What is the secret for massive blogging success? My vision was to build a blog around Social Media and Internet Marketing and help those who would accept and appreciate my opinions on the subject. I wanted to see more people achieving their own goals and dreams. So, it seemed natural to reach my audience through blogging.
But as many others just starting out, I was facing difficulties in developing an engaged community around my young blog. To make matters even worse when I tried to make a ‘face-lift’ to my blog by changing the WordPress template, something went wrong and it wasn’t functioning properly and the images accompanying the articles where missing and instead there was a gray rectangle.
Houston We Have A Problem!
To make a long story short it turned out to be a problem with a little PHP script called thumb.php (or timthumb.php in some cases), part of the WordPress template, which automatically resizes the image you attach to an article you’re publishing as featured images that represent the article.
This seemed to be a small issue at first and I was confident I would quickly fix it. I liked the template very much and it gave my blog a professional look and somehow a high-end esthetic to it. The template is called The Original Premium News Theme by WooThemes.
But after 48 hours of trying every possible option I could think of I was still struggling to find a solution. Sure, it would’ve been much easier to simply hire a professional coder to get it fixed but I wanted to solve this by myself. Being a Social Media buff I thought maybe I could find help on Twitter and to my surprise, even though I had just a handful of followers at that time (less than 500), I got some answers sooner than I thought it would be possible.
It’s ALIVE!
My followers started tweeting and retweeting the issues I had with my blog’s template and soon I got answers. I even got to the point where I was exchanging tweets with the co-author of the script, Darren Hoyt. But my blog didn’t get popular because of Twitter alone.
In terms of website traffic and exposure, my blog went from zero to hero in less than 48 hours when I published How Twitter Fixed My WordPress Blog Theme. After that article the traffic to my blog simply exploded. I soon found out I wasn’t the only one having issues with my blog’s template.
My blog post was instantly thrown to the first page in Google Search Results for various terms like “timthumb.php”, “thumb.php”, “mod_security” and other terms. Here’s the reaction I got from those who found my blog through search engines, having the same issues as I had:
As you can see there are quite a lot of folks out there who has some technical issues with this particular WordPress template and posting this article on my blog really made a difference. In fact, to this day, there are still people coming to my blog through search engines like Google.
One of the lessons I’ve learned is particularly related to Twitter. Because I had just started using it I didn’t really understand it at that time. But when I started engaging in conversations with my followers and with my blog’s readers, about my particular issue with the blog theme, I quickly discovered that Twitter was all about social engagement and simple conversations.
Also, it made me realize what a powerful social media tool a blog can really become when you have the right ingredients mixed together and taught me how to combine my blog and Twitter to get amazing results. The principles I’ve learned that day are the cornerstones of my 11,000+ followers on Twitter, at the time of this writing, and a steady stream of traffic to my blog that is quality, recurring traffic.
What did I learn from all this?
Here are 5 strategies I’ve used to get these amazing results that you can also implement to get massive traffic leading to massive success:
- The Viral Element – Now that I know what Social Media really means, I highly recommend using Social Media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The results will not come as fast as you’d like but these websites have a particular element that could bring a ton of traffic to your blog and it’s called: VIRAL. You see, because of my followers engaging in the conversation and retweeting my message, I found what the problem was and managed to fix it. But it also sent a continuous stream of highly targeted traffic to my blog.
- Find Your Target – Think about what the real purpose of your blog is. That way you can find out exactly what your target audience is. Then you can locate those places where your target audience hangs out. Places like forums, various communities, groups, news boards, etc. Involve your self. Let them see you for who you really are and that you are there to help them. Now all you have to do is provide a solution to their problems on your blog and then connect the dots. You can also leverage the massive SEO power of these social places.
- Engage Your Target – Look for ways to engage your target audience to participate in conversations and reply to your blog posts. Ask questions that your audience will find intriguing. Setup a small quiz on your blog. Many times this single strategy can bring search engine traffic that you would not have happened otherwise. Make your visitors become part of the action of your blog. Make them feel as is they are almost owners of that blog. After all, your blog wouldn’t exist without your visitors.
- Leverage Is The Key – When I managed to fix the issue with my blog’s template and had the idea of writing an article about it, I actually did something unconsciously: I used one asset and leveraged that asset to ultimately grow my blog’s traffic rate. Why don’t you do the same! Try to leverage all your assets. Even if it seems something small and insignificant. Remember: your smallest asset could be sometimes your biggest leverage. USE IT!
- Forget Marketing – Don’t be afraid to go out of your way to provide complete answers and solutions to specific problems. People appreciate when you are sincere and don’t use marketing tricks to get them to view your blog. People are smart. And will always sniff out a marketing pitch. Use common sense and think about how you would react in similar circumstances. Put yourself in their shoes. Try to understand what they’re going through. When you manage to do this, you don’t need marketing anymore. It’s all natural because you already gained their trust and they are likely to follow you anywhere or anyplace.
How would you improve these strategies?
I’m always open to any suggestions and I love it when people find a common ground to share their views and thoughts on a particular topic. So don’t be afraid to comment below and maybe even share your own success. Who knows, maybe we can find a way for you to leverage even your smallest asset.
Guest author Remi Vladuceanu’s blog provides practical knowledge about topics like Internet Marketing and Social Media. He recently published a free ebook on how to get traffic to your blog with Twitter. You can also publish guest posts and share your blogging tips.