We’ve already heard of ways to get links to your blog. Now, you’ll read about simple effective tips to finding readers for your blogs. Sure you may have a million of backlinks already but you’re reader meter is still not improving. What’s the point of having lots of websites linking to you if people don’t patronize your blog?

Darren Rowse of problogger.net wrote on the topic of finding readers for your blog. Since I’m in the mood for giving away blogging tips that have helped me further my blogging, here are another set of tips you can also find useful:

Tips to Finding Readers for Your Blog by Problogger Darren Rowse:

1. It takes time. Be patient. Every tree takes awhile to grow.
2. Quality Content and Good Design. Post timely and relevant content always.
3. Link to others . Be generous with your linklove.
4. Comment on others’ blogs. Show other bloggers that you are alive.
5. Interact with Readers. Be friendly. Don’t be a geek.
6. Update frequently. Four entries in 3 months will leave your few readers uninterested.
7. Search engines . Gotta love Google…and well okay, Yahoo, and MSN, and etc.
8. Add a signature to your outgoing email. This always works.
9. Web Rings . Join blog groups and networks that share the same interest as you.
10. Add an RSS feed to your blog . More and more people now trust their feed readers for updates. Why not join the bandwagon?
11. List your site on Portals . Think classified ads.
12. Blog Search Engines and Indexes . Same tip no. 7.
13. Get Involved in others Blog Projects. Volunteer your blog and talents for a cause.
14. Get involved in other web forums . Forums are another area of live discussion. Don’t ignore them. Make friends with the active members.
15. Take all advice with a grain of salt - Be yourself and have fun! . Enough said.

Now that you’re getting to know more and more about blog marketing, I guess its time that you learn the value of backing up. Much like your PCs and laptops, it is important that you back up your blog database because you’ll never know what could happen. Your WordPress blog database for example contains all your entries, comments, and links that you have gathered throughout the years of blogging and you simply can’t afford to have them deleted just like that — kaput in an instant!

Backing up your blog must be done regularly, the same way you back up your important files. You know what could happen if you don’t—all your entries and photos sent to oblivion. You’ll never know when your web hosting server will crash or your blog gets hacked by some clever programmer whose only goal is to annoy you, so it’s good to be prepared.

Don’t wait until a series of unfortunate events happens to you blog. Get into the habit of backing up by following these simple and easy steps. No, you don’t need to be a geek to do this.

1. Use an FTP client to download all the site files (the Wordpress folder)
2. Log into phpMyAdmin and select your Wordpress database
3. Click on “Export” and make sure that all the Wordpress tables are there
4. On the “Structure” section tick “Add Drop Tables,” “Add AUTO_INCREMENT,” and “Enclose table and field names with backquotes”
5. On the “Data” section leave all the boxes unticked
6. Tick “Save as file” and download the database (you can use compression if your database is big (SOURCE: DailyBlogTips)

If you don’t have access to your WP’s phpMyAdmin, you may use the Database Backup plugin instead. And remember, backing up habits can save your online life. So save the blog, save yourself,save the world.

Michael Stelzner recently came out with his list of 2007/2008’s Top 10 Blogs for Writers. I told you, lists as blog entries always work. I am not really sure how he ranked the blogs but I agree with some of his choice. Copyblogger for one, is a personal favorite because it presents timely writing tips in this age of Web 2.0 gearing to Web 3.0.

With or without SEO or linkbuilding in mind, blog writing is somewhat different from journalistic. Now thanks to these talented writers who share the same passion in blogging as I do.

Top 10 Blogs for Writers by Michael Stelzner:
1. Copyblogger, by Brian Clark: Holding the number-one spot for the second year running, this site excels at teaching the art of writing.
2. Freelance Writing Jobs, by Deborah Ng: For writers seeking new work, this site is your sole destination and maintains a top spot in our contest from last year.
3. The Renegade Writer, by Linda Formichelli and Dianna Burell: Are you a freelance journalist looking for inspiration? Look no further.
4. Web Content Writer Tips, by James Chartrand and Harrison McLeod: With a focus on making more money as a writer, this blog is full of helpful how-to articles.
5. Web Writing Info, by Courtney Ramirez: This excellent blog looks at social networking and emerging web-based opportunities for writers.
6. The Golden Pencil, by Anne Wayman: Wayman, a second-year winner, examines how to go for the gold as a freelance writer.
7. Catalystblogger, by Jennifer Williamson: Williamson writes about the pains and trials writers face.
8. Freelance Parent, by Lorna Doone Brewer and Tamara Berry: Two moms provide excellent perspective on writing with a dash of parenting.
9. Write from Home, by Amy Derby: Derby provides fresh commentary and advice on writing.
10. Copywriter Underground, by Tom Chandler: This site, a second-year winner, provides regular doses of inspiration for copywriters.

