How Your Blog is Working AGAINST You (And How To Fix It)

I'm going to tell you something you don't want to hear;

Building a successful blog takes time.

A long time. Sometimes months, usually years. There are few shortcuts.

But there IS cheating.

And what might be considered cheating? I'll give you one example: building up a fake following.

"Like" Ladders, #FollowFridays... You've seen the ads: buy 10,000 Twitter followers for $39.95 today! No password required!

Let me save you your reputation: every single one of these methods will destroy your blog. I know, because I've done it all before...

[Tweet this.]

Everybody wants an audience. Everybody wants to be heard. And most of all, everyone wants success. It's easy to fall into "get it now" schemes when you aren't sure what you're doing (as many victims won't).

10,000 Facebook fans certainly looks impressive. But if you've been blogging for but a few weeks and only have five posts up, you are going to have some skeptics.

Worse, imagine if a company decided to sponsor you with one of their products and ended up with no return, not even in visits? You can kiss whatever real audience or reputation you had built up on your own goodbye.

Having 100 real fans is ten times better than having 10,000 fake fans with no interest in any of your work.

100 real fans will read your articles (which equals at least 100 pageviews for your blog every time you post).

100 real fans will share and 'like' your articles, even the mediocre ones.

100 real fans will listen to your suggestions and might even buy something you recommend.

10,000 fake fans will do none of these things.

In fact, the only thing 10,000 fake fans will really do for you is impress people. And that is not going to help you get anywhere.

If you've managed to avoid the temptation of buying or working to build a fake following, I congratulate you. You are already one step ahead of most of the competition.

If you have started to build a real readership on your own (no matter how small that readership is), give yourself a huge round of applause!

If you've done neither of these things, that's okay too. I have one trick that will instantly help you start to build up a real, loyal readership. It's so simple and so effective, it makes you wonder why more people aren't doing it.

The Valuable Space that is Costing you Fans

First, let's agree on something: if someone makes it to the end of one of your posts, they are really digging your content, right?

Yep! But one thing that many people don't consider is this:

When a person finishes reading a post, they'll look for something else to do.

That's where you come in.

Now, often times, people fill that little space at the end of an article with ads and links to more posts, and that's fine, too. You'll get more traffic and might earn a little commission.

BUT.

If someone reads your entire article, I think it's safe to say they are already a fan of your work. Why not act on and grow that relationship?

How do you do that? You've probably already figured it out: Include a Facebook "like" button or a Twitter "follow" button at the end of all of your posts.

Just one or the other. Why? I'll explain.

Overloading any space on your blog with random widgets, links, badges, etc will overwhelm readers and work AGAINST you, costing you fans that you deserve.

Here on Social Czar, I have a simple message at the end of all my posts ("Enjoyed this article? "Like" for free updates.), followed by a "like" button.

That's it.

Notice, it's the same thing with my sidebar. Just the Facebook "like" box.

Now, at the moment, I have only one post published to this blog. But as I start to write more, I'll include a "Popular Posts" widget below that Facebook box. That way, even if people reject my request ("liking" SoCzar on Facebook), they see the widget, implying that my articles have credibility.

This might convince readers who ignored your "Like" button the first time to read more of your posts and decide, "Why not? I like what I've seen so far, and this person DOES have several popular articles."

Bottom line: Building up a real loyal readership is NOT hard with the right techniques. Giving people fewer options means they will be more likely to take action because they will be less overwhelmed. Good luck.

If you've found this post helpful, you should take a second and tweet it to your friends. Or comment. Thanks.