, and it is frustrating to write what I think is solid content but not have a loyal audience or a daily increase in unique visitors.
But like a lot of people have said already in so many words, YOU- the blogger- have to be your biggest cheerleader. People won’t find your blog and read your work unless they know about it. This is why it is imperative to get out there and promote yourself and your blog. I’m doing this now on a regular basis and while I’m in no danger of crashing any servers from my blog’s traffic, the page views and unique visitor numbers are climbing.
As always, great post, Darren, and I look forward to the 9 pointers. Cheers!
Wesley Craig Green
The Geek Entrepreneur
How will anyone know the content is great if they never see it?
This principle can be applied to nearly everything in life. It’s about finding the right balance in things. If you have amazing content, but no marketing or networking skills forget it.
The latter is also true… We need to find balance and it will come.
I half agree. Yes, networking, connecting, promoting your blog is half the battle of making a successful blog, but write content still is the other half. The two golden rules of blogging: Write great content regularly, and get it out there.
Side note: loved the promotion curve. Recently had someone blatantly spam my blog with a comment that had no interest except in promoting another website. When i called this person on it, he said he had been on the internet for 20 years, and this was the only way to get the message out. Your promotion curve shows this isn’t true.
Exactly. This is what I have been trying to tell my readers! They can not just expect results to happen without them working for it smartly. Can’t wait for tomorrow!
Very nice article. Brings up a number of solid ideas as a primer to more effective blogging. Cannot wait for part two.
Rob Mangiafico
Great points! Here’s possibly why too much marketing backfires:
The psychology is that if you have to market so much to ‘make the sale’ (get readers in this case), your product is probably not very good. Hence people shy away.
That’s just my guess, as that would be my baseline snap judgment. :P
This is one of the best posts I have read for awhile. It truly makes sense word per word. I cannot wait for tomorrow’s more specific post!
Thanks man!
Yeah, I agree with you 110%, Darren. I always hate when some blogger gurus tell the newbies that you just need great contents to succeed. How absurd?!
It’s just like if Spielberg creates a movie but no publisher (Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures, etc) are willing to take and publish it. Do you think that particular “Spielberg”‘s movie would be a success? No. The same apply to blogging.
Excellent Post! What you mentioned regarding “Great Content” does not market itself – or atleast requires a lot of other efforts to market itself, is really an eye-opener for me. It’s really true that just writing excellent content is not enough. I guess it is important to keep a good balance between the time spent for writing high quality content and the time spent for popularizing and marketing it.
You have to make the best stuff you can.
It might not market itself, but its too hard to be average. It’s too frustrating. If you’re not in danger of working yourself out of the game you’re in danger of boring yourself out of the game.
Or maybe not.
You raise an interesting point and I think there is a lot of value in your post, but the line of reasoning above is compelling to me.