Jeevan Jacob John is a young blogger who blogs about everything that is related to building a better blog. If you like what you are reading here, then you should probably check out his Why You Should Give A Damn Page. You can also find Jeevan at his blog – Blog Networking 101.
Generation traffic is one thing. Maintaining it is another. You know, as humans we have a bad behavior (in fact, we have many, this is just one): We have a desire to get certain products. And once we get that and use it for a while, we tend to forget/ignore/hate it.
I will give you an example from my life:
You know, I really wanted a game for my Wii system. I had a desire for it, and when I got it, I was excessively happy. After playing it for a week, I began to lose my motivation to play the game – the game was not interesting as it used to be.
If you have been a follower of my blog posts, then you would know my good food example: After you eat your favorite food for a while, you get tired of it; You want to taste something.
Well, the same principle applies with blogging.
After you generate consistent traffic with your blog, you get bored with it. You lose your motivation to generate traffic and maintain it.
As I mentioned earlier, maintaining your traffic is really important. You want those visitors to come back to your blog. You just don’t want to lose your desire to generate traffic and maintain it.
Well, in this simple blog post, we will talk about certain ways through which we can maintain your traffic and keep them coming back (we will also talk a little bit about increasing the strength of our desire to generate traffic and maintain it).
How To Maintain Your Desire?
Step #1: Make Yourself Understand: Identify that Generating and Maintaining traffic is not a desire, but a need. Write it down on a sticky note and put it somewhere you can see it daily. Remind yourself of the importance of generating and maintaining traffic.
Step #2: Diversify the ways you get traffic and maintain it. Most bloggers will tell you to stick with your most popular traffic sources. Don’t do that. Yes, invest more time onto sources that you get the most traffic, but at the same time, work on improving your methods with other sources – to get more traffic and maintain it. For example: If your top traffic source is Twitter and top 10 is Google Plus, invest more time onto Twitter (but at the same time, improve/change your methods with Google Plus, so that you get more traffic with it).
Step #3: Most bloggers will tell you to focus on just your clients. In fact, that is right. Business is always about you and your profit (Only a few thousand companies actually care about others – whether they are a client or not). My personal opinion is that you should indeed focus on your clients, but at the same time, care about your readers too (readers who are not clients). You know one thing, the world would have been so much better, if everyone cared for their society – for others, instead of focusing on their gains.
But, that’s the point. With our human nature, it is hard not to be greedy with money and power (And other personal gains). But, we can certainly do it, if we are determined.
How To Maintain Your Traffic?
Well, we all know the basic ones, don’t we? If you don’t, let me summarize all that in one sentence:
Interesting and Informative Content, Smart Marketing, Networking, Tracking and Tweaking Your User experience.
Well, I am not going to get on all that. I will just give you a single tip, a tip that explains everything else:
Just Be Creative: I am not talking about being creative in just one field: You need to be creative with writing, marketing, networking and even your blog design. For instance: All of us have the typical layout/design of blogs? Well, I want to say is that be creative. Choose a different font, customize everything you can. Change the color of your titles (How about Green? Blue? Orange?). Most bloggers just confirm with others on blog design and managing their blog. Don’t not follow the crowd! Always be different.
The most successful businesses are the ones that are different from others – it doesn’t matter whether you are providing something new or you are providing the same product with variations that make it better. What matters most is that your product (in blogging, your product is content) is different from others.
Well, as a blogger, I think bloggers should be unique in everything that they do, whether it is their blog design, writing style or thinking a blog post.
Let me give you another example: If you write your blog posts after planning extensively, then try writing articles without much planning and vice versa. Just do it.
Do what you can do and realize your power. Now, many of you guys who know might ask me why I am not that creative with my blog’s design. Well, right now, I am trying to learn some coding so that I can “redesign” the whole layout. I am also trying to be creative with others things that is related to blogging. People always like variety. So, give it to them. Write on different topics (while at the same time writing for your target audience).
So, what can you do with your blog? Realize your power and make changes. Give people something beyond they expect. Surprise them and they will come back for more. Build anticipation. Just be creative.
What do you think?
How do you maintain your visitors?
How do you maintain your desire?
"You’re such a smart boy!" were his first accolades heard. So, it’s no wonder that this phrase became the title of his business, Smart Boy Designs.