A recent Wired article talked about an electric car company which Wired said was a “hype-machine,” banking on their press releases for popularity, but falling short most of the time. This reminds me of those times when bloggers try to bring attention to their blogs through every means possible. While catching people’s attention on the onset is good (it provides you audience, after all), if you do nothing but heighten the hype of your blog, you won’t get loyal regulars. You don’t want your blog to be called “all hype and no substance” now, do you?

1. Limit your linkbaits.

Seriously. Sure, you’ve seen a huge spike on your traffic when you came up with a linkbait. Doesn’t mean you have to mimic the effort every day. Set a schedule for linkbaiting, such as doing it once every week.

2. Don’t stir up a huge controversy.

If you have a strong opinion about another person’s article and you decided to write about it, that’s one thing. But trying to rile other people up by writing controversial posts about their articles of themselves is another. Don’t try to write a linkbait with the purpose of making a select group of people hate you. Believe me, it’s not worth the effort. You’ll end up with a huge mess to clean afterwards.

3. Just write about what would contribute to other people’s knowledge.

Most of the time, you just have to write about what matters. Think of what your audience really needs to know and write about that. True, this tactic might not get you new readers at first, but it’ll definitely make your current readers stay. Also, in time, your blog could be known as a resource which newbies could refer to.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under blogging. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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