There are all sorts of little ways that email can increase blog traffic for you or for a client you blog for. Following are five good ideas.
Email a new reader; or two or three or twenty! Darren notes that emailing new readers was one of the main strategies he used to build up ProBlogger traffic back in the day, and if it’s good enough for that well… why not give it a shot. Note – some emails to new readers can be annoying. Try to keep track of who you send emails to so that you don’t send off notes to the same readers over and over. I personally hate that and it won’t get me back to your blog. Also keep it short. I did recently get a very nicely written email from a blogger at Green Talk – it was short, promoted the blog and is a good example of an email you can send to your own readers (see below).
“Thank you for your comment on Green Talk I read each and everyone of the comments on my site. Green Talk is all about the conversation, so every comment is valuable to continue helping others to live a greener lifestyle.
To continue the conversation, consider joining the Green Talk Ning, a social network site, for those who wish to live a greener lifestyle or subscribe to Green Talk’s email or feed.”
Email a company: When you blog about a company or product – assuming what you wrote was favorable and well written, shoot said company off an email. Flattery will get you everywhere. Just send a quick note saying something like, “Dear so and so company… I recently blogged/wrote about/reviewed your super cool toy – (include link). Just thought you might enjoy seeing the post.” Also if you have a badge, this would be a good time to send it along. Many companies will place your badge at their site if you’ve reviewed their product.
Q: What if I wrote a bad review about a company? I’d send them an email anyhow. A few times this has worked in my favor, either by a company changing their product or it’ll start a dialogue or the company will say, “Well, you hated our granola bars but let us send you some coffee to review because you might like that.”
Email another blogger: You have lots of choices when emailing another blogger. It could be to say you love their blog, it could be to say thanks for linking to you, it could be to start a conversation, but no matter what you email them for it often results in a link or two back to your blog.
Allow people to subscribe to comments: Comment subscription is not organically an email tactic. In reality it’s a comment/traffic tactic but it does draw people back via email, hence my including it here. When readers are allowed to subscribe to comments they’ll come back to re-comment when someone debates their comment or says something to spark their interest. If you need a plugin for this, I like Subscribe To Comments.
Let people subscribe by email and word it correctly: Most bloggers have RSS set up on their blog; i.e. “Subscribe via RSS.” Fewer bloggers allow for email subscriptions, however many people do like to subscribe by email. You can easily set up email subscriptions if you use Feedburner. You should also make sure reader subscribe by using the correct wording. For example, many people associate “subscription” with money. You usually have to pay to subscribe to stuff. Point out that readers can subscribe for free to make sure they do.
Of course there’s the basics too – include your blog in your email signature line, send professional emails, be nice and so on. The little things add up.
Got any more email tips that can increase blog traffic? Share below.
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