I discussed in my previous post 5 tips on how to generate traffic to your blog. I wrote very generally not really differentiating among amateur bloggers or professional bloggers. Of course if you get paid to blog and drive traffic to your site it means you have time to implement strategies that will help quickly. But even for amateurs you can still follow these 5 tips. 


1.     Write well and write about something useful for the reader.
It seems easy right? But in reality it is the hardest part of blogging. You need to be a storyteller, engage the audience, and write about something that is relevant and meaningful to you and others. For example, I started my fashion blog with a friend out of a challenge. We stopped shopping for 91 days and wore a different outfit each day. We posted a picture each day and discussed how we felt about the lack of shopping, our realization of having too many useless clothes in the closet, and consumerism in general. Our readers were curious to see if we could win the challenge, what we would be wearing the next day. Most importantly the blog made the reader think about their own relationship with clothes, fashion, and consumerism. This is what I meant by providing content that will spike people to react, to relate to their own life. If you blog about food and your journey to losing weight, most likely you will share your successes and failure. It is about emotions. You want to connect with people and you want to help these people with your own experience.

Once we were done with the 91 days we stopped the blog for a year or so (we worked on different projects). It has been only 2 weeks since I relaunched the fashion blog with a new purpose - fashion tips and editorials for the real people. What I mean is that I felt there was a gap between the fashion models and designer pieces and the punctuality of these items on regular people. Nothing new right? And yet I had hard time to find tips on how to dress for interviews without looking like an old day and where to shop in you are not in big cities. So I compiled pictures of what I perceived to be well-dressed women and functional women. However, the blog had a big limitation in terms of driving more traffic: I was posting only pictures. I was lazy. I must admit. Then I had a conversation at the coffee shop with my friend and we talked about business attire, interviews, and sheer hosiery. I thought why not talking about these issues on my blog with a supplemental picture. It worked. That day I had the highest volume in readership and buzz both on the blog and Facebook.

Moral: You need to spend some time to understand what gaps you need to fill in the topic you are blogging enough. Visual pictures are very helpful but should be accompanied by a story- entertain your reader, rewards them with your own anecdote - Be useful and true to yourself.

Next time, we will discuss how to drive traffic by identifying top influencers in your field and choosing the right time to blog.

Thank you,

Dr. Gin