Now there, this for me is a comprehensive list already for those who wish to improve their writing and problogging career. Notice that 6 out of 10 are women? Does this mean that women are the greater bloggers? Hmmm…quite a good topic for discussion.

Anyway, congratulations to the winners! And here’s to hoping that someday, blogmarketingjournal.com will land somebody else’s Top 10s.

One of the biggest challenges of blogging AND maintaining a blog is perhaps thinking of what topic to blog about especially when you are expected to write every day. In the modern Internet times when bloggers and more Internet savvy people are hungry for news and new ideas, sometimes, you can just run out of things to say.

Ah, the writer’s block you say. Blogging, like traditional journalism or creative writing can sometimes be exhausting. You think of a topic, write about it, but sometimes your readers won’t react the way you want them to. Oftentimes, you’ll receive no comment at all.

Chris Garrett of chrisg.com, suggests 10 Killer Post Ideas for writers who are fast running out of topics to write on. The list has already been around for some 2 years now and I’d like to share to you the list that helped me further my problogging and writing career:

10 Killer Post Ideas:

1. How to. Posts as such bring information to your readers. Anything that can be helpful to them such as How to’s, guidelines, and tips would be a good start. Think of the benefits it would bring your readers. Especially if you are doing niche blogging, how to’s are usually common.

2. Lists. Top 10, Top 5, or even Top 130. My entry Top 130 Ways to Get Links to Your Blog is a perfect example. Lists always work because you give something to the reader.

3. Campaign. Blogs for a cause can be funny according to Chris because you’ll never know what your audience wants to rally around. You may think of a good cause but launching such campaign entails a lot of hard work. It’s either the outcome is good or bad. But usually, campaigns whether good or bad, can create a buzz and always leave other people blogging about it.

4. Interview. I did this awhile back for a start up blog and it has helped me big time. Their answers are already full of information and are worth posting on the blog as is. However, there is the right way to interview people. Whether through e-mail, IM, or over the phone, make sure that you do your research first and prepare questions beforehand. Give the impression that you know at least some about your interviewee. Don’t ask him about things you already know. Ask him about the things you and your readers would want to know.

5. Review. Reviews are usually done on products or services. Most professional bloggers are sent stuff they usually don’t know about. Make sure though that you don’t review a product that has already been reviewed by a gazillion of bloggers out there.

6. Case study. Case studies can be very powerful. However, such entails comprehensive research. You can’t just write about something serious you just read on other blogs. Do your research.

7. Research results. On to the more serious stuff, research results can bring you a lot of good publicity especially if you did the research on your own. Surveys are pretty popular but there are other research methods. Work like your working on a serious school paper.

8. What’s new, trends. Write on what’s new with your niche( or what’s new with you). Blog on the trends in the Internet world. Everyday brings a lot of “news” so you’re sure you’ll always have something to write about.

9. Attack! Risky but often effective. It can bring you a lot of traffic and if you’re not careful enough, a lawsuit. It can also be a smart linkbait technique because you expect other websites linking to the controversial post.

10. Ask the audience. You may ask your readers questions. Leave them thinking and get them to send their feedback One reply can be a blog post in its own but of course, you still have to filter and present it in a worthy blog manner.

I am sure there are more that can be added to the list but these are tried and tested killer ideas. Now go. Write that “How Not to Gain Extra Christmas Pounds” entry and expect more incoming links.

If monetizing with WordPress isn’t enough to convince novice bloggers that you can make money online, then this list by Darren Rowse of Problogger.net could perhaps make you think about singing up for Google AdSense.

