What to do when your blog doesn’t move on

Have you subscribe base been constant throughout the past month? Stuck with 30 unique visitors per day and can’t seem to get it to move on? Your last 20 posts show “No Comments”, adding to the disappointment? So sick of blogging and beginning to think that pro-bloggers are all living scams? If so, this post is definitely for you.

Obviously, there’s something that you’re doing wrong or something that doesn’t seem to be working with your blog. Simply because, if you play your cards right, blogging can get you anywhere! I sincerely hope this post will give you some motivation and clear insights onto how you can get a move on your blog. Blogging is somewhat like a marathon. If you fall, you can always get up and start running.

Tip #1: Enhance your blog design.

There might be a reason why that 30 uniques visitors per day can’t seem to be converted in to your blog subscribers. In most of the cases, I believe this is because of the poor blog design. Sometimes, no matter how good the content is, readers will always object to subscribing for a blog with a amateurish design.

If you are using a widely popular wordpress/blogger theme, then you might want to customize it a bit. If you can’t seem to be professional enough in your appearance, chances are likely that you won’t get the deal. Search engines might not care how good your site looks when their spiders index it. But, people who click through the search results and visit your blog, do! Give them a good first impression to believe in your blog.

First impression is one of the most persuading factor for a reader to subscribe to your blog. If you fail your readers at this, they will fail you.

Tip #2: Are you promoting your RSS feed right?

True enough, most of the surfers have the feed auto-discovery in their own browsers. But it’s a key factor to your blog’s success that you indeed invest sometime to promote it yourself. As I don’t believe in data duplication, this post might help:) - Harnessing the maximum from your RSS Feed: Tips and Tricks!

Tip #3: Comment on other blogs.

Maybe it’s time you slow down a bit. Maybe it’s time you wander off to do some blog-hopping and start creating content in other blogs. Yes, you heard me right! Start creating content in other sites with your comments. This might be an exhausted tip in the blogosphere, but if the practical application of the tip is as exhausted as the tip is, then you might not want to read this tip at all:)

The key here is refraining from the cliches like “Great Post - period” and start offering and adding some valuable content as your comments. Often the author will not hesitate to pay you a visit and if it’s a blog of your niche, you might gain some valuable traffic and subscribers too.

Tip #4: Targetting some forum traffic

Off the time you save by slowing down on your posting, try having some dedicated time for forums. If manipulated right, forums can give you loads of free traffic, valuable tips and something to learn, and relationships with prominent bloggers. If you can pull off some good stunts in forums like asking ‘burning’ questions, and giving great answers to other bloggers’ questions, you can undoubtedly get a move on your blog really, really fast.

There are some bloggers who had built their blogs on forum traffic. And some bloggers I know, have 90% of forum traffic as a ratio of the total blog traffic. Remember, this is a proven way to get readers, provided that you have some minutes to spare.

Tip #5: Start networking with other bloggers

Sign up to MyBlogLog, it’s one great method I use to network with other bloggers. If you provide good content, then other bloggers would undoubtedly be impressedby your blog and interested in interacting with you. You can get some good traffic exchange deals, learn stuff, and most of all, have a human sense of a community in the cold world of ones and zeros.

If you play your cards right, you can encourage comments on your site, have review exchanges and much much more. Once you have built your castle, don’t you think it’s worth showing someone off rather than just being the king and waiting for your castle to slowly turn to dust? …I thought so!

Tip #6: Building authority in Social Media sites.

Digg, StumbleUpon, had generously contributed towards the success of MindBlogger. Just 2 days before, stumbles brought me around 200 unique visitors in 5 hours. The general theory in applied social media science is that content is king! If you got good content, after polishing up your profile in a few social media sites, you can make some new friends and get them to dig and digg your content.

Having authority in Social Media sites can be one great advantage for a blogger, simply becasue, one - let’s face it, it’s fun! two - you get to do add some great people to your network, three - it’s free, targeted traffic, and four - it’s really easy to be exposed, provided that you invest some time and effort in it.

Tip #7: Try identifying the flaws in your content writing.

You know, you don’t necessarily have to have flaws to improve your content writing skills. Is your blog not moving because of poor content writing skills? You might need to work on that then.

Chad Kettner of ProFreelancing has a greta e-book that will help you in writing great headlines. I expect to review the e-book in one of my future posts nevertheless. Likewise, Chris Garett on New Media has a great e-book on creating Killer Flagship Content. Look aorund for some good content writing tips. I highly recommend Copyblogger.

If that’s why your content is not being surfaced, whether it’s lack of ‘creating interest’ or simple grammar mistakes, it’s vital that you take necessary methods to rectify them.

Tip #8: If your content is good, try guest blogging!

Guest blogging can boost your blog statistics instantly, provided that your post gets publishedto a good blog. Blogthority has a good post on guest blogging. Writing guest posts to increase traffic: Choosing an audience - can help you gain some insights onto being a good guest blogger.

But, remember, guest blogging is not for everyone. The ideal candidate would be the blogger who can post great content but can’t seem to find the resources to invest in promoting his blog in a broader perspective. But if you’re excited about the new guest blogging traffic and prioritize guest blogging rather than building your own blog, or offer the best you have to the blogs that accept your guests posts and post all the unwanted crumbs in your blog, you’re losing the whole point.

Be a good blogger first. Only then can you focus on being a good guest blogger.