PB035: Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky Blog - a podcast by Darren Rowse: Blogger, Speaker, Author and Online Entrepreneur

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How to Turn Surfers into Blog Readers by Building a Sticky BlogToday's episode is about how to find new readers for your blog. It's the question I get asked most by bloggers, so this is the third of several podcasts on this topic. In part one we looked at two really important questions to ask before you go hunting for readers to read your blog. In part two, we talked about how to use two types of content to find readers for your blog. Today, we talk about building a blog that readers will want to return to again and again (a'sticky'blog).




i don't understand this Hamlet!!! by David Pereiras on 500pxIn This Episode
You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). Today we talk about:

Why it's so much easier to hook readers into become regular rather than having to find fresh readers every day
15 ways to make it difficult for readers to leave your blogHow to get readers to subscribe, follow and connect

Further Resources For Finding Blog ReadersA Secret to Finding New Subscribers for Your Blog
Add an ‘About’ Page to Your BlogTarget different readers with different messages. We use Opt In Monster, which enables us to show different popups/calls to action to subscribe to different types of traffic (this is an affiliate link).Full TranscriptExpand to view full transcript
Compress to smaller transcript viewHi. My name is Darren Rowse and welcome to episode 35 of the ProBlogger Podcast, a podcast dedicated to helping you build better blogs. Today's show notes can be found at problogger.com/podcast/35.

Today, we're continuing our series on finding readers for your blog. It's a topic we're all interested in as bloggers. In the last two episodes, I've been building some foundations for finding readers for your blog. In episode 33, I've talked about two questions to ask about the potential readers you're trying to attract. In the last episode, episode 34, I talked about two types of content that can help you to find new readers for your blog.

Today, I want to suggest one more thing to think about as a good foundation for building a blog with lots of readers—building a sticky blog. You might be asking, what is a sticky blog? A sticky blog is one way a first-time reader of your blog finds it difficult to leave. That might sound like you're going to try and trap them or send them a virus to their computer or something like that. It's nothing like that at all. It's because something in your blog motivates them to explore it further and/or they make a decision to return and keep connected in some way. The goal of what we're talking about today is to get people deeper into your blog, viewing more pages, subscribing, connecting, and following in some way. 

The reality is that most people who arrive on your blog surf away and they're gone again within seconds. It's less than 10 seconds (I would guess) in most cases. How are you going to hook them? How are you going to keep them on your blog longer? These questions are questions that I think are really important. I'm surprised how few posts there are in blog tips on this particular topic. It makes sense to me that it's better to find a reader and keep them coming back once a week for the rest of the year—52 times—than to go way out and have to find 52 new readers. Turning that one reader into a regular reader will pay off in the long term. 

This is actually how I think it's best to grow your readership. If all you're doing is promoting your blog to new readers and not convincing any of them to hang around, you're going to hit a ceiling as to how many readers you can have. But if you continue to add new loyal readers into your blog every day by hooking them in,

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