How to Get People to Read Your Blog

Now that my blog traffic numbers are increasing -- thank You, Jesus! -- I'm getting questions from various folks about how to get people to read your blog, so I figured I'd better start blogging about what I've learned thus far onhow to increase blog traffic:

* Blog every day, even several times per day. I got this tip from Fred Wilson of A VC, who is quoted in the December 2006 issue of Business 2.0 as saying, "I've found that having something new on the blog every day is the single most important thing to building an audience."

* Use sensational headlines...Fred continued, and I agree with him. Yesterday I created a post called Ellen Pompeo Playboy Pics Reveal... that I think will get lots of hits just from that enticing title alone. I'll keep checking Google Analytics,which gives bloggers all sorts of great data analysis about how folks are finding you and what posts they're reading.

*Post interesting pics with every post. We're all visual creatures. Pictures draw our eyes to stuff first. Which is why I have this somewhat embarassing image of me as a 9-year-old 5th-grader (I skipped 1st and 3rd grade) attached to this post. Just wait till y'all see my buck-toothed high school senior pic. So glad my mom finally got me braces my junior year of college at Florida A&M University...

* Get personal. Okay, so you don't have to get as personal as Dooce if you don't want to, but she is drawing 2.5 million -- that's right, million -- pageviews last I heard. Dooce has been blogging since 2001 and has developed a following because people feel like they know her. And they do.

* Write what people want to read. So this morning I was going to post about my dad reading my blog, but reader desire lead me in another direction -- writing this! Also, check Technorati's popular search term list as well as the Yahoo! Buzz Index - Today's Top 20 Overall Searches to find out what kind of info people are looking for. That's how I find out about Carmen Bryan, and I didn't even know who she was. Now that blog post is my top pageviewed post at the moment.