Is your blog getting enough attention?

[Jackie]

Here’s a situation you’re probably familiar with if you’re a blogger: You posted a couple of entries that took a good while to compose. You even added a bunch of pics. Then you sit back, and wait for the response. In many cases, you won’t wait long. But sometimes, and you don’t know why, a post just doesn’t take. You’re perplexed. It all looks great to you. You start doubting yourself, from the “Am I even relevant to anybody?” to the silently grumbled “Dumb audience, all their fault.” 

If you recognize yourself in one of these two extremes, or even anywhere in between, this post is for you. Which probably means it’s for everyone. Because at some point or other every blogger experiences a moment of doubt. Or days of doubt. Or posts of doubt. But that’s where the seriously dedicated bloggers make the cut. They carry on! They are not deterred by minor glitches, onward and forward they go. The question is: how?  

If your blog has always been steady with the numbers, but you notice a sudden drop-off, ask yourself, what might have changed. 

First of all, is it the season? Summer is notoriously slow for blogging. Fewer people write posts, fewer people read them. Why? Blame the sunshine, the beaches, the log cabins, the lake trips, the Europe vacations, or the back decks with grills. For some obscure reason people sip less hot tea, spend less time indoors on their laptops, and more hours idling along with a Pina Colada. Now, I’m as baffled as you are, why anyone would prefer a cocktail to my blog. Beats me. But there you go.

Other possible reasons:

Has your content changed? Have you been dabbling in a new style, taken a different approach?  Yep? Consider doing what @lazyliteratus did – he asked others, what they thought of his posts. Armed with input, you might consider making adjustments.  Geoff did, and replies are a-rolling.

Are your blog posts so well researched that it’s hard for people to say more than “wow”? Sometimes content is so meaningful, that your audience shies away from commenting, for fear of not adding anything valuable to the message.

Are your posts very long? Very detailed posts sometimes get shelved by readers, waiting for the “ideal moment to read” and then that ideal moment never seems to come, until the next post is already published.

Are you proudly sharing the news that you blogged? Some bloggers tell all and sundry, and @mention me too. Sharing your content is great. The more enthusiastic you are, the more likely your readers are too.

Are you active in the community, or does life get in the way? Sometimes it’s hard to find time to write your own blog post, let alone read others’ – but that’s one of the best ways to interact with other tea lovers and writers. If someone often replies to your posts, do you check out their articles too?

 If you’re interested in knowing how much you’re contributing outside your own posts, check out your achievements in your profile. See where you’re going strong, and where you’re taking it slow.

Finally, are you enjoying your own posts? If you are, then they are already well worth writing. Blogging can be cathartic, fun, challenging, and frustrating, but it should never be a terrible chore. Don’t forget, every blog is a big part of what makes this community so vibrant. Yours very much too.

We thank you all.

[lazyliteratus]

Interesting post @Jackie (and I’m not just saying that because of the plug, but thank you).

I would also like to add to the post-length issue. I’ve found – both on my tea blog and my main site – that an ideal blog length is between 500-800 words. Ideally, 650-ish. Any longer, and it’d better be a darn good topic. I was suffering from O.W.S. – Over-Writing Syndrome. So, I cut it back.

Frequency of updates and engaging on other blogs is also a help.

Lastly, though…I don’t think that getting attention should be the main goal. If one is seeking higher numbers, they’re writing about the wrong topic. Tea is a drink. And most people – save for us awesome geeks – don’t want to read about a drink…unless it involves alcoholic buffoonery. Write if it’s a fun subject to write about. It was a difficult lesson for me to learn…but I had to.

[riccaicedo]

I agree that tea as a topic doesn’t have the same potential for readership as other topics. I’m not sure how successful can a tea blog be if everything was done right.

In my case I get about 15 visitors a day. I write every week, promote my posts through social media and participate in forums.

For another topic (cooking utensils) I have a static mini site, no updates and only a few articles. I don’t do social media with it or anything else, my name’s not even in it, I just wanted to see if I could place ads and maybe profit. It didn’t work, and I hate writing about the topic, but it does get about the same traffic as my tea blog, which I work much harder on.

[Anonymous]

*I think my blog gets entirely too much attention sometimes, considering how ornery and unpleasant I can be on it at times.

I wish I had as many readers as Jason “Boiled Turnip” Walker has people watching his interminable review videos, or as many comments as some of the TeaChat (feh!) people get…but really, I think my audience is about as big as it deserves to be at the moment, given my skills or lack thereof.

I appreciate comments more than page views, because then I know somebody cared enough to do something active like typing rather than just passively reading, and also because I am a horrible narcissist. 

Someday I’d like to be a big enough cheese that I get sent samples for review. But right now, nice people read my blog and comment on it, so I’m satisfied with where I am.

[lazyliteratus]

@happygaiwan – I personally love your writing style, and find you’re at your best and most eloquent when you’re ornery. I wish I wrote as concisely as you when I was your age.

*breaks out walker*

Heh…Boiled turnip.

[Jackie]

@lazyliteratus ..breaks out the ol’ Jason Walker? 

[lazyliteratus]

@Jackie – No, I didn’t. I was just laughing at “boiled turnip” comment. It was funny. I like Jason’s stuff.

[Jackie]

@riccaicedo I didn’t either, so no worries there. Best we don’t ask. 

[Anonymous]

* @riccaicedo A boiled turnip is basically the most boring, bland, tasteless vegetable you can think of, except for maybe mashed potatoes. 

[ThePurrfectCup]

*Since this blog started out as just being for me…I don’t often mind when things are slow readership wise. But don’t get me wrong I also love the attention from readers too.

If you want attention make sure you do post to your social media outlets: facebook page, twitter, etc.

