This years presentation from Blogworldexpo 2009 on how to grow your audience - what do you need to understand first in order make your blog (or podcast) more popular.
1. 10 Ways to Build Your AudienceBlogworldexpo 2009, Las Vegas @NicoleSimon / nicole-simon.eu
2. Companion slides slides to both can be found at crueltobekind.org in a few days and will be up at slideshare.net/nicolesimon psst: last years presentations fit right in “10 ways to build your audience” and “Where do your visitors come from”
3. What is this about Ideas on what you should consider once you want to grow your audience not all of them need to be covered right now But you should be able to handle themin the future
4. Traffic can be misleading – and you need to cover all your bases Think Audience
6. Type: Subscribers Subscribed to your content / your feed through an feed reader or an email subscription do really read / listen to your content are genuinely interested in you / your brand / your products / your offerings have a more personal relationship with you more inclined to leave comment and share / bookmark / recommend your content ignores everything but the content
7. Type: Search Engine Visitors came on your site by accident through a search engine and are interested in finding what they where searching for could care less about your blog but may be interested in looking around acts on targeted advertising as this could be a better information than your blog post
8. Type social bookmarking user comes to your site by discovery in a social bookmarking service either through random choice or friend recommendation more interactive than search engine users as they might reshare your content
9. Type: Life stream users Services where I as a user can enter ‘my lifestream’, i.e. add my twitter, my bookmarking, my blog, my pictures all in one place Friends follow me and if they encounter something interesting go to the link. Highly interactive, but if it scrolled past me in the timeline, I will not see it
10. Additional “traffic” people who want to contact youexample: journalists people who want to offer you dealsexample: other bloggers people who want information from you
11. Big question What do each of these segments want from you and your site? They are all different! What do you have to do to help them get what they want? Each of them needs to be treated differently but you will be able to tie them all together
12. Think Nicole What does make Nicole happy? What does help Nicole to get what she wants? What can I do to make Nicole happy? (replace Nicole with each of your target groups)
13. Learn and transfer! switch mindset start thinking “what can I get out of it” know what you don’t know built up a support group example: look at all sessions of bwe09 get inspired: learn from others and take notes on it!
14. think professional media me, me, me! What is the difference between an advertisement and a magazine / article? What makes you think blogs and podcasts are different? editorial calendar: have a plan helps you to prepare content if you want to do partnerships – can you? do you have something to offer?
15. Cover the basics Is your blog added in search engines? Sitemap.xml, Webmaster-Tools? if a new posting is done, will it ping? how are your rankings and backlinks? tools of the trade need to be handled by you you need to understand these in order to delegate
16. work like a professional tools of the trade:how many workers you know just arrive with a hammer or just their brain? research. use what works for you buy books and information to get information prepacked and learn in a short amount of time use tools which will save you time in writing, editing while this costs money, it helps you save so much more!
17. think workflow and procedures workflow = f.e. lists you can work through without having to use your brain everything you do needs to be outsourced – at least in theory how do you work? how much time does it take you? can you optimize? can you outsource parts of it? which tools work for me?
19. think Stumble Upon this is the first time I ever see your site – do I get what you are, what you do, what I can get here, who you are and why I should give you a thumbs up or tweet about this? use other pages to gather what you like when you stumble them yourself
20. think Twitter think in titles which are retweetable 120 is the new 140 can I easily see your twittername? what is this content about? will others have a reason to point to it (and then think SU again) Bonus tip: think landing page think research, networking and other peoples click
21. think offline look at the person in front of you and behind you offline promotional material which is interesting to them? Vistaprint and co make for easy postcards collection of super articles? special pages for events like these?
22. think Newsletter What can you provide for newsletter authors? Which content do you deliver them for free in exchange for visibility and feedback? your 2-3 sentence bio? your best of articles? how do I contact you for inquiries?! go search for them in your niche – they will love you [Use helpareporterout.com as well]
23. think Facebook just because it is hip does not mean it fits you while this is a personal tool, you need to think of it professionally Facebook Fan page knowledge and how to connect the page with the rest will be a must in the future Tip: FBML boxes are simple
24. Stop thinking A-Listers Think Dancing with the stars and Top Chef you can become like them, but what works for them does most often not work for you - they teach you steps but you need to learn the music trust in yourself - learn and evolve
25. Pay it forward get in the habit of retweets, relink, bookmark forward interesting information freely to other – it will come back to you honor others who make your life easier give feedback and state what you like and missed Think: If I make other people happy, they will make me happy! think of at least one person you know at home and send them the information from blogworld
26. Thank you :)Questions?Nicole SimonMentoring, Consulting and Training on Social Media, Twitter, Facebook.nicole-simon.eu@nicolesimon