7 Tips For Growing your Blog's Audience

Alexender Kjerulf is a friend who’s been blogging for a few years, plateaued roughly around the same amount of traffic I have. That is, until recently, when he finally cracked the nut of growing his audience exponentially through Reddit and Digg.

What he found was that by tweaking a few things and leaving the essence of his writing unchanged, he suddenly got a major league hit. And from that first hit, he was quickly on to the next.

Thankfully, he took some time to share with me some of his tips for what got dim dugg and redditted, which I now pass on to you.

1. Frame your stories negatively. It’s easier to catch people’s attention when talking about something that sucks than when offering constructive advice. You can still be constructive, but you need to get their attention with a negative spin in the title and intros.

2. Write in a top 10 format. Or top 5 or 7 or whatever. It’s a good way to frame your idea, and it provides the reader with a structure, and a clear idea of the size and scope of what you’re writing.

3. Add something visual. A photo, an illustration, something to help people get sucked in and emotionally engaged. Kathy Sierra masters this to perfection. Use iStockPhoto or something similar.

4. Begin with a story. Then give us your message. Again, a story is the best way to communicate what problem you’re talking to, and to engage your readers.

5. Stick to a topic. Your blog should be on a single topic, because it is more respectful of your readers’ time. You can still have a personal blog about everything you, but the large audiences are in the ones that stay on topic.

6. Submit to Reddit/Digg at the time when most people are about to leave work, which is when they’ll usually do some gratuitous web surfing. Around 7pm eastern/4pm western should match fairly well.

7. Make the title stand out. In particular on Reddit which doesn’t have the description field. Not as in “BEST LINK EVER!!!”, but something intriguing and informative that pulls people in.

Now go do it for yourself.