Advice: How Do I Get People To Read My Blog?
Advice: How Do I Get People To Read My Blog?
Today’s Question for “Ask Dr. Diane”: Hi Dr. Hamilton right now I am up and promoting my artist Bianka and would like to ask you, how do I get people to read my blogs and visit my artist website. I am new to blogging and would like to know how to start people talking about them. If you can give me some insight on this it will be gratefully appreciated.
There are a lot of good books that give helpful advice about blogging. I liked the last two books I read: Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields and Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz by David Seaman. I also think there are a lot of bloggers like Seth Godin and others that list helpful advice on a regular basis. Some sites like Mashable and Problogger can be helpful as well. If you type in the question ‘How do I Get People to Read My Blog”, into Google, I think you can find more advice than you probably can handle. I think some blogs are really good to follow for advice as well. It can take some time to get blog followers. You need to post regularly and post information that is targeted toward the people you want to have follow you. Remember to include your blog address on everything . . .your signature line on your email, your twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc. pages . . . You’ve done one important thing already by responding to a blog (in this case mine). By posting helpful information on other people’s blogs, people can find you as well. You can go to forums like these to chat with others about it: http://bit.ly/aDqmQq . . . http://bit.ly/bbCG5H. You can start with Twitter as well by following people and posting things from your blog there . . . check out these articles: http://bit.ly/18qgK3 and http://bit.ly/Zq4Qt. I’m not sure if the price is still as reasonable as it was (I assume it is), but programs like letsgetsocial.com byKate Beck can be very helpful. She gives some good advice about how to set up social networking sites. Her aim is more about starting a social networking business, but I feel her videos are just as helpful to someone like you that is new to the social networking scene. One big piece of advice is to be sure you are spell checking what you type. You want to come across as professional as possible.
The Best and Worst Websites
I often teach marketing courses where we discuss the use of websites to promote products. In one class, I have students compare two different online malls to see their reaction to them. Without exception, all students prefer one of the sites over the other. Here are the two sites: http://www.1mall.com/ and http://virtuallyshopping.com Can you guess which one they prefer?
I use certain sites as examples in my courses to show overly busy pages. I think Godaddy’s site used to be an example of a difficult to navigate site. However, they have since made some big improvements. A company may have a great product, but if the average user can’t navigate easily, they may be losing out on business.
I chose my website developer, PS Web Design Studio, because they listened to what I wanted and developed a clean and easy to navigate site. To see some of their example websites, click here. Not everyone wants to spend a ton of money to have a site developed. Many can save money having their site developed using Joomla or other inexpensive applications. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but it can help to have the professional touch to add some extra appeal that you may not have considered. For more information about Joomla, click here. I also like WordPress for its ease of use and ability to put together a blog with little technical expertise.
For some examples of well-constructed sites check out these links:
http://www.webpractices.com/samplesites.htm
http://sethgodin.com – I tend to like simple sites and Seth Godin’s does everything it needs to do.
http://www.drdaniellebabb.com/ – Dani’s site has a very clean and easy to manage feel.
https://drdianehamilton.com – I am impartial . . . but I prefer the simple design.
To see some examples of overly busy or poor websites check out these links:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
http://www.boogersite.com/boogerSites.cfm
In all of the examples of bad web pages, I think the following one may have my vote for the worst:
This may very well be the worst web page of all time.