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Who are you blogging to?

If you’re a writer and you’re blogging about writing and/or your books, who is your audience? Other writers and readers. And probably, they already knew who you were. That’s how they found your blog. You may influence some of them to buy your books more often, but they were likely to buy your books anyway. You’re preaching to the choir. Blogging inside the box.

How do you expand your audience and increase your traffic outside the box? Here’s how:

Get a life! I hate to tell you this, but the only people interested in the mechanics of writing, how many pages you wrote yesterday, and that your characters aren’t cooperating are other writers. What else did you do last week, yesterday, today? Life is full–don’t narrow it down. Tell your funny stories of daily life. Explore your interests and hobbies. Think about it this way– say you were an insurance agent and all you blogged about was the insurance business. You wouldn’t interest anyone other than your fellow insurance agents. But if you blogged about your life and your funny stories and had a handy link in your sidebar to your insurance agency, people who became attracted and entertained by your blog would likely click on your link and say–”I want them to be my insurance agent! I like them!” Same thing goes for writers. Stop blogging about writing and start blogging to entertain. In other words, be a writer when you blog! Entertain! And readers will say–”Wow, I want to read their books!” Get out your personality and put it on the table. Your traffic doesn’t want to hear about your writing–they want to be entertained.

Consider adding bonus content. Expand your opportunities for search engine traffic by adding bonus content to your website or blog. Categorize pages with organized content. You can see how I do this on my blog, Chickens in the Road. On my “How to do stuff” pages, I have recipes, gardening, farming, and other organized content as bonus pages for my regular blog readers and to bring in new blog readers via search engine traffic. Search engine traffic comes for the specific content, then they find the blog, which is integrated within the bonus content for easy access and cross-traffic. People find my site by searching for my name or my books, but I offer a multitude of other ways for traffic outside the box to discover me.

Try whisper marketing. Don’t scare outside-the-box traffic away! Overwhelming self-promotion in your design can be a turn-off to mainstream traffic. They are timid gazelles, your outside-the-box traffic. Hit them over the head, and they’ll run away. Instead, coax them in with a warm, welcoming environment and subtle promotion. Consider even adding a catchy name to your blog and reducing your author name to lesser prominence. Yes, I said that, reduce the prominence of your name. (Lightning will strike me any moment now!) A blog is a subtle marketing tool. The trick is to draw traffic in, let them get to know you, and snap, you’ve captured them before they know it. Hitting them over the head does not work! I changed the name of my blog to “Chickens in the Road” and reduced the prominence of my name (it’s still there, just smaller), and my traffic tripled in two months. But you want your traffic to remember your name! Of course you do. And they will remember your name–because they will stick around in your warm, welcoming environment. Quiet, subtle marketing as part of a vital, entertaining blog will do you far more good than blatant self-promotion ever will.

Be dependable! Don’t want to blog every day? Let me get out the world’s tiniest violin and play it just for you…. (LOL) Blog every day! People are creatures of habit. Be there, or be square. They will forget you if you aren’t there when they sit down with their coffee to relax and blog hop. Reliability counts. Intersperse longer posts with short posts, or even photo-only posts. Or posts focusing on your bonus content. Whatever you do, be there. If you’re not, why should your traffic be?

You can see more examples of writers who are drawing new traffic here: Tori, capitalizing on her interest in Hollywood history, and Kacey, making hay out of being a baby boomer. Both of these writers are expanding their traffic base outside the box.

A blog can’t be all about you. Don’t just talk about your books and your writing. Offer something to the reader. Make it about them–and watch your traffic explode.

Got any great ideas about increasing traffic? What works for you? What do you think about these ideas? Let me know!

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Tags: How to Blog, Marketing //