Traffic traffic traffic. We want more! Give us the secret, what are your tips? How can we scam Google? What is the hidden trick to getting to the front of Digg?
Wooah there!
Haven’t we forgotten something?
When all those people you have cajoled, tricked or bought rush to your blog, what are they going to see?
Focusing on traffic before developing rich, valuable, compelling content is like gold-plating a house of cards. It doesn’t matter how much you polish, eventually the whole thing will crumble into an expensive, but pretty, mess.
By all means build your traffic using whichever techniques make sense, but after you have a good solid foundation of worthwhile content!
Rather than a big-bang flood of visitors, consider building slowly by providing real benefit to readers. Encourage feedback, grow a loyal following who are happy to recommend you. OK, you might not break any traffic records, but you will find organic growth based on actual value is far more rewarding :)
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Decent content normally brings in traffic. If its really good you normally get onto digg or stumble upon. I got an article dugg back in April that still gets a few thousand hits/month.
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How did this get into Stumble Upon?
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@Pete – Yes and that is the right way round :)
@John – Erm, the same way things usually get there, it was stumbled :)
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It is true that most of the truly compelling success stories, not just in the blogosphere but in other media as well, are about great content being found and propelled by forces other than the creator. I think that what makes many favour endorsement over excellence is that this is an inherently impatient medium. A blog is easy to build, the reasoning goes, and therefore it should be easy to get an audience. The ones with the good content, of course, are no easier to build than they are to disseminate.