What do you need to know about about the way people read online to make your content marketing efforts pay off?

What are you doing or not doing on your blog that screws up your traffic?

At least a few times a week I get an email from a smart professional who struggles with making their web marketing work to get found, get known and get clients. Here’s a typical one…

“Okay, Patsi, I’ve been following you for a while now, and your blog writing tips have helped. I’m posting twice a week, but I’m still not getting comments, and my traffic stats stink. Can you take a look?”

Of course, I have to point people to my consulting services if they want me to spend time doing a good analysis and provide specific solutions.

But often the problems and the solutions are common and universal. I can almost predict where the low traffic problems come from based on looking at a lot of blogs over the last five years.

Here’s a general overview of things I see many people doing on blogs that don’t bring good results:

1. Frequency: Not posting enough
2. Headline: not compelling or even clear
3. Content: No clearly defined problem and solution, no answer to the “so what?” question
4. Content: No keyword usage in headline, first paragraph, or in body
5. Content: Too broad and general, need to hone it down to specifics, need to personalize it
6. Formatting: Too many long blocks of text, need shorter paragraphs, subheadings
7. Engagement: Too author-centric, not enough asking readers questions, addressing them as “you”
8. Engagement: Not enough client stories, no quotes from other people Read More→