We all can’t be writers, but we all want to be bloggers. It seems like everyone with an internet connection and an index finger has a blog. And why not? It’s cheap, it’s easy and you can do it while soaking in a baby pool of pudding in your living room if you want. A lot more convenient than running off a thousand copies of your manifesto and thrusting them into people’s faces while they shop downtown, that’s for sure.
But, how do you make your blog’s star shine brighter than all the others in the blog-o-verse? In the wide, dark waters of the blogging ocean, how can you make your one little drop cause an internet tidal wave?
Well, knowing a couple of kick-ass metaphors helps, but there are a few rules you can follow to increase traffic to your blog and get you noticed.
1. Write a “How To” post
Don’t make it too technical or sciencey. You need to reach a wide audience, so your subject should be relatable to most people. Like “How to Insult Strangers” or “How to Breathe With Your Mouth Closed.” It doesn’t matter if you don’t know a rat’s ass about your topic because most people will only read your post in order to comment, point by point, how wrong you are anyway. That’s okay! There’s no such thing as negative press in blog-land. A page view is a page view, right?
2. Write a “list” post
Movies you love, books you’ve burned, foods that make you sneeze – list it out. Lists are easy to read, which is important. Lengthy paragraphs with no breaks frighten blog readers which makes them clutch their bag of Smartfood and click elsewhere. You want them to wipe their hands on their pants and stay a little while.
3. Have pictures
As I inferred in item #2, people who read blogs have short attention spans and need pictures to break up the words. Blogs are not novels. They’re more like comic books or those pamphlets at the free clinic that teach you the warning signs of a raging meth addiction or that it’s not your fault your uncle is handsy.
If your blog post is “Top 10 Ways to Train Your Pet Weasel” do a Google image search of weasels or scan Flicker for weasel pictures. Just be sure to give an image credit so you don’t get sued. Or, just draw the picture yourself in MS Paint (or whatever paint program Apple has that I’m sure is soooo much better).
4. Link to something else
It’s not necessary to write much of anything at all if you just link to someone who already said it in a smarter or funnier way than you ever could. Or, take a cue from item #3 and link to, or embed, a video. People love watching videos because it’s much easier than reading and there’s sound. Like TV! Why spend 500 words that no one will read ranting about Justin Bieber, when you can just type, “Look at this douche” and then post a video. Blog post: Done.
5. Mention Justin Bieber
Or whatever embryo currently has a hit song on constant radio rotation. It’s called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), people. You gotta know what’s popular in order to be popular. Some of you are already screwed, I know.
6. Have a child
I don’t condone spawning just for the sake of blog fodder, but it is an insanely popular genre and if you can’t get a handle on SEO, you may want to consider it. For maximum post material, have more than one, a boy and a girl, if you can manage it. Plus, you will never run out of copyright free pictures to use.
I had a few more tips, but this post is already on the near side of 1,000 words which is critical mass for most readers so I’ll wrap it up. How To’s, lists, pictures, links, Bieber, kids. Got it? Great! Now go blow up the front page of reddit.
Or, if you would rather humans, not automatons, read your blog, write whatever you like, however you like. Just be true to yourself.
I’m disappointed. I thought sure this was going to be some sort of tribute to David Allan Coe.
Yes, I recently read an advice column published by our beloved WordPress people about ramping up your hits. So now I always take the time to insert a picture. But I suck at making lists – which is why I’ll never write for a magazine – so that’s as far as I’m taking it.
So sorry. I’m sure you won’t be the only disappointed one!
Yeah, all the advice on how to get more hits is kinda ridiculous. The blogs I like the most are the ones that don’t seem to be trying so hard.
Blimey, it is almost like you’ve read my mind (or my blog)! I like this post but your drawing of a weasel looks like a dinosaur.
It’s a miracle that the drawing looks like anything at all. It’s not easy to “draw” with the track pad on a netbook. Although, I’m not much of an artist with a pencil, either. But, no one will sue me over it!
