How to Grow Your Blog

By Victoria Hudgins. Photography by Aram Bedrossian.

While devouring recent conference recaps, I came across these tips for growing your blog's readership. I especially loved Jenny's points about having a good preliminary idea and being able to capture new readers. Both are vitally important.

Preliminary idea

Set goals and maintain the right prospective. What is the end goal for writing your blog? The most traffic possible? A book deal? New friendships? New clients? Build your blog and develop your posts with your end goal in mind. Reevaluate often; "Am I getting closer to or further away from my goal?"

Capture new readers

Most of you found this blog through a blog roll. That is great! Let's all share the blog love and keep up blog rolls of our own. If you are intimidated by the sheer number of people who want to be on your blog roll, consider having two - a favorites and a rotating list of new to you blogs.

Make your content "buzz worthy" so that other bloggers will want to share it. What do I mean by "buzz worthy"?

• Truly original content (try to post something completely yours at least once a week). Or at least put a really unique spin on any recycled photos.
• Think about common problems and find solutions to those problems through your blog. "How to paint vintage furniture" or "How to sew pinch pleat drapes" or "How to shop at a flea market" etc.
• Start a conversation that other bloggers will want to continue. The two examples I used were Lauren's Design Price Points post and Chelsea's idea to stop complaining.

Read the rest of Jenny's tips right here.

Comments

[Jaime Huffman]

I just transferred my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Maybe you all can do a blog post about the pros and cons of each format? And I would love to figure out a way to get all of my followers from the Blogger account over to the Wordpress account. Can I set-up a redirect? Also, is there a good "follower" widget on Wordpress (something like Google friend connect?) Would love your input.