I also try and break up the straight reviews with some of the Taking Tea With tea stories I enjoy writing. But those posts aren’t the the type I can kick out in a snap. I actually research those a bit as to get the character I’m taking tea with.

I do think things pick up more when folks are stuck inside when Fall rolls in.

[peter]

Thanks @thepurrfectcup for getting this thread back on track there. A little bit of thread drift there, what an undisciplined lot we are….

Anyhow, back on the topic of SEO, there are a couple of things that I see around the Tea Trade blogs that are not quite the best ways to do things. I blame myself for this because I’m well overdue to write some informative posts about it especially since I’ve heard that recently there has been some heartburn about activity and stats and search engine stuff.

Well, Tea Trade is busier now than it ever has been. We are seeing both higher numbers and higher levels of activity, so I’ve got nothing to complain about there. Not to mention that we just picked up significant this week, which makes me wonder who else from the tea industry is watching.

First piece of advice:

I’m going to start posting more about best practices on blogs, but there are two things that could use addressing which would help stats and things. This is something I’ve not mentioned before, but it is well-worth mentioning — Google doesn’t like duplicate content. 

There are a few blogs here that are used to post duplicate content from other blogs. Several people have created blogs here to connect with our audience, but also post the same posts on other blogs as well. This sort of thing actually hurts Tea Trade and it hurts the other bloggers. Here’s why, say you have an older blog, your main blog, where you post about all kinds of stuff. Sometimes you write about tea, you post it there and you also post on your Tea Trade blog. Well, when Google finds out about (and it will) Google downranks the younger site (which is usually your Tea Trade blog) and because Tea Trade is a shared domain name on a network, the other bloggers also suffer too. In the eyes of a search engine, Tea Trade begins to look like a blog farm.

The Big G does this to encourage people to write unique and original content. So, my recommendation here is that you write your tea stuff on Tea Trade. No reason not to mention it on your other blog(s), but don’t duplicate your content – invite your reader there to come here and read your stuff about tea. It was for this reason that we stopped supporting mirrored blogs. We did it when we started to get activity moving, but stopped doing it as soon as we could.

Second piece of advice:

Get a unique domain name. We support domain mapping for free. Every site on the network can have its own unique domain name and not use the teatra.de subdomain. The reason we do this is because it is good for your rankings. Not only that, it makes your blog look professional, good-looking, more authoritative and trustworthy. The search engines understand this and you get bonus points for it. Domain names are cheap, for less the price of a meal you can get one and point it to your blog. I use and recommend name.com – another registrar that was recommended to me recently was namecheap.com

Third piece of advice:

Use Google Analytics. This is another feature we offer to every site here for free. Go to Google Analytics and sign up and get a UA code. Enter that code into your site’s dashboard at Settings => Google Analytics. Start tracking your activity. While I do recommend this, I’ll also say not to give too much credit to GA and stats. If you are writing good, unique content, people are reading it and replying then you are already doing things right.

Don’t feel awkward…

I don’t want anyone to feel awkward because they thought their activity was down, or their site isn’t getting enough hits, exposure or visits. If you have concerns, talk to us about them. I’ll look at your site and see what things can be improved on. The SEO structure of Tea Trade is sound and I’m confident about our own position and activity on the web. I think about not only ours, but also yours. All of you are such great contributors here and I want your posts and material to reach across the web far and wide.

[peter]

@happygaiwan – no, it won’t. Search engines will recognize that his hasn’t been updated. Sites that don’t change with regular frequency go down and they are recognized as abandoned sites. Search engines (Google especially) track the frequency of your changes and adapt to crawl your site accordingly. Duplicate content on an abandoned site isn’t going to hurt anything. The issue really comes when there is fresh content on one site and it appears in another place also as fresh content.

[Anonymous]

* @peter Ah yes, it all makes sense. Also on your recommendation for name.com, I assume their rates are per month/per year? I’d ask this in a private message normally, but maybe others want to know, too. 

[peter]

@happygaiwan – yes, their rates are per year.

[ThePurrfectCup]

Thanks for the tips and tricks Peter. I did finally as you saw get my own domain. Yay! I’ve also added Analytics to my blog and have noticed a lot more hits. 🙂

[seule771]

*My blog on wordpress and other blogs gets no attention. I am cook/weird so the few of know of my blog cannot figure what I am trying to do. Unsure always of things. I blog to keep busy as a logging of activities since not employed for many years. Thank you.

[riccaicedo]

@seule771 I’m sorry to hear that. I think you’re probably depressed, it’s happened to me too. I wish you the best and that fortune may smile upon you in the near future.

[riccaicedo]

Back on the topic about traffic, I looked at http://jasonowalker.wordpress.com/ and he showed some of his stats. He says that from 2 January to 25 June 2011, he had 7198 visits. That’s about 6 months, with 1,199 visits per month, or 40 per day.

I’m not sure how he’s doing nowadays, but 40 per day in 2011 looks to me like an incredibly low volume, I was expecting his blog to make at least 300. I’m now averaging 30 visits per day according to google analytics, perhaps there’s some mistake with his/my data?

Unless his traffic has now exploded, how he makes any significant money with such low numbers is beyond me. The niche site I referred to earlier makes less than a dollar a month from advertising, and it’s about 20 visits per day. Maybe he has an extremely high conversion rate, but I doubt it.

He has a member’s section, perhaps that and sponsored posts are what sustain his site.

Note that I’m not a blog expert, and I could be wrong, but I like to read about that topic.

I learned at a webinar from problogger that a good daily number to reach for is 250 uniques per day, I’m shooting for at least 100, don’t know if it’s possible or not : )

[Author]

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