Writing to No One

One of the hardest things to do is to write for someone to read and not get any feedback. I feel the same way doing webinars, talking to a television camera, and practicing presentations. As humans, we feed off that connection and interaction with other humans. Sometimes writing your blog feels like you’re writing in a vacuum and no ever reads it, so why bother.

First of all, you blog for business for two reasons: build your website’s search engine ranking and more importantly to position yourself as an expert in your industry. It is exciting when a client calls and says they found your website, read your blog and they want to hire you – this actually happens. It is a great buzz and it makes you want to write, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient. You don’t get listed on the first page of Google the first day (if you did, you’d just lose that spot tomorrow). Most search marketing experts say it takes a year of weekly blogging to make a blog successfully appear in the search engines.

How do you know if someone is reading your blog?

– Look at your statistics – Google Analytics will show you what pages are being read, what search terms your visitors used to find your website, and how long they stayed on your website.

– Ask for comments – I try to always conclude your post with a question to entice people to comment.

– Work it into conversations – If a topic comes up that you’ve blogged about, you can slide in “I wrote a blog post about that a few months back…” Don’t force it though. I’ve actually had someone connect the dots that I was the one that wrote the blog post that she was quoting. I felt like a minor celebrity that day.

Do you have other ways to see if someone is reading your blog?