I long suspected, but I now have evidence. Bloggers really worry about getting attention. Call it traffic, promotion, audience or fans, bloggers are focused on getting more eyeballs.

I recently put a call out for blogger most important questions. I’ll be answering these questions as downloadable reports over at my Authority Blogger newsletter and those that get used will be put in to a draw to win the full Authority Blogger course. As you can imagine, with the incentive to both get answers and win a prize I got, and continue to get, a variety of questions (you can join in yourself, just sign up to the list and email me your most important question).

While there was a big variety, over and over the key issue was how to get more attention, what can bloggers do to drive traffic and gain more subscribers? Of course I will answer that question in one of the early answer reports to the list, but today I want to address this need with some balance.

A lot of bloggers are doing the online equivalent running around in their underwear with a traffic cone on their head. Yes you get people to look at you but at the same time you lose a little dignity.

Yes every blog needs attention, but what are you going to do once you have gained it?

If you attract an audience by showing off, what do you do when you have gathered a crowd?

We need to think further than just gaining visitors. You need an audience, but the right audience. It’s not about numbers but about getting your ideal reader, delighting them and getting them to be a true fan.

1. Work out who your ideal prospect is, develop a clear picture of who they are and their motivations
2. Develop tactics for attracting those particular people
3. Create content that absolutely blows their mind
4. Show clear calls to action to get them to do what you want them to do
5. Keep them super-happy, so happy they tell all their friends

To give you one example, I know from my pen portraits that I need to attract bloggers and those who want to be. One way I am attracting them is to give away a prize. Along with Adii I have a contest to win Premium News Themes, but to add novelty value you have to follow me on Twitter.

Audience + Incentive + Novelty = Word of Mouth.

That’s the attraction part. What am I doing with the attention? I am engaging in conversation. My blog has a proven ability to take visitors to being subscribers (conversion) but I am not driving followers directly to my blog. This is about people and conversations not eyeballs and hits :)

Yes a large Twitter following is not in itself valuable, and this is an experiment, but I hope you see that it is not enough to just get an audience, you have to think through the next step and the step after that.

Imagine your whole flow from someone discovering you through to what you would ideally like them to do and beyond. Build the links in your chain. It’s got to be a system not just attention.