Building the Michigan Blogosphere, Part 2

Spreading the word (4.00 / 1)

Great synopsis Laura -- lots of helpful stuff here. I would only add:

Post OFTEN (something I have not been good at lately!)

Post QUALITY CONTENT

thanks!

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by: kathlee @ Sat Jun 17, 2006 at 11:41:32 AM CDT

Thanks for the great article ... (4.00 / 3)

...and thanks to everyone who links to & reads my blog.

Most of my loyal readers have come from word of mouth.  I email links to articles of interest to friends, candidates, etc., and they in turn have emailed links to others.  I have also found that an investigative series such as Owosso Township Recall has always resulted in a long term increase through word-of-mouth promotion.  Any time I’ve done interviews or requested access to certain information, I’ve ended up with new readers who have directed others to my site.  (sometimes in a negative way)  Whenever you are writing an article, I recommend getting a comment/quote from someone of interest.  It keeps your work original and it gets a buzz going about your blog.

My focus is Shiawassee County, but I consistently get more traffic to articles that push the limits of that niche.  Proud To Play went viral, drawing nearly 1000 unique visitors the day after it was published.  Who Is Dave Camp and What Kind Of Liberal Are You both increased my traffic by about 80%.  Although the increased traffic doesn’t last for long, it often results in new links from other sites and a slight increase in regular readers.  I think of these posts as advertisements … they get readers in the door, and hopefully some will poke around and become regulars.  I recommend adding “related postsâ€� links to your posts to make the most of this kind of traffic.

One final thing I would add is not about getting traffic, but about respecting the kind of traffic you get.  I only get about 150 unique visitors each day (plus RSS readers which I don’t know how to measure), but some of these readers have their own larger spheres of influence.  For example, the Argus Press has occasionally responded to something I’ve blogged.  When I blogged the Capitol Bowl fire, I questioned 5 specific issues regarding the performance of the Owosso Dept of Public Safety.  These were issues such as the use of mutual aid and the protection of JC Penny (adjacent to Capitol Bowl).  Two days later, the Argus wrote a series of 5 short articles, each one defending or praising the Dept. of Public Safety on a particular issue that I raised (and in the same sequence as they appeared in my article).  The intent of my Capitol Bowl article was to persuade readers that Owosso needs a Fire Department with leadership that specializes in firefighting, rather than a Department of Public Safety with leadership that specializes in police work.  The result was that our local paper praised the leadership and performance of the DPS. 

On the other hand, when an Argus reporter followed up on an article that I wrote about the Shiawassee Drain Office, we finally had some media exposure on an issue that we Democrats had been trying to bring to light.

I used to think of my blogging as shouting into the wind, where no one would hear me because I was just one voice being drowned out by the noise.  Now I realize that it’s more like speaking into a weird hall of echoes; I know I am being heard, but I can’t predict what the effect of my speech will be.  Bloggers tend to think of traffic as a status symbol ... the more traffic we have, the more powerful we are.  I am always aware of my traffic and trying to build more, but traffic can't measure the impact that we have outside the blogosphere.  That's the kind of impact I'd like to have, but I never realized what a mixed bag it would be.

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by: Christine @ Sat Jun 17, 2006 at 11:57:31 AM CDT

Traffic buildup (4.00 / 3)

I started my blog and only told one person. They sent it to a few friends and it kept building from there. I have done no advertising outside of posting here and getting a link on the side (thanks!) and connecting with the BlogPac people (I think that's how I got on the LeftyBlogs BlogWire though maybe I signed up for that independantly). I used Stat Counter for my site and really like it. I started the blog in March and have already built it into a fairly successful source for news on Barry County politics with some commenting on other state government issues and races included adjacent senate and house districts and the governors race. Thanks to State Counter I can see that the DeVos campaign has been reading. I've also gotten hits from a couple of township clerk offices, the Senate Seargant at Arms office (searching for Stabenow ino- don't know why but I emailed them just to give a heads up) and even the DEA. According to the stats I average about 300 unique visitors over the life of the site though at first I was probably lucky to get 50 a week so its actually much better now. It just keeps building, but I think a lot of that is because I focus locally and I'm in a rural area that is not served by a lot of media. I also have some pretty good sources which allows me to really dig into whats being talked about in the local coffee shops. I decided to go anonymous so that I could better protect my sources since I live in such a small town rural area. I find that it might have helped add an aura of mystique around me which has probably helped build readership as people ask others if they know "the blogger."