10 Reasons Why You Should Consider Using AdSense on you blog by Darren Rowse:

1. International Traffic - Adsense have a large client and advertise base who wants traffic from other parts of the world
2. Easy Implementation - any web idiot can set up ads on his blog
3. Massive Advertiser Base – AdSense’s large advertiser base enables them to serve relevant ads to any blog
4. Obscure Topics – not many ad sponsors have ads on targeted niche but AdSense does
5. Make it Easy For Advertisers to Target Your Blog - there is a big potential of advertisers to make contact with you for further advertisement deals once they see they are getting more than what they’ve paid for from your blog
6. Set it and Forget it – you can leave the code as it is and earn if you’re too lazy to experiment
7. No Minimum Traffic Levels – small traffic can get you approved and can be a good start to a happy online earning
8. Able to be Used with Other Ad Types – you can run other type ads and PPC programs with AdSense
9. Multiple Ad Formats – you can choose to serve different type of Adsense ads : text Ads, Image Ads, Video Ads, Adlink units, referral ads (CPA), and even the Google search tool
10. Reliable Payment – very prompt and reliable once you get your first Google AdSense cheque

AdSense may not be the best choice because there are quite a few number of other Pay Per Click programs available but the fact remains that it has many financial benefits. You decide.

Over at Copyblogger, Jon Morrow posts about how writing can make one feel drunk. I haven’t been that drunk but I know that alcohol can be well, a bit addictive. It led me to think why and how blogging can actually control the deepest recesses of humans.

Much like alcohol, blogging can sometimes make you just want to forget you’ve actually posted something foolish. You blog and you post. And when you get to reread them the next day, there’s a small voice inside you that says ‘Delete Post’. And much like alcohol, you blog like you can’t live without it.

I like how Morrow presented the analogy. Quite a dirty analogy but it’s so true — blogging and alcohol. So here are my own explanations of Copybloggers’ list why blogging can sometimes be synonymous to alcohol :

You Think the Post is Brilliant. More often than not, bloggers are proud thinking their every post is just that brilliant. For alcoholics, any type of alcohol can perhaps be the most beautiful thing that ever happened in their lives. Some prolific bloggers even expect that their readers would always dig their blog posts. It isn’t the case always and oftentimes, you forget about search marketing standards because you can’t wait to just blog.

You Think the Post is Hilarious. Since when is alcohol hilarious? I know blog posts can be hilarious at times but remember that humor can be really dangerous. What is comedy to you may be drama for others. Alcohol on the other hand, can be hilarious because it makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do, ergo, dangerous. Enough said.

You’re Actually Drunk or High. Blogging can make you high literally. You post something and you get too excited with the response of the people. You wait for the comments and check your dashboard every 10 minutes. Obviously, alchohol makes you want to drink as if there is no tomorrow. Remember that not all blog posts will benefit your readers much like not all alcohol types can make you forget you just broke up with your girlfriend.

Your Heart is Pounding. The site of a beer bottle can give you a heart attack. Blogging can also give you a heart attack until you blog about what you just read, thought, or seen. You heart beats until you actually tap your keyboard the same way your heart pounds the first time you drink beer after a season of alcohol drought.

You Can’t Wait to See How People React. You look at your dashboard for new comments like a protective mother bear. You think about how people will react. As for your alcohol, you also can’t wait to see how people would react to you once you decide to binge drink or pass drinking for the night.

Your Stomach Tightens Up. Ever had those times when you just wan to puke upon reading your older blog entries? How about your stomach tightening because of too much alcohol? It’s time for you to rethink what you just did so it’s either you edit or delete the post entry or sober up fast.

You Hesitate Before Clicking ‘Post’. Perhaps this may not be a challenge for more experienced and professional bloggers but others may still not be that confident. You’ve tried drinking alcohol, but sometimes the effect on you is different each time.

Blogging is indeed addictive as alcohol. For me, it’s amoral like most Web 2.0 programs. It’s up to the blogger how he uses the blog for his own purposes and worldly desires much like it’s up to those who drink alcohol why they do such.

WebPosition 4 is a popular SEO Ranking software that I’d recommend, even if the only website you have is a blog. If you are trying to monetize your blog then you’ll need a way to track your conversions, right?

