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Website In A Weekend reader Holly J took the WordPress 101 coupon offer and sent in this suggestion: “Getting – and Keeping – Readers.”
Sadly, Website In A Weekend doesn’t have very many readers. Leaving out spammers and scammers, crawlers, spiders and robots, my guesstimation is something like a dozen readers (Update August 27 2009: Daily readership is now running about 80). This estimate is based on data returned from the WordPress Stats plugin. I have no idea whether WordPress Stats is liberal or conservative with it’s reports, but it doesn’t really matter, it’s close enough. The exact numbers aren’t that important, good ballpark estimates work just as well (100 readers? 1000 readers?), and I’m happy with stats accuracy to a factor of 2.
But… as the title indicates, I do have a plan for getting and keeping readers! It’s divided into two parts, active and passive. Active corresponds (more or less) to “Getting” blog readers, passive to “Keeping” blog readers. These aren’t set-in-stone divisions, but they’re handy for me to keep track of what I’m doing, and will allow me to split this article later if it gets too long.
Here’s my plan…
Actively getting readers
Actively getting readers means going out on the web—or in real life—to recruit readers. Here’s the tactics to active strategy:
- Write stupendous blog posts better than anyone else’s blog posts, ever. Sounds delusional, eh? I’ve got a ways to go, but stay tuned because I’m applying my Advanced Engineering Education (look for a link in the future!) here.
- Comment on other blogs with relevant, informative and (very) occasionally witty comments.
- Comment on forums related to using and developing WordPress.
- Develop WordPress plugins useful to me and others.
- Use social media to propogate links to articles.
Let’s dig into each tactic in more depth…
Writing stupendously useful blog posts
It’s amazing, really. English language cookbooks have been around since at least the “Forme of Cury” (ca. 1390), yet continue to rack up regular sales.
600 hundred years of cookbookery, in English alone, and the topic of cooking food appears far from exhausted.
Why is that?
Evidently, people never get tired of either eating, or reading, or both.
In contrast, WordPress has been around for, say, 5 years in some form or another. Even with the vast number of blogs dedicated to WordPress, given the data from cookbook sales, it seems reasonable to assume there’s plenty of room for Website In A Weekend.
Especially since Website In A Weekend features extremely high quality and all original content.
Check around. You will find that most blogs on WordPress simply repeat what’s already been said. Usually in their own words, but (sadly) sometimes just copying text directly from some other source.
For example, copy and paste text from a popular plugin such as All In One SEO Pack and see how many search results you get that paraphrase the original text. In fact, just search on any common term associated with WordPress, and see how much useful, actionable knowledge is returned. Of the sites that aren’t paraphrasing from each other, a few will have high quality content, the rest will be spam. WordPress is an extremely hot topic for search engine gamers and black hats.
Website In A Weekend aims to cut through all that crap.
As Gary Vaynerchuk states: “It’s all about the content.”
Let’s go get some readers!
Commenting on blogs
I put these feeds in my Google Reader, and comment on articles as appropriate to my interest and ability.
I also comment on other blogs when appropriate.
There’s several keys to commenting.
One key is adding value. Think of it as joining a cocktail party. If you’re late to the party, you need to suss out the vibe and get with it. If the vibe isn’t to your taste, find a different party.
Another key is commenting into the long tail. Long-running blogs like these are widely and deeply read years afterword. For example, I often read several past articles on each of these blogs above, every time I visit. Once or twice a week, I get a referral link from a comment I made months ago on someone else’s blog. I’m always amazed. These add up over time.
Your final key is a really hot tip. This may seem really obvious to many readers, but to others, it will simply not have occurred to them: on many blogs, there is a little check box allowing you to get emails when the comments are updated. Should you check that box and get updates, or just drop your comment and go, leaving your inbox free of even more email? Here’s the tip: if you’re following the guidelines for commenting as a means of conversing… check the box. Pay attention to the comments, add value when you can as the conversation evolves. This tip is really valuable because when you just drop comments around randomly without interest in the conversation, you’re halfway to spamming for linkbacks. Following this principle will practically force you to keep your comments valuable and on topic.
Commenting on forums
Forums can be an excellent place to find readers. Whenever you’re inspired by a question on a forum, consider writing your answer as a blog post as well. Here’s some forums I participate in:
Developing and distributing WordPress plugins
Plugins are a vital part of WordPress. As a programmer, I find them easy and fun to program.
