Grow Your Traffic: Turn New Visitors Into Loyal Readers

Oct 12, 2007

Grow Your Traffic: Turn New Visitors Into Loyal Readers
by Skellie

What’s the difference between a one-time visitor and a loyal reader who visits your site daily for a year?

Around 364 unique hits.

You’d be lucky if a link from an A-list blog sent that much targeted traffic your way. The good news is that turning a first-time visitor into a loyal reader is a whole lot easier than getting a link from an A-list blog.

The bad news? Loyal readers are a source of long-term traffic many bloggers and webmasters (and many articles about growing site traffic) seem to ignore.

What if you could build loyal readers from just 5 new visitors? If they went on to visit your site daily for a year, those 5 visitors would bring you 1825 hits. Further, 50 loyal readers of this kind would bring you 18,250 hits over the course of a year. And so on.

In this post I want to outline some basic strategies you can use to turn new visitors into loyal readers.

Be generous

Generosity leaves an impression, whether you offer new visitors a free eBook, a free review, or some other service.

Make a connection

Responding to a comment or email could turn a one-time visitor into a loyal fan of your site. It’s surprising how many bloggers and webmasters don’t see responding to comments/emails as worth the time investment. It absolutely is!

Be consistent with your topics

If the reader enjoyed your coverage of a particular topic they may keep tabs on your site, hoping for some more great coverage of the topic they’re interested in. If none is forthcoming, they might lose interest.

If you write about a flaw in the iPod screen, for example, you don’t necessarily need to write about the flaw again. You would probably be expected to cover the broader topic of iPods, however. Pick your general topics and be consistent with them, to avoid readers feeling your site was not what they thought.

Develop a consistent rhythm

Loading up a site only to find that it still hasn’t updated can be quite a disheartening experience. If this happens enough, the reader might stop trying.

This doesn’t mean you need to post every day. You might only post once a week. The key, however, is that your articles flow with a consistent rhythm. If you post 5 times one week, readers will probably expect you to post 5 times next week, too.

Where to next?

Tomorrow I want to provide a longer list of concrete strategies you can use to convert first time visitors into loyal readers, and in doing so, exponentially grow your site traffic. If you don’t want to miss it, consider subscribing to have it delivered to your feed reader.

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10 Comments, Comment or Ping

Patrick

You’ve been remarkable enough that you have a loyal reader in me, Skellie. Thanks for another great article.

I like the idea of creating a free ebook, then using it to somehow market your blog. There is always the popular give-away-the- ebook-to-rss subscribers, but I think there is potential to do more with it than just that.

Yes, a free eBook…..(strokes chin)

As usual, you’ve got me thinking again….

Oct 12th, 2007
skellie

Thank you, Patrick. Your comments have been a pleasure to read.

Another option for a free eBook is to encourage it to go viral. If you make it easy to share then a great, free product with your blog URL on it will reach a wide audience of potential readers and, perhaps, create a snowball effect for your blog.

Well, that’s the ideal situation, anyhow

Oct 12th, 2007
CHESSNOID

Hi,
I love visiting your site. I always find thought provoking articles here. My favorite post so far is how to write dirty. Keep it up. I appreciate your creativity and the quality of your blog.
Cheers!

Oct 12th, 2007
skellie

Thanks, Chessnoid. I’m glad you enjoyed writing dirty — it’s a subject I want to return to again soon :).

Oct 12th, 2007
Travis

You’ve inspired some thinking - the gears are turning inside my head. I may try to offer something extra free - maybe a review of one reader’s blog a week.

Thanks for the simplicity review, by the way.

Oct 12th, 2007
jsanderz

skellie, your tips are good advice and although I am a newbie at blogging I do pretty much what you have wrote. My biggest down fall is the posts, I try to do 5 a week but they are not always consistent, will have to try harder.

Oct 12th, 2007
Pinyo

I always love reading your posts (mainly through RSS reader except when I come over to make a comment).

How can we really reach out, thank them, and get them involved? I have been thinking about doing some type of readers-centric post, but afraid it will be a flop.

Oct 12th, 2007
skellie

@ Travis: If you come up with something, feel free to link to it here. I’d like to see it!

@ Jsanderz: Honestly, I think consistency is more important than posting frequency — particularly after reading a fantastic article on Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter. If you are struggling to consistently make five posts a week, consider cutting down to four or three.

One surprising thing I’ve noticed over the last two weeks or so is that, despite my being quite busy and not posting as much as usual on Skelliewag, the blog has never grown more rapidly. I’m actually starting to think that giving individual posts a longer run in the limelight gives them more time to gain momentum on social media. Maybe posting less is actually better than posting more?

@ Pinyo: I always love reading your comments

This is something I’ve been thinking about and a topic I want to cover in detail in future. How can we say thank you to our readers? There should be a few suggestions in the post I’m going to write tomorrow (hopefully I can get it done!).

Oct 12th, 2007