WebPosition 4 can do that and so much more.

Not only does WebPosition 4 track conversions, but it also reports your search engine rankings, helps you target your keywords better, uses a built-in expert to optimize your web pages more effectively, and submits your URLs to the search engines for you. It’s an automated process that is well worth the time.

There are two products that you might have an interest in: The standard edition and the professional. The standard edition is good if all you want to do is use a metrics system for your website or blog. But if you do any pay per click advertising at all then you’ll need the professional edition. The way it tracks and reports pay per click conversions is well worth the extra that you’ll spend on the professional edition.

The standard edition supports up to 5 domains, but the professional edition has unlimited domain support, so if you have multiple domains then you should think about shelling out the extra bucks for the professional edition. You can also have your reports e-mailed to you with the professional edition, which is a huge time saver. And two other new services that come with the professional edition are meta tag manager and link validation. I really like the link validation tool!

At any rate, before I go on too long, check out WebPosition 4. You’ll be glad you did.

Marketing Pilgrim blogged about an organization calling itself Blog Council. The Pilgrim is dead on regarding its interpretation of the Council. They don’t seem to be too qualified to what they say they’re going to do. Here’s a sample of their own blogging philosophy:

“Major corporations use blogs differently while abiding by the same rules and etiquette,” said Blog Council CEO Andy Sernovitz. “Individual and small-business bloggers don’t face the same issues. For example, we still need to deliver a responsible and effective corporate message, but we need to do it in the complicated environment of the blogosphere. We have to speak for a corporation, but never sound ‘corporate.’ And we have to learn to do it live, and in real-time.”

In other words, it’s business as usual for the world’s mega corporations. Corporate speak is more important than honesty or authenticity. And since Blog Council has published an entire two blog posts since December 5, they can be trusted to discuss the ins and outs of blogging. And those two blog posts amount to nothing more than an FAQ and a “Hey, we launched a blog.” Their first mistake? Publishing an FAQ on a blog for an organization that no one has thought enough about yet to ask any questions. Which tells me that they just made them up.

From the FAQ:

We will also serve as a voice for corporate blogging. Companies will be blogging, but we will do it differently than personal or small business blogs. There is no one “right way” to blog.

They’re right about that. There’s no one “right way” to blog. But there are a lot of wrong ways to blog and if you want to avoid them you’ll do yourself a favor by choosing a guide who has some experience in blogging.

I made a post the other day about doing six free blog tips. You can read that post by clicking here.

Fitzy, or Brian Fitzpatrick asked me to review his blog so here we go. Now understand, this isn’t a review so it may sound negative at times because I focus on what can be improved. There are several things being done very well, but to give you 6 blog tips to improve your blog I have to focus on what needs to be improved.

1. Brian, it might be just my computer, but the blog hangs when I first visit. Maybe there is a little too much to load, but it was frozen while something loaded for too long.

Load time is important to both seo and your visitors, so maybe you could have a friend or two go there and test it. Make sure they hit shift+refresh if they have been there before so it doesn’t just load from the cache.

You can remove one element at a time until you find the culprit and remove it.

2. Permalink structure. When I click the headline of a post, the title of the page I go to reflects the blog post title, then your blog name rather than the other way around. Good job on that. The default is usually blog name, then title of the post which is not as good.

But permalinks are the same. The title should be first. Your post about stumbleupon for instance. The url for that post is http://www.fitzbiz.org/2007/10/17/stumbleupon/ so the keywords or keyword in this case is at the end. This will hurt you on posts with much longer titles.

Here is a sample permalink structure that will improve your seo. I have to change the same thing on this blog so don’t feel alone. Choose custom permalink structure and put this into it.

/%category%/%postname%/%monthnum%/%day%/%year%/

Now the url would look like this;

http://www.fitzbiz.org/internet/stumbleupon/10/17/2007/

Now since you have been blogging for awhile there are likely trackbacks and search engine listings pointing to the urls you already have in place. You don’t want those links to go to 404 pages just because you want to change the permalink structure. So you can set up a 301 redirect for all 404s to go to your home page or actually have a programmer put in a redirect that takes all of the old urls the way they are structured and points them to the right post. Not sure exactly how to do that, but there are scripts that can be written to make it happen. maybe a reader here can help us on that one.

