How to get more hits on your blog - Blair McPherson

Is it the subject that attracts the readers? Is it the key words, tags, that simulate interest? Is it the opening sentence that grabs their attention and gets them to click on read more? Is it simply a catchy title? Is it all about knowing your audience? Why do some blog postings get single figure hits when others on the same site get 100’s?

I ask as a blogger on this site who was envious to see that someone else had heading for 2 thousand hits for one posting!  So I tried to write a blog posting that would beat this and set a new record. Just in case some off you think my main method is cheating I would point out that this is an experiment to determine what works.

 In order to isolate the factors that work I wrote on the same topic, used the same tags and appealed to the same audience. My blog took the information in the original piece, provided new examples and used my own experience as a senior manager to question assumptions and provide a different perspective.

I made my opening paragraph different by referring to a comedy on TV which by asking around I found was popular with my target audience. I also dropped in a couple of other references that I hoped would make the posting stand out to the people I was writing to. These references were added to the tags. The original post had a cracking title in the form of a short intriguing question. I couldn’t come up with anything as good so I just when with something that made the subject of the posting clear.

The initial results were disappointing only 25 hits after 24 hours. I consoled myself with the knowledge that my postings tend to be growers that is the initial hits are few but tended to grow over a period of 3 or 4 weeks and six weeks after posting some  reach a respectable number but nothing anywhere near my current target. Besides which the post I was comparing myself with had over a thousand hits within a week.

 I needed to do something dramatic. I decided to piggyback not only the original posting but the original title. I would simply add ”part 2” thus implying correctly that it was a follow on from the original, a sort of sequel and like the movies not necessarily by the same person.

Did it work? See for yourself.  https://khub.net/group/khub/my-blog