Marie LeBaron is a 30 something stay at home mom to 3 silly kids. Before life as a mother, she graduated with a teaching degree in Early Childhood & Elementary Education, after which she taught four years of Kindergarten. After her first child was born, she decided to read books and sing silly songs at home. She misses the classroom, but she now gets to bring the fun and learning into her home and ours. You can follow more of her projects at her parenting blog Make and Takes.
Here's a few tips and tricks to help increase traffic to your blog.
As I've been blogging for 2 years and currently have just over 4,100 daily subscribers, I know most of these tips have helped my own readership grow.
Niche Blogging - Find your passion and blog about it. It's much easier and comes more naturally if you blog about something you love. It could be food, parenting, photography, knitting, design etc. If you're genuine and real in your posts, people respond to that and want to read more.
Submitting Posts - There are some great sites that take submissions for related posts and can bring you new readers. Here's a few to check out:
- Stumble Upon - here you must submit other sites as well as your own.
- Kirtsy, Digg, Delightful
- Craftzine, Get Crafty, The Craft Crow, Tip Junkie
- Tastespotting, Foodgawker, FoodPhotoBlog
How-To Type Posts - A post with a recipe or directions to make something are very popular with sites like Stumble Upon or Kirsty. They tend to bring a lot of traffic, as people love to see how to make things for themselves.
Use Twitter as a Business Card - Twitter is great for building relationships with people, but it can also be great for sharing your site with others. Try to follow people who are in your area of interest. Chances are they will see your profile and click on your blog link, seeing who you are and maybe staying a while.
Responding to Comments - When someone leaves a comment on your blog, try to comment back or even email back to readers who may be new to your blog. It helps them feel welcome and you can say thanks for sharing their comment. Chances are they'll find you took the time to say hi and they'll come back to read more.
Leaving Comments - Visit other people's blogs and share a comment. Who doesn't love to get comments? Read their posts and comment with something relevant to add, letting them know you're genuine!
I hope these tips and tricks help. What else have you found to help increase traffic to your site?
Photo by flickr.
Tanner Barrett was held off snow for shoulder and hip rehab last winter and he is savoring every opportunity as well getting right back after his backside rodeos, front sev's and even a nine. Peter Dimitriou is a rail demon and working the front and backside spins to bring his jump skills up to the same level.
And finally a huge thanks to John Evoy and the Irish Men that made ups feel at home in Ireland. Thank you. This TV show has changed my life. In the spirit of Thanksgiving month I say again THANK YOU, THANK YOU all.
Had art time with the kids in the garage today, so I thought I would make another Talking Fly ad. The Talking Fly is a video project that I am launching on YouTube that will feature short documentaries, some stand-alone and some longer shows cut into 2 to 5 minute pieces- like a web series of sorts, anyway it will be just a place to explore passion and/or nonfiction filmmaking.
About a year ago, I decided to learn right along with my kids. Often the best way to learn is to teach. When you teach, you often discover what you don’t know, and you can relate to your audience. When I serve food I have historically not eaten, like carrots, I tell them carrots aren’t my favorite. I say that I prefer them cooked, and when raw they are very crunchy. Then I eat one, and show them I survived. The concept that food doesn’t have to be a favorite to be eaten is very powerful in learning to overcome food aversions.
Thankfully, she doesn't actually play with any of the low-hanging Christmas ornaments, but she does like napping under the tree.
For Thanksgiving, Julie cooked up a wonderful meal of turkey, potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and green beans. Then Bill, Loris and Seth Benson came over to join us, bringing some appetizers, a wonderful mushroom soup and a salad. Tons and tons of glorious food topped off with Julie's pumpkin pie and some Deer Valley carrot cake. Needless to say, I have gained several pounds over the last few days.
Julie's mom sent us a pretty floral arrangement. I think was part Thanksgiving and part Happy Birthday. Today's is Julie's birthday! No huge plans but we are doing dinner and a movie (Lincoln).
On Saturday we journeyed up to the Montage Hotel for their tree lighting. In the lobby, they have a huge Gingerbread House. They also have two Gingerbread Dog Houses for Monty and Jonas, the hotel's pets.
What does it take to build such a large creation, besides many, many hours? 480 pounds of flour, 165 pounds of sugar, 135 pounds of butter, ... Now I understand why they charge over $800 per night for a hotel room. Someone has to pay for this place!
Julie, in her younger days (two days before today's birthday). You have to get up around 9,000 feet to have all that snow in the background.
The Montage was also serving Smores, with about 10 different flavors of marshmallows. Hannah seemed to be loving hers, although her marshmallow never got toasted, or even very warm. Although this misses the true pleasure of a Smore, apparently a graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow sandwich was just fine.
It got surprisingly cold as the sun set, so everyone was getting quite impatient for the tree lighting. They had some fires out for warmth, but I think they could better be described as smoke pots. When the trees finally did light up, they were very pretty.
Other than our fabulous Thursday dinner and the follow-up leftover meals, it was a fairly mellow weekend. We watched a lot of football, because that's what you're supposed to do. We avoided Black Friday, Grey Thursday, and every other form of panicked shopping.