It happens to the best of us. Do everything you can to have the right blog post at the right time and…
Thud.
You’ve seen your visitors drop in half. Or worse. Overnight. You thought you’ve struck a chord but…well, you thought wrong.
Here, though, are 4 tried-and-true tactics for getting over the slump hump.
1. Stop writing.
In other words, don’t do it yourself. We love guest bloggers (HINT) but we’ve had even more luck with special series. The one we did called “So You Really Wanna Write a Book?” had twice as many visitors on day one as our interview with Chris Brogan did in 2010.
We love writing here at HQ. We think we’re good at it. BUT…hey, I had a confidant tell me last week that I “could use a lesson in sentence structure,” and I “overuse hyphens.” Maybe I needed a break?
Maybe you need a break? The alternative…
2. Write MORE.
When we wrapped up a client engagement in the Energy industry last October, we made a new mantra that we called “The Chicago Way.”
Blog Early. Blog Often.
Not to sound like the Motivational Gurus who will tell you that you’ll miss all of the shots that you don’t take…but if no one is seeing your writing, perhaps it’s because you aren’t doing it enough.
Guys like Brogan can help you – even if you don’t want to buy his Blog Ideas service, that’s okay. See the kinds of things that he, and others, are talking about. Apply that to whatever niche it is you’re operating in, or want to be operating in.
3. Get Personal*
Stories are great. Stories that actually happened to you, or inspiration from something you’ve watched happen or from people you met – those will get visitors, IF you can tie them into something, again, people can use.
This post – https://area224.wpengine.com/how-much-did-that-cost/ – was very popular (30% more traffic than average) because it was a story tied into current events (specifically, Groupon‘s waste of ad dollars on Super Bowl Sunday).
There’s a big asterisk (*) because a good chunk of people get this WRONG. Here’s how they mess it up:
Bob’s Musings from Suburbia OR
Random Thoughts from Rachel’s Life
Some of you may be guilty of doing this in the subhead of your blog – so the 9 seconds of attention span we have (according to @SallyHogshead) leave me spending the first 6 seconds trying to figure out if I know you from somewhere, then the last 3 trying to find out if you’re worth my time.
People don’t want to read something random, and they don’t want your musings.
Trust me on this – we got tons of visitors on Tuesday, but we wouldn’t have had the COMMENTS if the personal story was random, or a series of musings. We tied it into business and what we’ve learned. BUT, also…segue to Tactic 4:
4. Leave your “neighborhood.”
Gary Unger is in Atlanta. Marian Schembari is in New Zealand. Most to all of my Dad’s friends are in Indiana. Theme?
Not only aren’t they geographically in the same spot as me, they are demographically in different spots, too.
To tease this out even further, I had to step out of my own neighborhood online and build relationships over the days, months, and years. Some of this gets done by picking up the phone, some of it by commenting on other people’s blogs, and some of it by paying the karma bank here and there.
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