Four Proven Blog Traffic Strategies or How I Got 40,000 Pageviews in One Month

As you may know, I run two other blogs in different niches in addition to this one: rosettathurman.com and happyblackwoman.com. But out of all three of my blogs, Happy Black Woman receives BY FAR the most traffic. (The crazy part? That blog is only 18 months old!) And since most entrepreneurial bloggers want (and need) traffic to be able to promote their business, I thought I’d share some of the strategies that have resulted in Happy Black Woman getting 10,000 uniques and over 40,000 pageviews in just one month.

Be Very Clear About Your Niche

On all of my blogs, I have a clear audience of readers that I’m trying to reach. On rosettathurman.com, it’s young professionals who are interested in social change. Here on frombloggertoentrepreneur.com, it’s folks who want to learn how to use blogging and social media to build a business. On happyblackwoman.com, it’s black women who want to improve their lives and be, well, happy. Having a clear niche like a specific community of women allows everyone in that target market who comes to the blog feel at home. They find a sense of community, not just useful information that they could get anywhere else. To get more clarity on your own blog, try calling your readers by name – business owners, professional women, fashion junkies, wine enthusiasts – whoever they are, let them know you’re writing directly to their interests and needs.

Host a Challenge on Your Blog

Over on Happy Black Woman, I host a monthly personal development challenge called “31 Days to Reset Your Life.” It has really taken off and become viral in ways that I never expected, but suffice it to say that people love a challenge and if you can provide the structure for 21, 30 or 31 days, people will appreciate you for it! Plus, they will spread the word to their friends! No one wants to go a challenge alone. I also invite people to write about the challenge on their own blogs, so that brings in additional and sustained traffic from the backlinks that their sites provide. It’s truly a win/win for everyone – I get the opportunity to serve my audience and in return they bring new visitors to my blog!

Here is a screenshot of how my traffic skyrocketed just a few days ago after announcing this month’s challenge (click through to the actual post if you’re viewing this in a reader):

Install Facebook Comments

Since many of my Happy Black Woman readers are on Facebook (evidenced by almost 1,400 “likes” on our Facebook page), I decided to experiment with Facebook Comments to see if it would encourage more comments and more traffic. What I found was that by adding Facebook Comments (in addition to, but not in place of WordPress comments), I received 100% more comments than I did before. I also noticed new visitors coming to the site because of one little Facebook trick: whenever someone posts a comment on Facebook, it shows up on their page for all their friends to see! Sweet, right? Another great feature of Facebook Comments is that you can respond to your readers AS your Facebook page instead of your personal profile (see my graphic below) for even greater management of your online brand. Here is the awesome tutorial I used to install Facebook comments on my Happy Black Woman blog. It is very thorough with screenshots, so I hope it helps you get set up!

Also, I’ve posted a screenshot below of how the Facebook comments integrate with and enhance the WordPress comments on my blog:

Promote Your Blog on Twitter

Every blogger should be on Twitter. The social network is a great place to connect with other bloggers as well as people who would be interested in your content. If you’re already on Twitter, be sure that you have posted the URL to your blog in your profile! (So many bloggers miss this simple step.) Post a link your recent blog posts on Twitter – shorten the original link first with a service like bit.ly. You can also use Twitter hashtags to promote your blog posts to your followers. Whenever I tweet my posts, I will usually use a hashtag related to the content such as #leadership or #socialmedia or #nonprofit. Nowadays, there are established hashtags for every niche! Of course, you don’t want your Twitter stream to be all “read my blog”, but keep in mind that everyone is not on Twitter at the same time, so you can probably get away with posting your blog links up to three times a day – morning, midday and evening. You can also do this with older posts to make them fresh again!

These strategies have been the ones that have produced the most results for me over the past year in getting traffic to my blogs. There are a few more that I will share in future posts, but these ideas should get your mind turning and your fingers moving to try them out with your own blog!

Which strategies have you been using to increase the traffic on your blog? Leave a comment and share the wealth!