#1 way to drive traffic to your DU Journal or blog: New content.

[brainshrub]

This is for those of you following my DU Journal: Brainshrub - Best. Journal. Ever! (SEO tips for political bloggers)

Once you've started your political blog the two most obvious questions are: 1) What do I write today? 2) How do I get people to read my work?

The answers are: 1) Anything. 2) Post something every day so people will get in the habit of reading you.

People who surf the internet are creatures of habit, they tend to surf the same 4 - 6 sites over and over again. If readers know that you will have unique content every day, they will start to work you into their reading routines.

People like to be proven right. If someone visits your site expecting new content, and there isn't any, you have just proven him/her wrong. On a subconscious level, they will resent you for it... and after a while stop visiting you altogether.

Personally speaking, I update Brainshrub.com at least once a day M-F. Sure enough, if you look at my site stats, Saturday and Sundays have a dip in traffic. (To me, this is acceptable because across-the-board political blogs get less traffic on weekends. Furthermore, most of my visitors read me from work.)

Don't worry at first about the quality, that will come with practice. Just make sure something, anything, is up. Even if it's only a few sentences.

If you don't have much to say, don't say much.

If you are thinking: "Who cares about a few sentences about such-and-such" look at it this way:

For all intents and purposes, there are an infinite number of people on the internet at any given time. (Yes, I know it's finite - but the number is so high that from the perspective of any one individual the number may as well be infinite.)

In an infinite universe, there is bound to be hundreds of thousands of people who want to read your material... even if what you are writing is pure crap. What is blather to you, is pure wisdom to another.

The more you write, the easier it will be to come up with new topics. It's like lifting weights.

When I started, it was difficult to think of new things to write every day. These days, I know what I'm going to write about a week in advance.

An example of a blog where the author is writing anything just to make sure fresh content ready ... is this DU Journal. I know the content here is not at the same level of quality that I put into my regular blog. However, I also know that with time I'll develop a style and flow.

Thanks to the sheer numbers of people on DU, someone will find this information useful.

Paul -V-
www.brainshrub.com

[libodem]

1. Thanx

quite useful info :)

[brainshrub]

2. Your welcome.

And you just illustrated my point.

:thumbsup: