Welcome back. This is a guest post by Z of Pervertically Virtuous. Her blog is where she writes about her sexual experiences, her outlook on life, relationships, and more.  During a conversation with Z of Pervertically Virtuous she shared with me her blog’s stats.  Here is a snap shot of what she shared (edited for clarity):

“I started blogging just over 2 months ago and have since published 72 posts (pretty much 1 post a day).  I have 73 blog followers, 6 of those are email. I’ve had a total of 29,000 views or 450 a day. If we disregard the first month (during which I had very few views) and look only at the month of April, I had 20,000 views and 6,800 visitors (avg view per visitor – 3.00). Since April, my best day was 3,000 views/1,000 visitors; my worst day, 200 views/100 visitors.”

Those are pretty impressive stats for any type of blog for just over 2 months of blogging.  Pervertically Virtuous shared some of her processes for drawing the traffic to her blog and then offered to write a more detailed post for the Building the Better Blogger series.  I took her up on her offer, specifically because  she has a lot of information that anyone looking to increase the traffic to their blog can use.

Thank you Z for taking the time to share your processes and experience.  Barb read over this post, like she does all posts, and was finding ideas that she could use to promote her Etsy shops.

Without further ado, I present to you Pervertically Virtuous’s post:

Using Networking to Increase Blog Traffic: 10 Lessons from a Novice Sex Blogger

Two and a half months ago, I had barely ever read a blog, I had no Twitter account, no clue what a ‘widget’ was, no idea what SEO stood for.

And then I started blogging.

I blog about my sexual experiences and opinions, which are as varied as they are plentiful. In the 70 days that my blog has been up, I have published 73 posts, gotten 220 comments, and gained 76 blog and 28 Twitter followers (I blog anonymously, so none of these are my real-life friends).

In the first month of blogging, unsurprisingly, I had very few total views (350) and unique visitors (130). But in my second month, I got 20,000 views and 6,800 visitors (an average of 663 views a day)! Since then, my best day was 3,000 views/1,000 visitors; my worst day, 200 views/100 visitors. By today, I’ve had over 30,000 views. Compared to many other sex bloggers – those are some really nice site statistics.

So how did I do it?

I have a bit of an obsessive personality – when I get excited about something, I get REALLY excited about it. I delve deep, learn everything I can about it, and try to be the best in it that I possibly can. (It is never about competing with others, it’s about competing with myself). Blogging was no different. Having written nothing but academic papers prior to this blog, I took it as a challenge to make my non-academic writing good and successful. I want to write because I like writing, but also because I want to share my experiences with others, so I want people to read it. The more readers I can reach, the better.

So when I started blogging, I also started reading about quality content creation, search engine optimization, and content promotion and audience building. I will leave content creation and SEO to those much more qualified than me. Here I want to share some tactics for content promotion – particularly through networking with other blogs, websites, and social media – that I have used so far and that have worked for bringing all that traffic to my fledgling blog.

10 Strategies for Content Promotion and Audience Building through Networking

1. Read and comment on other people’s blogs. Particularly those with a large readership. Set aside at least 30 min a day for this. Make it a point to comment on 1 new blog a day. For attracting a more varied readership, branch out beyond your specific topic. In addition to sex blogs, for example, I read and comment on blogs about writing, fitness, photography, travel, atheism, humor…
2. Guest post on other blogs. Find established blogs in your area – or in areas tangential to yours – that accept guest posts (many will note this somewhere on their page). Make sure you tailor your post to the specific audience. This is the first time I’m implementing this specific strategy, but it is said to work wonders.
3. List your blog on a thematic blog directory. Many areas will have blog directories – websites that bring blogs on that topic together. Early on, I listed my blog on http://www.adultbloghub.com, a blog directory for sex-related blogs, and I submit one of my already published posts there about once a week; it is among the top 5 referrers to my blog. (There are also general blog directories, but I have no experience with them.)
4. Get your blog reviewed by a reputable review website for your topic. In the world of sex websites of any kind (blogs, porn sites, educational websites, etc.), JanesGuide.com is “the” review website. Only 4 days after getting a positive (“Quality and Original”) review from Jane’s Guide, they have become one of my top 5 referrers. Identify that website in your area and submit your blog for review.
5. Participate in a thematic blogger digest. Many areas will have blogs that publish a recurring “blog digest” of links to self-submitted blog posts, which is then re-posted in full on all participating blogs for each edition. In the sex blogging world, elustsexblogs.com publishes such a digest once a month. I have submitted my favorite post of the month there twice so far and they are among the top 10 referrers to my blog.
6. Find a popular website or blog in your area that re-publishes content of your type. About 3 weeks ago, I wrote to Fleshbot, a hugely popular erotica/porn/sex news website, giving them permission to reposts any of my sex stories in their “true stories” section. Since then, they’ve chosen to feature 3 of my stories and are now among my top 5 referrers.
7. Use Twitter effectively. And by that I don’t mean post what you had for lunch every day. Unless your blog is about food. Here are 3 types of Twitter activities that can generate interest in you and your blog.
   1. Promote your content. Set up your blogging platform (e.g., wordpress) to post each new post on Twitter automatically. Later that day, tweet about your post again – with a commentary this time. Each day choose an older post, and tweet about that “post from the archives” twice that day.
   2. Provide useful non-self-promotional content. Each day, tweet about something new, interesting, or informative related to the topic of your blog: something that happened to you, a thought you had, a cool blog post you read, a news item… Use relevant popular hashtags to potentially reach those who do not follow you on Twitter. If you don’t know whether a hashtag is relevant/popular, search for it first.
   3. Interact with others. Each day, tweet @ someone you know, tweet @ someone you don’t know (for e.g., if they wrote something that inspired you), respond to someone’s tweet, favorite someone’s tweet, retweet someone else’s cool tweet….
8. Use social bookmarking sites like Delicious or Reddit: They are huge communities that can lead to a lot of traffic if used wisely. The first time I posted one of my sex stories in the /gonewildstories subreddit (see here), my blog views went from 115 the day before to 3,300 the day after! I now post a story there once a week, and reddit is by far my #1 referrer (it sends more people my way than the #2-#5 referrers combined!). Find the subreddits relevant for your topic and submit there. You have to be careful though – you must be an active participant in that subreddit beyond just self-promotion (read others’ submissions, up/down-vote, comment…); their spam filters are pretty damn good.
9. Do a regular column for a web magazine that publishes in your area. I am in the process of hopefully starting such a column for Fearless Press.
10. Give and get help to/from other bloggers. Fellow bloggers in your area are your new best friends: Network with them. Help one another with content promotion: You share their content and ask them to share yours. All those sharing buttons (Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr, Digg, Pocket…) are there for a reason.

This HubSpot resource helped me jumpstart my Twitter efforts. Since I started engaging more actively on Twitter, it went from barely making it into my top 20 referrers, to climbing up to #10. And as my Twitter followers slowly keep increasing, I expect that to increase as well.

(I am sure you can use Facebook in similar ways, but I have not done that yet.)

In all of these activities – Be Genuine and Useful. Don’t just do it for the self-promotion.

A note about how networking can help SEO. SEO “the next generation” relies not only on keywords you use in your posts, but also on links to your blog from reputable other websites. The more of the above strategies you implement, the more other reputable websites will be linking to you and that, in turn, will make you rank higher in search engines. Search engine traffic is among my top 3 referrers.

This is what I’ve done so far, and so far it has paid off. But I know I must keep doing it: Maintaining a blog that gets a lot of traffic is a lot of work, especially in the beginning. Just creating good content is not enough.

I’m searching for, learning, and trying out new strategies every day. Please share yours!