Increasing Blog Traffic with Speaking and Article Marketing

In June, I only wrote one post but managed to increase my blog subscription by 40% last month. Yeah, if I'd intended to do that it probably wouldn't have worked out that way.

While I can't give you a specific formula for how it happened, I can share with you something I did during the course of the month that probably contributed to the spike in growth:

Free Speech - I gave three free talks locally. Two of the speaking engagements were at women's chamber organizations. The audiences consisted of women entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, and other decision makers. One of the groups did an exceptional job of extracting information from my website and created a killer bio to market my presentation. They even went the extra mile and found comments from an online article I'd written (which weren't on my testimonials page) and included those as well. The other event afforded me the opportunity to serve as a moderator for a roundtable discussion. This allowed me to get up close and personal with my target audience. I was called to speak at this event because someone had cancelled and I didn't have time to create a customized handout. Instead, I gave each person at my table a copy of my personal branding article. The article byline included my blog url. At the end of the event, I had ladies who hadn't sat at my table coming up to me and asking for a copy of the article as well.

I've met people who simply refuse to speak for free. For me, it's a great way to get exposure, share my expertise, and expand my community. In this case, I thought outside of the box and gave more valuable content to my participants, and at the same time, was able to showcase my writing abilities and drive traffic here to my blog.

I've set a goal for the number of blog subsribers I'd like to have by the end of 2010. At this rate, I'm well on my way to achieving that goal.

Photo credit: kevinzhengli