Hello -If you are new to blogging, thinking of starting a blog or maybe feel that your traffic has gone stale, then this is maybe for you.
I know that there are a million "Tips" and "How to" out there on social media for bloggers,
this is not one of them.... but the ramblings, on what I have personally noticed to the traffic on this blog.
The Past
- I have deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I was sick of the negative content filling my day, people moaning and complaining about insignificant things....
Two months on, and it has been amazing, I feel more focused and surprised how much extra time i have acquired. To spend with people that actually mater.
Social media -is a black hole of time, we are creative people when we get the time. Turn off the social media for a day and see how much more you get done. Turn it off for a week (you will carry on living
trust me) your life will be improved. I am phoning people more, and when working away - emailing. Not as personal as hand written a letter, but an email these days feels much more of a personal way of communicating with someone rather than a "like" on Facebook, or a quick comment on a photo they post.
Back to the blogging
- Since leaving these two social media giants I have been testing ways in which traffic will now be directed to my blog as previously the main traffic was via Facebook and Twitter.
When blogging the main point which can not be stressed enough is -
CONTENT IS KING! Post relevant interesting content. Then people will return and view your work. Far too many post on subjects that they do not understand or are even interested in. Listen to your audience, i regularly post answering questions from readers.
Be yourself- stop posting trying to be someone else. People see right through this and it will only act negatively in long run.
Key wording- this is a vital tool for your images and posts to be seen from search engines.
You have written an article on late 17th century poetry, performed in the medium of dance. If you have the relevant wording in the post then others who share your views will be able to find this from say google searches.
This also hugely effects your posted images - Google "image01.jpg" and you will be surprised how many images are uploaded. You have worked hard on taking the image, taken the time editing it, now take a minute to square away a bit of house keeping.
So rather then the camera generated number, name the file some thing like "yourname,location,subject,date,genre,etc.jpg" Now when people type into Google words that match any of these, your post and images will pop up.
A note on key wording. Keep it relevant. This is a point which really annoys me, and morally is the lowest way to keyword. It is to include the Subject Masters in your key words.
So unexpecting viewers looking for an article on a subject/ person, are now viewing your blog with irrelevant content...
I have in the past seen, HDR images of cats in front of the fire with selective colouring and wording saying that this is no "Henry Cartior-Breson"
.... You know what you are doing - STOP IT!
(Disclaimer- yes I realise the above name is spelt incorrectly- it would be very hypocritical of me to include his name on a post of this nature now..)
The test- My most visited blog page to date is one of a workshop I attended, ran by a Photoshop legend. This guy has a huge following (and well deserved) but by posting my experiences of the course, un-expectingly directs many to my blog from Google searching their name.
To confirm this, last week an American photo legend posted on their blog. images of the Shard building in London. Saying that their images from inside were unusable due to the reflections on the glass.
I commented ( in a non spam way) a blog post that I wrote, on the techniques and equipment that i used to take away the reflections. I included a link to my blog showing the post and my image from inside the Shard. Not so to help this photographer as they are awesome and would know this, but help others who follow. - And in one day I got over 1000 page hits.
I am certainly not one to spam, but find this interesting. It is all good getting the numbers but are the viewers relevant to your work?
More recently I've been testing Google+ I have found huge communities of people with the potential to view your content. But are the 400,000 people in a HDR community worth viewing your posts?
Me Personally-I post for me, and I regularly go to the beginning of my blog and see how I've improved and it spurs me on to create new work and improve, this blog is a living time line of my images and i enjoy slowly watching them grow over the years. This blog is not compiled to generate business. I use other tools for that.
Businesses- For those of you trying to direct potential customers, it is finding that right community / audience.
Facebook has its place, but i find you do not have to be present, that is an excuse. If the content that you create is great, people will still share this. Finding the niche in your postings is the tricky part. Look at what you create and try and think like a customer, where would they be looking.
Posting too much - I think that there is a fine line with over posting. If the noise that you are creating is too often, people will grow tired of it quickly.
Quench the need to post everyday, cut back your posting and spend the extra time to produce higher quality content. ( I know that this goes against most top tip how to blog sites)
Utilising your blog's schedule function is a handy tool. You have some rare free time, and want to catch up with some blogging. Rather then throw out 20 posts in one hit, schedule them to be published over time. This will give you a clearer conscious that you have content coming out over the next few weeks, and helping you to have more time to spend on other things.
Also on this subject, when posting images i wouldn't post every single image taken on the shoot. Show just your best work rather than 900 images of the same subject. People lose interest and will click off and head else where.
Where ever you decide to post and cast the net, please be unique.
I know that the automated sites out there are time saving, but when for example you are viewing tweets blatantly created by software, with a hyper link to your post. It is highly off-putting and less people will follow the trail.
Monitor - Most blog these days utilise some sort of analytics in the back ground, this blog site for example is ran through Blogger (owned by google) and so i can see how many people view a post, where were they directed from, what country, what browser used etc. This helps in working out trends.
For this site i have seen that the G+ community traffic by far out weights that of the Facebook and Twitter views. And what content is most popular.
This post was created from my own personal views, there are no one size fits all with this, and it is taking the time to work out what is best for you.
My first post was over 5 years ago, which is frightening to think where the time has gone.
I will find it interesting to re-read this post in another 5 years time and look back on how things have changed.
Thanks for reading
- ill go now and enjoy some of my newly acquired free time
Lee.
