Aha! I got you here.
My final tip for driving traffic to your blog in today’s Art Marketing Action newsletter is to use your newsletter to get people to your blog. I imagine that’s how you got here right now. For your efforts, one big bonus tip for getting people to visit your blog . . .
Ask them to leave comments.
Whenever someone emails you about something that was on your blog, ask them if they’d please leave it as a comment on your blog. I had to do this when I first started the Art Biz Blog as many of my subscribers were unfamiliar with how blogs work. And there are still so many others who need a good blog education. Be kind and accommodating and explain that it sure would help you out if they’d leave a comment on your blog.
You don’t get what you don’t ask for!
10 thoughts on “ASK people to comment on your blog”
Great suggestions. The truth in finding those that inspire is the key. All of my mentors were found from searching, finding, commenting.
Very good advice, I will be using it!
A jolly good recommendation – I do the same thing. The one problem is that there’s a difficult balance to achieve between: 1) making a blog accessible for people new to blogs to comment – and 2) deterring all the very ‘odd’ people who would like to sell you their services / propound their theories. I have to keep moderation on my comments to avoid too much spam and ‘oddity’ creeping in.
Sorry – I should have made it clearer that I was only referring in the last comment to people who are VERY ‘off topic’ and only interested in their own agendas!
BELIEVE ALYSON ABOUT BLOGS. Three weeks after I launched mine, I started turning up second on a Google search for “linocuts.” Right behind Wikipedia. I have a LOT more traffic on the website, and the blog has created a new little following for my work in Australia. BTW: Google Analytics offers a good (FREE!) tracking device that not only counts visits, but keeps track of pages visited and lets you set up a “goal” for your traffic and track your results. Use it on your blog, use it on your website. It’s easy. And it makes cool little pictures of your data. http://www.google.com/analytics/
Great suggestions in these comments, too!
You’re right about asking people to comment! I ask for responses about paintings or working on the spot, or feedback on my new art class banners on my regular webpage (http://cathyjohnson.info)and find that I get more comments then than on anything else–but my cats! (What can I say, there are a lot of cat people out there!) I have no idea how to do the text link thing, though–I keep thinking I have it sorted out and then they change how it’s done–at least on LiveJournal, where we now have .html and Rich Text formats. (It used to be sort of a bizarre hybrid that worked just fine!) Thank you for all your help, this is very valuable–I found out about you from Katherine Tyrrell’s blog at http://makingamark.blogspot.com/, by the way!
Thank you for all this information about blogs. I started my blog in January. Then, you handily send me all this info about blogging in your newsletter and blog. It is much appreciated!
You’ve provided a great service to new bloggers everywhere!
asking for comments is a good thing–i get a lot of emails from people who don’t want to or don’t know how to comment on the blog itself which is too bad. often they have very cogent things to say and it could open a good discussion…we’re all learning here, i guess 😉