Listing a plugin on the WordPress.org website will allow WordPress users to install your plugin directly from the Plugin administration interface. If you put a link to your website in your plugin documentation, people will visit your website. Guaranteed. WordPress also publicly lists new and recently updated plugins, which will bring you more traffic. If your plugin is actually useful, plugin users will return to your website repeatedly.
Here’s a few plugins I’m working on:
- hRecipe provides really easy microformatting for recipes.
- Aweber Super Simple provides an easy way to have people sign up for your newsletter while they register people for your blog.
- Creative Commons is planned to be a little plugin for dropping a CC license box into a blog post. I’m gathering interest for this plugin right now, and will get started on it when I find the time.
Social media
I am not a big fan of social media. In my personal opinion, it’s going to strip privacy and subject all participants to high-school levels of peer pressure. But it’s here to stay, and as the old saying goes, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! In any case, here’s the social media I am currently using:
- Digg is helpful for provided a public “time stamp” for publication. I don’t worry much about getting my articles highly rated, but I know that if I submit my article first, at least I’ll get credit for it.
- Twitter is a tool I don’t personally much care for, but I do recognize it’s usefulness. My challenge is to find an algorithmic approach that works “well enough” to make it worth my time. You may desire to be, or already be a twitter personality. If so, you will find the channel easy.
- Facebook is another social media channel which I’m not that inspired by. I prefer social media to be… social? But Facebook is another important medium for self-promotion which must be mastered for effective use.
- Email: You’re welcome to my email address, but you will have to go through the Dr WordPress contact form to get it!
Passively keeping readers
Active moves to passive on the long tail. Once you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, that comment becomes a passive driver of traffic. This really works! It’s amazing to see people referring in to your blog from a comment you made months or years ago.
SEO friendly
Getting your posts and pages structured correctly to provide optimal search engine results is not difficult, but there are a fair number of details to master.
- Structure: WordPress handles HTML web page mechanics. This is a good thing.
- Content: Tightly integrated content, posts build on each other in relevant ways. Articles contain links backward and links forward in time. Titles, permalinks, descriptions, keywords, tags, categories, excerpts, etc. all support the content of the article to help drive search results.
Monitoring 301 redirections & 404 errors
When you change the link to a page, if you haven’t provided a link to redirect queries for that article, the webserver is going to return an error, a 404 error to be precise. Redirection is one way to prevent 404s. I use the Redirection plugin from Urban Giraffe to handle 301 and 404 results. This plugin assumes you have some working knowledge of HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), but you don’t need much. That being said, the first time you examine your 404 log, you may be in for quite a shock!
Once again, I have an article coming on 301 redirection and 404 errors. Check back in a week or so. Or sign up for newsletter or RSS, I’ll let you know when it comes out.
Monitor with WordPress Stats
Since my current focus is on building high quality, tightly integrated content, I haven’t yet mastered Google Analytics. The traffic statistics I’m currently most interested in are delivered by WordPress Stats, which is currently my main monitoring tool.
I have an article in preparation on how I use WordPress stats to help drive traffic, watch for it within a week or two. (I’ll link it from here once it’s published.)
Longevity is best SEO of all
Check back next year. I’ll be here. And according to Matt Cutts, Google rates long-lived sites higher, so I’ll be getting a lot more organic search activity too.
Personal interaction with readers
Interacting with readers is an active process, not a passive process, but it’s a necessary part of keeping traffic.
Long time readers (bofem) know that I take personal interest in providing useful and important content, and helping them solve their problems. As you can see, I will reply to comments directly.
Find more information on building traffic
There are tens of thousands of web pages, ebooks, backlinking and other schemes floating around the internet all claiming fast results for building traffic. Some of them work. Some, maybe not so much. Most of them will probably get you the traffic. But what are you going to do once you have it? That’s not something any of the “Get Traffic Fast” crowd can help you with… because keeping readers requires high quality content, which takes time to develop.
For example, Website In A Weekend got “Stumbled Upon” back in April, receiving over 1800 hits in one day. Did any of these visitors stick around? Not more than one or two if my blog and feed stats are accurate. 0.1% is a terrible stick number, but when that happened, there wasn’t content to keep people’s eyeballs glued to the website. That’s becoming less of a problem as Website In A Weekend advances to the WordPress 101.
So, what’s your plan? Do you have one? How well is it working? Check back in 6 months, I’ll tell you what worked and what didn’t work.
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