Many of us use blogs to build a platform--- a following--- which can be a useful thing. Publishers and literary agents are impressed by writers who come to them with a good platform. But how much is enough?
A recent article in Writer's Digest magazine gives an answer as to how many blog page views a month is impressive:
Notable: 20,000 views a month.
Very Notable: 100,000 views a month
Impressive by Any Means: 500,000 views a month.
By contrast, my own page views in the last month were 1531. (It hasn't been a very active month, and I have been in the middle of once again re-inventing my blog--- hence the new title, which I may yet change again, perhaps to something as dull as my own name. I just have to decide which name.)
Now, there are page views and pages views. If you look at your stats for the search terms people use to find your blog, you will see that many came looking for the wrong thing, and most likely immediately left. In my own case I have a lot of people who come looking for 'David Tennant naked' or 'Billie Piper pregnant' or 'John Barrowman naked'. But never, sad to say, 'John Barrowman pregnant'. (OK, it's his character, Captain Jack Harkness, who has been pregnant.) Since this blog, alas, is not about nudity or celebrity gossip, these hits are wrong numbers.
On the other hand, some blog views really count because the viewers stayed to read and then to comment. My friend Mike Duran's blog tends to run towards 40-50 comments on every blog post. Often he arouses controversy among his reading base, but not in an angry or rabble-rousing way. I invite my readers to scroll down my sidebar to find the link to Mike Duran's blog and check it out.
How do you get more blog views? NOT by going around to forums and groups online and saying 'hey, read my blog!'. That seems spammy, and, worse, a little desperate. No, you have to decide which topics contribute to the platform you are building, and write about those things.
Now, for writers the trap is to write about writing (which I do far too much) and build a following of other would-be writers of a similar genre and outlook. We need to expand--- particularly to expand to topics of interest to readers. For example, I ought to be writing more about popular books I enjoy, such as The Hunger Games trilogy, or Howl's Moving Castle by the late Diana Wynne Jones, or Orson Scott Card's books, particularly the Homecoming series, and Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series.
Blogging about TV series and movies of interest--- Doctor Who, Star Trek, Gattaca--- is also worth doing. Blogging about books from small presses, or self-published books, does not attract readership except perhaps the author of the book in question. So my plans are to limit mention of such things to the most excellent examples, such as 'Live and Let Fly' by Karina Fabian.
Doing these things, I hope, will get me more page views. Perhaps not to a notable level. But, one hopes, better than I am doing now.
If you are a blogger trying to expand your platform/followership, what methods are you currently using? Are there any new methods you are thinking of trying?
Visiting and commenting on other blogs is a sure way to increase your own traffic! :)
ReplyDeleteTrue, to some extend. Some comments are perceived as spam comments and ignored. Thoughtful comments on the most relevant blog types (if you can figure out what those are) are most likely to lead to worthwhile traffic. But sometimes it's hard to think of thoughtful comments when you are out blog-visiting!
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