Business Blogging is for the long term- building your following on ActiveRain or outside blogs.
I was looking at our ClustrMaps a few minutes ago and wondered if the numbers are going up or down. In other words, are we gaining readers or not. The second question that came to my mind is has our following been growing over the years I have been blogging. This is just our ActiveRain stats so if you think blogging on ActiveRain is a waste of time, think again.
I started blogging on ActiveRain in June of 2007. I had another blog on blogger before AR. Consistency is one of the keys to business blogging.
You can see by the chart below that each month we have about the same amount of posts.
When AR members ask why no one is reading their blog or why they don't get any calls, etc, one of the common denominators among those members is that they do not blog consistently. If you post one or two posts a month that is not very consistent. People lose interest in your blog.
Then I went to look at our ClustrMaps archive and noticed that each year our readership has increased.
ClustrMaps completes the maps in December of each year and then archives that year's stats.This is because otherwise many ClustrMaps would look like one big giant red blob.
From December 2007 to December 2008 we had 89,281 visitors:
From December 2008 to December 2009 we had 106,420 Visitors:
From December 2009 to December 2010 we had 113,621 Visitors:
From December 2010 to December 2011 we dropped in visitors down to 106,486. We attribute this based on the numbers of where people are coming from that when the global recession hit some of the European countries, our readership went down. We also had a dip in U.S. visitors- again- we believe due to the recession. But we think it is picking up again.
So you can see that the visitors go up as the years go by if you keep adding good and interesting content to your blog. We are on track to have 120,000 visitors this year based on this quarter which is not entirely over yet.
You can see that each year the readership increased with one exception. Business blogging takes time. It is also a commitment that you need to make if you are going to be a blogger. If you want to test the water by dipping your toes in that is fine, however, there comes a point where you need to commit or change gears. The more you blog, the more of an audience you will get and out of that audience will come referrals and direct customers.
You can also see where people are reading you from. It is interesting that we have people in Lithuania reading- that is because I wrote a post about one of our agents who speaks fluent Lithuanian and can help people moving here from Lithuania and I posted the translation in Lithuanian as well. I also wrote a dozen or so posts about my mother's country- Latvia- you can see people in Latvia found those posts.
If you are using outsourced help it is easy to see them in the chart and then delete those numbers to get a real number of those reading your blog. You will also want to adjust the numbers by about 10% for spammers from certain countries who are known to be hackers.
ClustrMaps is a great way to track where your readers are coming from. This helps you to know more about your audience so that you can create content that resonates with them. It is free. You can see where people are moving to your state from and then write content for them there.
If you want to learn how to add ClustrMaps to your blog you can read my tutorial on ClustrMaps here.
If you need help consider hiring me as your marketing consultant and business coach to develop and implement your online branding and marketing strategies.
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