3. Now going back to that post about stumbleupon. There is an element in the page where a user can make a comment that says “page cannot be displayed” so whatever that is needs to come out or be repaired. It’s on all of the pages where a comment can be made. That’s in IE7. In Firefox it doesn’t show that.

4. Your stumbleupon image at the top of each post on the comment page is not displaying either so need to fix that one too. I’m using IE7. My friend in firefox said there was no image at all there.

5. This blog tip is for everyone who has a wordpress blog. Take out the css and xhtml validation links. I haven’t found a wordpress template yet that will validate. Those links are useless. Anyone who does click them will see that your blog does not validate. None of them do. So why even leave those links in?

W3C Compliant is important to web designers that want to prove they are better than another web designer. Yahoo and Google are two bigshots on the Internet and their home pages don’t validate. So obviously not too important to them, so not important to me either. I know that might get some comments from the guru section, but try validating some of the top ranked websites for your key phrases in google and see if they validate.

6. I don’t really have a 6 for you. Most of what you are doing here is very good. You use good keywords in your titles, the posts are interesting. The blog looks good. Your anchor text for links is good. Most everything I see is done well.

Most of the stuff I mentioned is just technical. You do have some issues with IE compatablility, but they should be easily fixed.

Good blog Brian.

Making lists of blog tips seem to be a favorite of bloggers who talk about blogging. Why? Because lists make it easier for readers to absorb the information you are giving them.

I found this post at www.fastpitchnetworking and thought it was interesting and broke it down into a list;

(Referring to different types of corporate bloggers) Wright(2005) suggests that there are seven personality types,

1. Blogs that advise, analyis or place authority on the industry or topic run by ‘Barbers’ who are candid about their work and are impartial.

2. ‘Blacksmiths’ who come from inside their firms report news and build relationships. Software developers are blacksmiths.

3. ‘Bridgers’ who connect people and draw new customers.

4. ‘Windows’ who provide internal news, and address complaints and problems.

5. ‘Signposts’ who identify valuable resources and information while offering little opinion.

6. ‘Pub’ bloggers who meet in communities and discuss shared topics.

7. ‘Newspaper’ bloggers who report facts, but post very few opinions.

Now, keep in mind they are talking about corporate bloggers here. Bloggers who either work directly for a company or that have been hired by a company to do their blog. I think they have identified the different types well, but they have missed a couple that I would add.

Think outside of the box when creating blogs for your company. Identifying your target audience is of course important to all aspects of your business, so you should know who your target audience is already.

8. ‘Entertainment’ Set up a blog that entertains the same audience that you target in your business. You will attract the same target sudience and get them to like you. People buy from people and businesses they like.

9. ‘Special Offers Blog’ Set up a blog that has contests and giveaways that your target audience will be attracted to.

These are just two ideas you can use for your company blog. They are not the “standard corporate blog”. Most bloggers out there who give advice about corporate or problogging get stuck with a standard way to do things for companies and use the same stale approach over and over again.

Think about what will attract your target audience and find a way to tie your company to what they want rather than trying to use your blog to ram your products down their throat and you will win every time.

Wright(2005) goes on with ten tips for corporate blogging: “Be real”. “Be passionate”. “Write often”. “Link lots”. “Leave comments on other blogs”. “Have fun”. . “Push the envelope”. “Ping”. “Use feeds”. “Create meaningful titles”.

I’m not going to add to that.

This is a limited time offer. No, really! It is! No Hype! For a limited time, lets say through November 15th, 2007, Brick Marketing will be offering you free advice about your blog.

We will be giving you 6 tips on how to improve your blog. These are not just random blog tips you can get right here on Blog Marketing Journal. These are 6 things you can do to improve your blog. We will take a look at your blog and give you those 6 blog tips right here or in a private email where appropriate.

Just a free service we are trying out so we can help people improve the results they get with their blog. So comment if you would like to receive your 6 free blog tips.

A lot of information is out there about how to write a good blog post and I’ll likely repeat some of them here. But for new bloggers, this information is helpful. Even some of us who have been blogging for a long time forget the basics.

