Thursday, June 13, 2013

How to market your blog!

When I started this blog my goal was to have one billion regular readers. I was not exactly clear on the marketing methods I should use to get to this goal. The least uncomfortable marketing method I was able to find was to tell most of the people I knew about my blog. I don't actually know very many people, but after a few interactions of this sort I would still have to go into a cool dark place, take loads of deep breaths, and sing softly to myself. I'm pretty sure I ran out of people to tell about my blog before the strain of telling them shut me down, but it was touch and go. After that initial marketing onslaught and its attendant recovery period I dabbled in a few low level and truly nauseating small marketing experiments and formulated plans for larger ideas. These ideas never failed to give me a great feeling of joy and serenity whenever I abandoned them.

Throughout this time someone, rarely, would mention me on some kind of social network somewhere and I would get a sudden influx of one or two hundred views of my blog. First of all, if you're out there right now, and you did that, thanks. That was very nice. And I have to say that other people mentioning me, as a marketing plan, is pretty nicely low on the uncomfortable meter, meaning that I think I can work with it. But when you consider  a situation in which I do absolutely nothing and then have 200 people come check out my blog, and it still causes me to have a slight panic attack, well, it sort of calls into question the one billion goal. So I was thinking of maybe slightly revising my goal. However I am wavering on just what the new goal should be. Definitely less than the one billion regular readers. The question is just how much less. The range I am currently working with is somewhere between working towards having two more regular readers than I currently have and working to have one fewer regular readers than I currently have.

This has a few really nice advantages. One, it sets the bar very low. Sadly many of the places I go on the internet are heavily visited, high traffic places. All the internet roads funnel you to the 16 lane super highways and it can be very hard and challenging to find your way to the tiny, narrow mazes of strange back alleys. Did you know that you are currently in a dark narrow back alley of the internet? Watch your back! Just kidding, it's more like a narrow back alley of an old European city here, where they have eliminated all crime except children pickpockets. Anyway, all these popular sites, under my old goal, would just make me feel jealous and unsatisfactory, but with my new goal I can instead feel cozy and European.

Another advantage with my new goal is that, roughly speaking, at any given time, I have, on the whole, met my goal. And if I insist on getting all technical about it (and I usually do insist) I will always at least be ever so close to meeting my goal. Depending on where in my goal range I decide to land I can meet my goal at any given time by some stray person in Ireland stumbling onto my blog and liking it, or a friend mentioning it to a like minded friend, or, in the other direction, by alienating just one reader by happening to hit a sore spot while making fun of axe murderers, or marketing. Of course, to get very, very technical about it (I am less keen on doing this)  I can never actually meet my goal, I can only meet it prospectively. But I have a strong prospective bent anyway and feel this being always a sliver removed from my goal will be like a homeopathic remedy to prevent complacency.

I think the best benefit though to my new marketing goal is this: every time I get that urge, that terrible urge, and start musing on some nauseating idea to bring throngs of viewers to my nice back alley blog I will have to say "Whoa! That is way off the charts! That could bring as many as 14 new viewers!" and I won't be able to even remotely consider the idea further. Indeed, the only marketing ideas it will be anywhere near okay for me to consider will be small, strange, idiosyncratic, quixotic and surreal ones, which, in happy coincidence, are the only ones I would ever want to do.

So, do I recommend this marketing plan? Yes, wholeheartedly, I recommend this marketing plan to everyone and anyone. I think it is worth considering as a way to market everything. It's worked for me. And it's worked for my blog. After all, you're reading this, and you are a whole world, yourself.

2 comments:

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.