New blog's a week ago, had 900th unique today...My secret?

Hi all,

I started up a new blog last week for me and some friends to write about stuff happening in Chicago and so far its been a big success. We had our 900th unique visitor today, Analytics shows 52 different referring URLs to our content we're averaging 130 visits a day and we've been featured on the front page of a few of the BIG Chicago blogs...

Want to know our secret?

Get off your butt and go outside!

People read our stuff because its actual unique content. Perhaps you should consider going out to an event related to your topic sometime and trying to "cover" it if you're trying to think of things to write about. My silly Halloween story has been read by over 300 people. Why? Well, because I was the only one covering it...

Thoughts?

http://www.methodsreporter.com

 

There are a lot of blogs out there with great content but no readership since nobody knows they're there.. A nice add on to your story would be how you marketed the site to get the 900 uniques in one week.

 

I agree!

Ed

 

Here's one big thing we've done. We write about actual real people who do the things we write about or are involved in them. Those people want to read what we wrote about them and tell their friends to look at our blog too.

 

Ok from what your saying your marketing mix involves:

• Going to real events
• Reviewing those events
• Contacting those involved in the events

So how did you contact them? Was it emails or phone, or what?

This seems like it would be a pretty good way to get people coming to your site. People are always interested in seeing stuff written about themselves i'd say. Its a good word of mouth generator. I'd still like more info on the specifics of what you did to get the traffic.

 

Yup. Check out the Halloween piece from the first post. I talked to about 20 people at the event, got all their e-mail addresses and sent them all the link to the blog. That led to 70 people from their school stopping by for a look.

 

That's the way to do it! I, too, have written several articles that have had a wide appeal and my traffic has surged. Even if this cannot be done on a daily basis, simply writing an interesting and informative article on a weekly basis will bring in the traffic. People like pictures too, so include them whenever/wherever you can.

 

Easy to do stuff like this thanks to Digg, etc.

 

One of my articles was picked up by Fazed.net 8 hours ago and in just that time well over 3000 unique visitors have hit up my new blog. I'm waiting for analytics to update so I can bask in the glow!

Here's the article they linked to, its about PS3 Launch campouts in Chicago and the investment banker and the railroad engineer who teamed up to make some cash and score some systems.

http://www.methodsreporter.com/2006/11/19/playstation-best-buy-ps3-release/

That puts me at 5,441 uniques so far after three weeks of blogging...

 

Um, since I wrote that, we've had another 10,000 people show up to read the article.

 

Feel the power! Congratulations on your success...pretty soon you'll be leaving us at DP behind. Rats. ;-)

 

Congrats for getting so much visitor in one week, out of 10,000 some of them will become regular to your blog.