A couple of weeks ago I wrote a bit about how to drive traffic to your Web site. Interestingly, I got a request from an old friend recently on how to drive traffic to your blog so I figured I’d look back and see if my over-simplified framework - DAC - would be applicable to blogs and I think it is.

1. Drawing first-timers to your site
   1. Optimize your Postings - Each of your postings should become a tool for drawing first-time visitors to your sites through search.  There is a good plug-in on WordPress that will apply the title of your posting in the URL, which will help your rankings in search.   This means you should be doubly concerned about the language you are using in the title of your posting because not only will it help your rankings but the more relevant and well-phrased it is, the more likely a click-through will be.
   2. Engage with affinity bloggers and networks - Make sure you are familiar with the other people in your space and reach out to them.  You may already know who is active in your space and perhaps this has compelled you to participate but if not, you should probably spend a little bit of time using one of the blog search engines to see other prominent bloggers who share a similar focus and subscribe to their feeds.  Once you become a reader of their blog, take the next step and begin interacting with them through comments and trackbacks.
   3. Participate in social media sites - There are a number of prominent social media sites that you should join to help promote your blog postings (provided they aren’t garbage).  Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, etc. are all good resources for you to join.  Don’t just use these sites as a platform to promote your own materials - make sure to spend some time actually participating in these sites.  Actually, it may be worth just joining one and really participating than using several as a platform to spam the social media space.
   4. Use an integrated approach - Push your blog in other mediums.  Add your blog URL to your e-mail signature; use a widget to republish your blog on your social networking page; respond to people’s e-mails by spending some time and blogging your response (such as I’ve done here).
2. Attracting their attention
   1. Quality of Content - Make sure that you are going to be providing content there is a demand for and that you take production seriously enough to put some effort into it.  If running a spell-check on your blog postings, or reviewing the posting once or twice before you hit ‘publish’, seems like more effort than you want to put in, then there is a high-probability your blog isn’t going to be that successful.
   2. Scope of Content - In addition to the quality issue, there is also a scope issue.  I know that most blogs are fairly extemporaneous in nature, but there really needs to be some over-arching thematic scope in order to attract a reader’s attention.
   3. Type of Content -  As professional and mature as we act, we are all kids on some level and like looking at pictures.  The really great thing about a lot of these blogging platforms is that they make it easy to integrate multimedia.  There is just something intuitively appealing to a blog posting that contains some sort of visual imagery.
3. Converting them into a repeat visitor - To a great extent, the points in the previous stage are also applicable here.  If there is really great, eye-catching content on your blog then people are likely to return there of their own volition.
   1. RSS - Blogs are also great because they come with RSS feeds that people can subscribe to.  There is an implicit agreement that comes along with RSS subscription.  Subscribing to an RSS feed is basically saying “Hey, I know I am inundated with so much clutter but I liked your content enough to take the time to actually subscribe to your blog.
   2. Schedule - If someone subscribes to your blog this means two things: First, come up with new content on a somewhat consistent basis; and two, please don’t become one of those bloggers who feels the need to write something new about every little single thing that happens.  If you are launching a new product or want to share your thoughts on some event - that’s one thing.  If your cat is sick or you got a lot of spyware, it may make more sense to reserve that for a phone conversation with your friends and family.
   3. Engage - Even though it takes less than 10 seconds to leave a comment, most people won’t do it unless they are really impacted by what you wrote.  If your reader takes the time to comment on your blog - or another blogger writes about one of your postings - then you should take the time to respond to them.  You may find that some great offline connections can manifest from online interactions and the first step is by responding when someone takes the time to reach out to you.