How To Get 2000+ Views on the First Article of Your Blog
Now you might be thinking that I am exaggerating by saying it’s possible for “EVERYONE” to get 2000+ views on their very first articles.
Well, it’s more than possible…
If you follow these simple steps below, I can almost guarantee you that you will receive 2000 views or more on your article. No, this won’t be fake traffic and no, you don’t have to be famous. Remember that with some tips of the trade an inch can become a mile.
So I assume you are eagerly waiting for me to jump into the juicy bits of the article aren’t you? What if I said that I will only be writing this article next week and for the time being I’m going to give you simple exercises? I bet most of you will turn away because you want the real deal…right?
Well, luckily I won’t be giving you exercises, but instead a short and simple step by step system to getting your first article viewed 2000+ times.
Let’s jump right into it…
Now we all know why you are here so I am just going to get straight into it. No beating around the bush or long introductory pieces. Let’s GO.
1. Think of a valuable topic
Now that you have setup your new blog and written your introduction post titled, “Welcome to my blog — yada yada yada” — the real work begins. In order for you to gain readers and credibility you are going to have to write about things the community and people want to read.
If you are expecting thousands of visitors by posting a view photographs and rounding up the prettiest flowers, you definitely should stop reading NOW.
However, if you want to get your blog onto its feet and build a firm foundation, start correctly right from the start. In order to start right you are going to require unique and invaluable content and yes, you are going to have to write it. Unless you want to pay for it of course, but what fun would that be?
Ok, some questions to help you find a decent topic to write about.
- What niche is my blog positioned in?
- Is there a problem that I could help solve?
- Can I write a How-To for something that just launched? (Facebook Timeline, G+ etc)
- Could I write a guide on something I know very well? (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects etc)
- Could I give input into a current developing situation in the community?(Positive or negative, it’s your thoughts.)
- What mistakes have I made and how did I fix it?
- How did I kill my procrastination habit?
These are just some simple examples of questions that you can ask yourself to help you find a relevant topic to write on. So once you have your topic, you can move to the next step.
2. Research, research…oh and research
What a stupid title for a step right?
Research! Do you agree? Research!
Fine don’t answer me…let me get back to researching my topic. As you can see I don’t want you to get distracted. Researching your topic is vitally important if you want to make sure that it’s going to bring value to your readers. You have to remember that you want a topic that hasn’t been seen all over the internet, so when researching see what others have written on the subject and try come up with a unique way of approaching it.
Let’s say you are wanting to write your article on productivity, but you come across an article like my previous one — 7 Tips for Boosting Your Productivity as an Entrepreneur. Don’t fret, if you Google “Productivity help” you will find countless articles. You just have to be unique in your approach.
Here are some tips to being unique in your approach to an already covered topic:
- Be personal in your approach (How I boosted my productivity by following these 5 steps.)
- Attach a celebrity to your approach (7 Things I learned from Ryan Gosling on boosting productivity.)
- Start with a negative approach (5 things that won’t you help boost your productivity.)
- Add a scientific approach (Boosting productivity can lead to better sleep)
- Use real life scenarios in your approach (5 things my son taught me about productivity)
These are merely examples. So, whilst doing your research you just have to decide in which direction you are going to go and follow through with it. Remember to make notes and compile a little spider diagram with ideas for the article.
3. Write one hell of an article
You heard me. Write it as if it was your last day on earth. Put some quality time into it and make sure you capture the readers attention each step of the way.
Use images in your article to draw your readers in and keep them focused every step of the way. Remember that this is the start of your new blog and you want to build a firm foundation.
Go big or go home…
Whilst writing your article, make sure that you know what you are talking about(That is what the research was for.), there is nothing more annoying than someone going on about something that doesn’t make sense at all.
Try keep the length of the article between 700-1200 words. That is of course unless it is a 15-30 pointer. Then it’s understandable to make it much longer. This article you are currently reading is standing at 887 words at this very line. That was just a useless fact.
4. Publish IT
Now that you have written your masterpiece and reread it approximately a bazillion times. It’s time to publish it. Get it online, badabeem badaboom…whatever you want to call it. Just hit the “Publish” button.
Now unless you already have a pretty bulky email list or thousands of followers on Twitter, it won’t do you any justice to just leave the article lying there gathering dust.
In order for you to gain 2000+ views on this article, you are going to have to promote it…which brings me to the next step.
5. Promoting is the most important part
If you have a decent written article with quality content, you won’t have a problem garnering some attention from the public.
One of the first things you can do is submit the article to social voting sites. Visit the sites(Most of them need you to register) and submit your article onto the site via the submit buttons. I have listed some sites for you below.
- http://www.designbump.com
- http://www.reddit.com
- http://www.stumbleupon.com
- http://www.dzone.com
- http://www.designfloat.com
- http://news.ycombinator.com/
- http://digg.com
There are countless other social voting sites, but you can just Google that by yourself.
Next up is sharing it via your private circles.
Private circles include your Facebook, Google+, LinkedIN and Twitter Friends. If you are part of other social networks those could suffice too. You need to get this article spread as far and wide as you can.
Don’t worry about what your friends are going to think or what others are going to say. There will always be people that criticize no matter where you are and what you do.
Next up is cold calling some bigger blogs…
Yes, you heard me. You are going to email them and ask for help.