1. Bold Text or enlarge Subheaders in a long blog post. People forget to do this all the time. Maybe you don’t start out to write a long blog post and it just becomes one. Go back and create some subheaders and bold them or enlarge the size of the font.

In brackets you can use FONT SIZE=”+3″ COLOR=”RED” or you can use +1 or +2 or gray, black, greeen or whatever text color you want.

Make parts of your article stand out for those who are just scanning the article for information they might find useful to them. It also breaks it up and makes the post more readable.

2. Short Paragraphs. On the web, short paragraphs are much more readable than long ones. Another point is that when the next paragraph is short, the reader will feel like reading at least one more paragrah. They will continue to do that all the way down the post.

If that next paragraph is long, they feel it’s a good time to stop and go onto something else. If you really want them to read the whole blog post, use shorter paragraphs and make it easy to read.

3. Use bulleted lists to organize your content. Lists are easy to read and readers like them. It makes topics easy to understand.

4. Spelling. Here I’ll probably give you different advice than most people who give blog writing tips. Everyone says you need to check your spelling and that people won’t read your blog or take you seriously if there are misspelled words in your blog post.

I disagree for many blogs. If you are writing a blog having to do with writing etiquette or how to write business letters or something academic, you do not want to have any misspellings. Your readers will definitely point them out to you.

However, in targeting keywords for ppc, people actually pay for misspelled words that users type into the search engine so their ads will show up. Why? Because not all users or readers of your blog are perfect spellers either.

If you misspell a word, it’s likely someone else out there misspells it the same way you do. They might find their way to your blog just because of that misspelled word.

Now I’m not telling you to go out and purposely misspell words on your blog. I’m not telling you not to read over your blog post to see if there are some obvious errors you can fix.

I’m just saying relax. If you misspell a word every now and then, it is not the end of the world and it doesn’t make you a bad blogger.

Judith Harlan was nice enough to stop by and comment so I decided to go read her blog as well. Judith is doing some of the things that makes a successful blogger. She says she is new at blogging, but I see a successful blogger in the making. What is she doing right?

1. She is reading what other bloggers are writing on their blogs. I cannot tell you how many times I see good writers start their own blogs and don’t spend any time reading blogs before they get started. Reading blogs will teach you more about how to be a successful blogger than all the tutorials and books you can ever buy.

2. She is keeping her posts short and interesting for her readers. Unlike long-winded bloggers like me, she keeps her posts short enough so people want to read more than one post. Yes there are different methods in blogging. Since I’m long-winded, you need to come back every day. lol. I could read Judith’s blog once a week and keep up. But that is a good thing. Someone new to her blog can catch up quickly.

There is one post on Judith Harlan’s blog I do want to comment on here though and trackback to her post there. It’s about to blog every day or not to blog every day.

Just when I’m convinced that the gurus are right — you’ve gotta blog every day if you want your voice to be heard in the blogosphere — one of the top business bloggers breaks the rules.

Debbie Weil, who wrote the book on corporate blogging (The Corporate Blogging Book), is blogging less. Why, you may ask, would a leading blogger and marketing expert cut back on blogging?

Stay convinced Judith. Blogging every day is essential to 99% of all bloggers who are not Debbie Well. Just because Debbie sets all of us lowly bloggers a bad example doesn’t mean any of us should follow. If you can establish a reputation and your name is well known enough, you might think it’s ok to do whatever you want like not blogging every day.

But, the fact is, your readers expect you to have something new when they revisit your blog. It’s your blog. You really can post as little or as much as you want. But if your readers keep visiting your blog and don’t find anything new to read, they will lose interest. That is a fact. Remember not everyone uses a reader. Some actually visit the blogs they like.

Technorati and other blog search websites also lose interest, dropping you below those who are posting more often. Maybe Debbie has arrived and doesn’t feel the need to post every day anymore. That’s of course entirely up to her.

She could be giving a guest blogger a chance to get well-known and keep her blog up-to-date at the same time.

For me, I’ll keep posting daily. I’ll keep advising others to post daily too. I love the way Judith put it best.

maybe that indiscriminate blogging is what got bloggers their rep amongst non-bloggers as narcissistic diarists blogging about what they had for breakfast.

