Do you recognize yourself in these words:
I should really be spending more time marketing my blog, but I just caaan't find the time needed to do so?
Then I have a very simple solution.
The next time you use Google Analytics (a post about the importance of using this tool at an at least weekly basis can be found here) for your regular analysis and evaluation of your blog, do the following:
1. Make sure you're only viewing stats for the last week
2. Look at from which social (twitter, facebook, online forum) source you have been getting the most visits lately
3. Seek out that source - preferably every day that this particular source is the most traffic-bringing one -
and do something (retweet, answer a forum post etc) to make people notice that your are still actively participating and interested in keeping contact.
This way you'll keep being noticed by the same "target audience" that have been most interested in your blog recently and - voila! -
you are keeping a positive spiral turning in the right direction. You will also find that since your main source of traffic is the place most interested in what you write about, it is almost certainly a place where
you as well will enjoy spending time keeping a social network alive.
Therefore I recommend that you skip any search engines or similar that may come up first and
look for the first social source you can find. This is unless you are particularly interested in SEO, but that is another topic.
Blogging is all about communication and the ones most likely to be interested in what you have to say are people you know well. Therefore
BUILDING AND MAINTAINING SOCIAL NETWORKS is the most important aspect of running a popular blog.
The good news is that this is one of the things that are most rewarding about blogging - if you're actively building and maintining contact with like-minded people
you will no doubt make quite a few friends along the way.
It is my firm belief that
only a person with a sincere interest in making and keeping new social connections and that senses a joy in doing so, will become a successful blogger. After all, if it's all struggle and no joy doing it - why do it at all?
Happy blogging!