If your article is really as great as you think it is, others will see it and promote it. Unique and high quality content will always come out on top. It doesn’t matter if the blog is 10 years old or was only started a couple of hours ago.
If you have high quality content then you are miles ahead of the others that only started with roundups and small posts.
Don’t start small, dream big or go home!
Conclusion
If you were to follow these simple steps that I laid out before you with every article that you publish on your site, you are definitely going to get somewhere. It takes dedication and hard work to make a success out of a blog, especially when you get stuck with the thought, “What is wrong with my blog?”
Once you break through that mental block though, you will be well on your way to building a great repository of quality information.
Good luck with building your following.
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Loved the article, although I’m sure many people will quickly click away once they realize that to get so many views on a article requires actual work and not a magic trick.
As you mentioned, the mental block that seems to occur naturally, that from the start holds us back needs to be broken, when we think that we can do something it usually gets done vs an I don’t think that’ll work mind frame.
Yes, that is usually the problem. People don’t want to work to see results. They just want it fed to them like a baby.
Thanks for the comment David.
Hey Jacques, I like the way you’re devoting half of the tips to the actual content. It all really starts from the content, however I’ve seen quite often that poor posts got huge traffic from social networks simply because there was some fun photo or hilarious headline
Speaking about “calling some bib bloggers” – this is in my ToDo list, but I’m not sure of what can I ask for & how? Should I ask them to tweet? or maybe to link to me? You have a very popular design blog and I’m sure you were contacted hundreds of times. What kind of requests worked with you personally?
Hey Tim, thanks for the comment. It comes down to content being king. Most of the time that is….What you are referring to by saying poor posts are getting big chunks of traffic usually relates to some photo or video going viral. It gets picked up by some guy in his basement that has a ton of followers and get’s distributed out of there like there is no tomorrow. Haha, if you know what I mean?
Cold calling is done on a daily basis by BIG companies all around the world. A lot of people just dismiss the fact that it is cold calling due to the nature of the company or its political position. If you want to be successful at cold calling I can give you 2 tips that will get you to come out on top each and every time without offending anyone.
1. Be personal from the start: Introduce yourself and tell the person why you are emailing him. (Personally I hate reading 2 paragraphs to find out the guy wants to be featured on my site.) Be subtle and don’t suck up too much. Stand your ground.
2. Ask him or her if they can check out your latest article on your site, you feel that it is relative to their readers and them sharing it could help both of you. (Give them the option of sharing, don’t force.)
Other than that, build relationships and interact. Ask them if there is anything you can do for them in return. I don’t ever do something expecting something in return, but it’s nice knowing there is someone I can call if I need something done in the future(for a price obviously.)
Good luck Tim.
Thanks, Jacques! That really helps!
I suggest you to write a separate post about “cold calling”! You have 2 perspectives here:
1) when you were a beginner you had to reach out yourself, so you can tell people what worked and what didn’t. What were the mistakes and the wins. Tell us about the coolest “piece of help” you were able to get this way.
2) Now, that you’re pro blogger and young bloggers reach out to you – tell us about what you hate and which emails get noticed in the fist place. Also tell us what was the coolest “piece of help” you did to someone, and why did you do that.
hope you’ll consider this idea for a future post
Great idea for a future post Tim. Punched it into Evernote so you are guaranteed a post sometime.
Thanks
You forgot the most important one: Write a catchy headline. I remember reading an article about this on Digg a couple years ago. The digg article was about how to write a popular headline … on Digg. It said the “catchiest” headlines had things like:
Top 10 (x) you never knew about (x),
or
3 Ways to (x)
For whatever reason, headlines describing a numerical list are hugely popular. In fact, you already gave 4 out of 5 examples of numerical headlines in your “Research” subsection above.
You are right that it’s important to have a catchy headline. The only reason I left it out as a (point) is because I’m writing an entire post about writing catchy headlines. I don’t think that I would have been able to cover all the tips and tricks in this article with everything that is going on.
You are also right that I stated 4 tips out of 5 in the research section, that was due to me wanting to bring in some sort of recognition towards it, but not fully focus on it.
Thanks for pointing that out though Ben and thanks for the comment.
Hey Jacques!
Good to see your still going strong!
Your point on research is so vital when it comes to writing articles, though one word of caution is to be careful which sources you use! With the introduction of Panda on Google you do get a lot less of the junk resources but some sites such as ezinearticles.com are still filled with what can be kindly called junk!
A good recommendation is to get yourself hooked up to some industry newsletters and RSS feeds, these are great sources of information and also let you keep your finger on the pulse of what kind of news is relevant at the time!
Anyways keep up the good work!
Aaron
Hey Aaron, that is indeed true. There is still a lot of junk out there, but Google is doing a much better job of filtering through the nonsense than they have before. Regarding the RSS, you have a valid point there.
I also have a lot of feeds in my Google Reader that I check daily and catch up on what is going on in the world and the industry. It’s vitally important to stay on top things like you said. I will be sure to write a post soon on making use of your RSS reader to boost your Twitter interaction.
Hope the music is still going strong and the company as well. Thanks for the comment.
Cheers mate.
There are much more sources for promotion, once you find them then you are set!
That is true. I just highlighted a few. Thanks for the comment.
Just started my website a month ago, trying to figure out how to build a base of people that come back or check the site regularly. Not just when we post it on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Good article
Very helpful for me, straggling to get some traffic.
I will appreciate your comments about my blog
Thanks, Hod