If you are setting up a business blog and it isn’t just a hobby or your diary, I think Judith’s message is that you need to post daily.

Visit Judith’s blog. She has some good stuff to say.

Do you check your traffic stats very often on your blog? You should because you will definitely learn a lot about what readers are interested in, which topics got you the most traffic, and one very important statistic, how long after you posted about something did you get the most traffic for that post.

In other words, this post, Blog Posting for the Future, some people that visit this blog daily will see the post today or maybe tomorrow. But how many people will find this blog post a week from now, a month from now, or longer?

We all know about timeless posts like this one where it doesn’t matter when someone reads it. The information will still be valid. But how do we use statistics to guide our posting to be more effective?

Let’s say I post about “wordpess plugins” on the 1st of september. I post about “blog seo” on the 12th and “typepad tips” on the 24th.

After checking my stats 30 days later, I see the page with that post on it got 1000 unique hits. I see the typepad post got 500 and the blog seo post got 250.

Well I also know that my weekend traffic is higher than my week day traffic, so I look to see which posts were on the weekend and which posts were weekdays and add that into my analysis. But let’s say all 3 posts were the weekend.

Then I know that people will visit me more when I let them know about wordpress plugins. I know typepad is more interesting to my readers than blog seo, and so forth.

Of course you need to keep checking every month to be sure it isn’t a fluke, but by using your stats you are learning about what brings people to your blog. Using that, you can increase your traffic.

Now that is just part of it. How does that apply to the title of this blog post, Blog Posting for the Future?

Now you are tracking your stats every month to see what posts are getting the most hits, so you also need to see when each post is getting most of those hits. The same day? The next day? The same week? Are most of the hits to a blog post you made coming a month after you posted it?

Remember, we are talking about hits directly to the blog post page and not to the main page of your blog.

If you are getting a lot of hits to your posts a month after you made them, then you can blog for the future. You can post about things that will be relevant to users who find your blog post a month from today.

If you had something you wanted people to buy on November 22nd, say concert tickets through your affiliate program, then you are posting about it on september 2oth-23rd. You get the idea.

The bottom line is learn from your statistics. Let your users guide you to what topics they want you to write about. Of course comments do that also, but for every person who comments, you might have 100 people reading your blog. So don’t just go by comments alone. You’d be surprised at what your stats teach you.

If you have not read 10 Ways to Increase Your Blog’s Pageviews - Part 1 you should do that first.

6. Write once per week special projects. These are a series of articles on a particular topic. You will be offering it once per week giving readers a week to comment on it, then have them hanging on for next weeks special post in the series. Each time add links to previous posts in that series.

7. Using your content from your other websites or blogs is also a great way to get more pageviews for all of them. Use the target new tag and refer to material on your other blogs and websites. It will open a new window leaving the current blog open while they visit your other website or blog. You can quickly double up your pageviews while also introducing your readers to your other websites and blogs.

8. Make a list of 10 previous posts and the links to those posts. Make a post in your blog about 10 things you want your readers to know and read in case they have not done so before. At your suggestion they will at least go see if they have read those posts before, increasing your pageviews once again plus bringing old material to new readers. That also lets them know they should browse the archives for things they have missed.

9. Using that same list of 10 posts or a new one, visit other blogs on your topic. Find posts that talk about something similar to one of those 10 posts, then instead of adding a link in your signature to the home page, make a comment there and refer to the post that is similar and that contains helpful information to that blogger and their readers. You will also be increasing your link popularity while doing this. Do not spam the link. Make sure it actually contains useful information. Don’t be trolls or spammers and you will end up with new readers and more page views for your blog.

10. Do not stop being creative. Use the tips in this article, plus invent some of your own ways to interlink your blogposts together. Create pages. Don’t just post and forget. That content is valuable, use it. Do not make people search your blog. They are lazy and busy. Bring it to them. That is just good customer service.

I hope this helps you learn there is more to blogging than just writing a post once in awhile or even daily. If you employ the tips I just gave you into your blog I guarantee you will increase your pageviews which in turn will increase your revenue if using an ad program in your blog.