I also want to thank you for the tips here because I didn't know how to submit to Yahoo. I get a fair number of hits from Google since I signed up and MSN and a couple others seems to have found me, including the local Topix forums and now Yahoo can help add more traffic still.

I gave up posting on Daily Kos. I've been there almost from the start but unless you curse a lot or have a very outrageous personality its hard to get noticed and your diary will sink off the main page in an hour or two. I would encourage bloggers to focus on local issues since your opinion will hold more weight on state and regional issues versus being just one more person to write about how stupid the President is.

I apparently have influenced a couple readers of my site to start their own blogs who have linked to me. You will be amazed how it just keeps feeding off itself and getting bigger if you keep at it, keep posting new stuff that people want to read.

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by: MichPolWatcher @ Sat Jun 17, 2006 at 16:16:08 PM CDT

Thanks for the advice, and ... (0.00 / 0)

What would be very helpful is if Michiganliberal.com would take a leadership role in stuff like linking to other blogs.

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by: Captain Salty @ Sun Jun 18, 2006 at 06:01:29 AM CDT

Point taken. (0.00 / 0)

We could do better on linking to other blogs in the stories we post. Here's one way to help Michlib out though: if you write something on your blog you think would be of interest here, please feel free to drop an email to point it out. There's so many blogs and sites out there, it's hard to follow it all.

Also feel free to cross-post over here too. We front page diaries fairly often.. So be sure to toot your own horn in it (lead off with a link to your blog). Then if your diary gets fp'd, your site gets publicity too.

Could also try writing here with more of a summary of your post, and direct people to your site for the full content. I wonder how often people click over if they get access to the full article here already.

Also Michlib does have the Leftyblogs wire up, and we keep a pretty extensive blogroll. If you're not on the blogroll, just contact us to get added. We always appreciate links back too!

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by: lpackard @ Sun Jun 18, 2006 at 15:11:41 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Michlib does a good job (0.00 / 0)

promoting other MI blogs.  I get a bunch of traffic from the links here.  Thanks!

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by: Christine @ Mon Jun 19, 2006 at 03:27:20 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

RSS/SEO trick (4.00 / 1)

You can improve your rankings some by adding your RSS feed to MSN, Yahoo, and Google.  All three have a personalization system that allow you to control how the layout and content of the page.  Using this personalization system you can add custom RSS feeds.  Sign up / sign in to personalize and then add your feed to your own page. 

MSN:  go to http://my.msn.com, “Add Contentâ€� .  A pop up window opens to “Search For Contentâ€�.  Enter your RSS feed into the search box.  Select ‘OK’.  Pop up window will close & the mymsn page will refresh.  (The new feed might not show up right away).

YAHOO:  http://myyahoo.com , scroll down to “Find Contentâ€� .. under the search box is a link to “add RSS by URLâ€�.  Follow the link.  Add the RSS URL and select “ADDâ€�. You will be taken to a preview page of the feed.  Select “Add To My Yahooâ€�  and you should get a confirmation “this source has been added to my yahooâ€�.  ‘Go To My Yahoo’ to view the RSS on the page. 

GOOGLE:  http://google.com, “Add Contentâ€�, you will be taken to a search page.  Next to the “Search Homepage Contentâ€� is a link, “Add by URLâ€�, which (oddly enough) opens the “Add by URLâ€� input box.  Enter feed and select “ADDâ€�.  A confirmation should appear that the feed was added.  Select “Back to homepageâ€� to view.

All of the above methods have assumed that you have already signed in to personalize these pages.

My site performs better and gets indexed more often since I’ve done this.  I also find more referrals from all three of these sites in my logs.

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by: Christine @ Mon Jun 19, 2006 at 03:30:30 AM CDT

Excellent primer! (0.00 / 0)

Very handy--I see a few tips that even I had forgotten about (and I'm a pretty old hand at this, relatively speaking), including Technorati and Topix.

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by: Brainwrap @ Tue Aug 29, 2006 at 20:59:46 PM CDT

Great hands-on advice (0.00 / 0)

That was some great advice, and I used all of it. I wish I could have attended the blogger caucus at the state Convention Saturday, but I volunteered to work at the registration desk for the party. I did get to meet a lot of people there, including you, again. I also met you at the Camp Millie presentation in Monroe. I mistook you Saturday for the head of the Michigan Environmental Council. Thanks for the advice, and please keep it coming.


Communications Guru The Conservative Media http://liberalmedianot.blogspot.com

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by: kjbas58 @ Wed Aug 30, 2006 at 16:08:34 PM CDT