This falls into the category of almost too true to be funny – you know, like “The Office.” I could never watch that show because I swear Steve Carrell stole the identity of my boss.
After reading a couple of “Increase Your Hits” advise blogs out of curiosity I started getting deja vu. They all say the same thing: 1. people are idiots, 2. cater to them.
I love The Office, but it does make me cringe because it’s almost too real.
How to increase your hits
Write an article about growing string beans and how you felt like you were committing infanticide when you cooked them.
You will get 500 hits from the people that say there is no global warming. You will get 500 hits from people saying there is global warming. You will get a hit from the lady that’s about getting saved and Jesus and stuff. The you will get 500 hits from the Palin haters and 500 more from the Obama haters and another one from the Jesus lady. Then it will evolve into 300 about the Arizona stuff. And them you will get something really funny from me about beets or potatoes which has nothing to do with strings beans. 800 re taxes, 354 re Middle east and interspersed between them all you will find people calling for use of nukes or for disarmament. Then with this many hits in between 4:00 to 7:00 AM on the first day you will get lots of advertizers to pay for the blog. These usually take a good week to slack off so if you know the names of 51 more vegetables you will have a whole year’s of the most active blog in the world.
Wow. You got it all figured out. You must have the most popular blog in the universe.
Have been turned on to blogs only last few weeks. I have no blog and probably never will.
I have things I’d like to submit but as a newbie I am astonished at the profound talent esp. humor and that you folks are so creative and can create things on almost a daily basis. I’m coming up on 61, draw cartoons, basically a gamer, some research, typing and condo board business(yuuck!) Thanks for your kind reply.
You should try it. You might surprise yourself with what you come up with!
check.
check.
check.
and yeap, don’t laugh, but i actually did a blogging workshop because i’m obsessed with hits. (don’t judge me.) it was a waste of time and money. i should have just waited for you to write this post.
Hits are great, lord knows I love ‘em, but if you don’t have the content, people won’t keep “hitting” you in the future. Plus, if everyone followed the same advice that I see everywhere, all blogs would look exactly the same. How boring would that be?
Your blog is great because it’s original and honest. So, just stick with that (even if it involves how to’s and lists!) and I think you’ll do fine.
Er… wow. I actually DO some of this shit. It wasn’t intentional though. I mean, yeah, it was intentional, but I only did it because I wanted to. Right. If you can’t think of something interesting to write, then make a list of stupid shit! (Hey, why not? I’ve got several stupid lists).
You know, every once in a while I write a serious blog post about something I find personally interesting. Oddly enough, those are the ones that get the fewest hits. The popular posts? Those are the ones where I either go off on some wild rant, or lampoon some cultural idiocy that we’re all familiar with and stuck experiencing.
I think George Carlin said it best. “That’s what I do. That’s my job. Thinking up weird shit. Coming around every once in a while, letting you know what it is.”
Yep, idiotic drivel combined with occasional lapses into boring and meaningless content. Sorry about that.
Yes, but do you do some of this shit because you notice that your hits are down and you know that people on the internet are sheep so you make a list post or a how to post in order to up your hits?
Or, do you do some of this shit because you have a list of shit you think is funny and/or interesting and would like to share it with as many people that happen to stop by your blog?
There is a difference.
Just for the fun of it, really.
I’ve started several lists as drafts that I haven’t published because they’re incomplete. I add stuff to them as it occurs to me. Once the list is done and looks decent, I post it. I enjoy the hits and the comments, but that’s not the motivation. I enjoy making the list more.
And of all those blog advice columns, none of them mention that obvious point: Enjoy writing what you write. If you don’t like it you won’t keep at it and then it won’t matter how many readers you have.
It’s obvious you have a passion for writing and that’s one reason why I love reading your blog and the many others that I read. Their passion is contagious and makes me want to write more and better.