Blog Traffic Tips Weekly Newsletter
by Yaro Starak – The Blog Traffic King
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Today’s blog traffic tip is a technique you can apply to your blog, and if implemented well, will achieve the following:
- Make your blog a destination point
- Increase your blog’s “stickiness”
- Bring traffic to your blog regardless of how (in)frequently you update
- Consistently attract incoming links
Best of all, you only need to implement this technique once for it to work well. If you do it twice, or thrice, your blog will be well on it’s way to becoming a superstar in the blogosphere.
Sounds like a miracle technique doesn’t it? Well read on to find out what I am talking about…
THE HOOK
If you are at all interested in pop music you will be aware of what is known as the “hook”. The hook is the element of a song that is just so catchy it makes you want to hear the song over and over again. It forces people who otherwise should not be singing to sing along while listening to the track. The hook is dangerously powerful.
In terms of blogging the hook has the same characteristics that it has in music. A hook brings readers to your blog over and over again. It’s addictive, fun, or valuable and unique.
HOOK VS PILLAR
So what’s the difference between a “hook” and a “pillar”, the technique I talked about in previous articles?
A pillar is generally easier to produce and most successful bloggers will produce multiple pillars each month, some each week or even every day. A hook on the other hand is something so compelling and unique that you are lucky if you pull it off more than once a year.
You could think of a hook as a pillar on steroids. It has all the same characteristics but everything is magnified with a hook. It takes more work to pull off a successful hook, but the rewards are significant when done right.
Still confused?
Essentially a hook is something, and it can be a blog article, but often it’s a piece of software or a digital download, that provides tremendous value. The idea is this one resource brings in traffic to your blog because it helps a lot of people.
Word of mouth spreads a hook all over the place, with hundreds of bloggers linking to it, and people sending emails to tell their friends about it. A good hook comes up in conversation as the accepted way to get something done – as the best solution to a problem.
HOOK EXAMPLES
The professional blogging site, Performancing.com, released a plug-in for the Firefox Internet browser that allowed bloggers to post articles directly from their browser without logging into their blog software. This one piece of software is unique and very valuable to the whole blogging community and therefore was a hook for the Performancing blog.
The team behind Performancing no doubt worked hard to get the software designed right, it would not have been created over night. Their hard work paid off and when their plug-in was released they enjoyed a huge flow of traffic, exposure and incoming links. I still read blogs that mention the performancing plug-in when they first discover it. This demonstrates the long, ongoing traffic creating effect of pulling off a successful hook.
Performancing has gone on to release many more great tools for bloggers, including Performancing Metrics, a statistics tracking service for blogs, the Performancing Exchange, a place where bloggers and blog employers can advertise blogging jobs, and the latest, Performancing Partners, an advertising system designed to help connect blog publishers with advertisers.
All these services are hooks – they are not easy to set-up, provide tremendous value, leverage community and make Performancing a destination blog.
COMMUNITY BASED HOOKS
I’ve talked about the importance of building community at your blog in previous newsletters. Another form of a hook is a forum where all the fans of a hobby congregate and talk or trade. If that forum is hosted as part of your blog, then it is a hook, bringing people back to your site every day.
A forum or a chat room, a classifieds section, or a bulletin board, are all community services that can make your blog into a destination point and help your traffic grow without you directly creating the content – the community does the work for you.
It’s not by any means easy to build a successful forum or community service. It takes a while to gain traction – it’s about as hard as it is to build traffic to a blog, so if you decide to go down the path of building a forum adjacent to your blog as a hook strategy, be prepared for some hard work.
Try this article to get you started with your forum building:
How to Build a Popular Forum Community in 5 Steps
DON’T BE DISCOURAGED
Remember a hook is a challenging technique to implement well. Most sites that have good hooks are the result of a team, or special talents. To build software or create a resource that is truly unique takes resources, timing, strategy and a good dosage of luck too.
In my career online I have created maybe one or two truly successful hooks. One was a forum (MTGParadise.com) that people started trading cards at so they kept coming back to trade, the other is my blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com, which has the hook of my entire back catalogue of articles to help people build an Internet business. Both these two hooks took at least a year to build up to the point where I could really call them a hook.
Building a hook takes time. Keep at it for the long haul but make sure you see HOW the hook will work, don’t just assume it will work. You need to see the psychological pull, the addiction or fun or value that your service or content or resource provides. If you don’t have that, it won’t work.
Here’s to your blogging success,
Yaro Starak Blog
Traffic King
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More Newsletters
- How To Choose The Right Blog Topic
- How To Get More Blog Comments
- How To Build A Popular Blog
- Don’t Make This Mistake With Your Blog
- The Secret Of My Blog’s Success – The Pillar Article
- Is Blogging About Your Mistakes A Good Idea?
- Do You Have To Blog Full Time To Succeed?
- How One Technique Increased My Traffic By 25%
- What Is A Trackback And How Can It Increase Your Blog Traffic?
- How To Interlink Your Blog Articles To Increase Traffic
- How To Laser Target Your Blog Traffic
- How To Attract More RSS Subscribers
- Start Relationships For Win-Win Blogging
- Are You Trying To Run Before You Can Walk?
- Make Money From Your Blog Selling Text Links
- WordPress Bloggers – Install This Plugin To Boost Your Traffic
- The Power Of Credibility
- How To Deal With Negative Comments On Your Blog
- How To Leverage Online Forums For Blog Traffic
- What Is The Most Powerful Blog Traffic Technique?
- How Important Is SEO For Your Blog?
- The Death Of Link Exchanges
- Where To Find Photos To Use In Your Blog
- What Do You Want To Achieve From Blogging?
- Do You Blog Strategically?
- Don’t Forget The Newbies
- Competing For Attention In An Attention Deficit Blogosphere
- How To Be An Exceptional Blogger
- How To Create A Community At Your Blog
- Does Your Blog Have A Hook?
- Why Being Perfect Can Hurt Your Blog
- How One Blogging Technique Attracted 6000 New Subscribers
- Track Your Long Tail Trends For Traffic
- Track Your Blog Traffic Using Alexa
- Does Your Blog Design Matter?
- Why You Must Be A Thought Leader
- Establish Preeminence With A Pillar Article Series
- Is It Time For A Kick In The Pants?
- Why Do RSS Readers Unsubscribe From Blogs?
- Have You Considered Selling Ads Directly From Your Blog?
- Sell Direct Advertising On Your Blog Using This System
- How To Attract Blog Sponsors
- How To Kick-Start The Launch Of A New Blog
- Try This Tip To Attract Offline Traffic To Your Blog
- Apply This HTML Code Tip For Better Blog Headings
- The Most Powerful Blog Traffic Technique
- Can You Make Your Blog Readers Feel Like This…
- The Secret To Successful Blogging
- Why Bloggers Don’t Make Money From Affiliate Programs
- How Does Getting Paid $500 An Hour Sound To You?
The following lessons are from my original “blog traffic king” email newsletter, my first ever email course with one lesson per week delivered for a year. There are some real gems in these articles too, so don’t skip them!
