Ask HN: How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you drive traffic to a new niche blog?

17 pointscardmagic14 comments

What are the most effective ways to drive traffic to a new blog that is targeted to a specific niche audience. Sites like digg and reddit don't have fine grained niches that make the content relevant to most viewers. For those of you who have successfully launched such a blog, what is your advice?

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The most effective way to drive traffic to a new blog is to write consistent, targeted and high quality content (keep your posts on-topic, especially early on), and to get to know the other people in the niche (they're not competition, but fellow members of a community). I really don't believe there are any other ways to attract high quality traffic.

That said, I'd really recommend that you step back and figure out an agenda for your blog. Are you trying to educate readers? Learn by writing? Develop a reputation as a competent programmer or as a member of a community? If you go into blogging aiming at pageviews, you run the risk of writing junk simply because it appeals to readers from Reddit or Digg, but doesn't accomplish anything positive for your personal brand.

Expanding on this, remember to give back. Find the top 5 blogs in your niche and link to them while delivering your high quality content. The people reading those blogs could discover you through trackbacks and those bloggers may eventually link back.

Start slow, and take advantage of your time without readers to find your voice and figure out what works and what doesn't. Once you get that figured out, just do all the standard stuff. Here's a good list: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/how-to-launc...

Shameless plug, but why not go the widget route? Widgetbox.com has channels that are used to link different blogs together, but that may not fit your niche requirement. People love to see relevant content, so extending your reach by creating a widget and allowing those that are interested in it to grab and spread your voice is by far the best way.

Look around for other energetic web users that think like you (you're just in a niche and not something completely unqiue, correct?) and network yourselves together. Also, driving traffic to each other increases SEO and overall awareness on the web with minimal effort.

Blogs generally are on a niche subject. Digg and reddit are aggregators not blogs. If something is a niche then it is a niche. Why are you expecting lots of traffic?

I think he was saying digg and reddit wouldn't drive the type of traffic he wanted to attract, I don't think he meant to call them blogs.

...If that wasn't what he meant, then what I wrote is what he should have said :)

That is correct. Although it is a niche, I want to attract as large of a niche audience as possible and starting from 0 readers is intimidating, even when you write good content.

Tag, label, and categories your posts well. Check Google Analytics to see which keywords drive traffic to your site. Use these keywords as topics for future posts.

http://www.hittail.com is good for checking referrals for further post ideas.

In terms of general Web strategies:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=341138

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=351709

But here are some tips specific to niche blogs. I run a niche blog that has 17,000 subscribers and am in the process of building up others, so I have a few tips (but I am by no means an authority on this!):

- TWITTER! Use search.twitter.com to find people talking about your topic and talk to them. Follow them, get them to your site. Twitter about your topic. Use TwitterFeed to stream the titles / links to your blog posts into your Twitter feed.

- Sometimes niches are interesting to broader audiences. On HN you see stories relating to the Ruby programming language (or Rails) all the time - these are pretty niche topics but with some general appeal to hackers / programmers.

- Find the other blogs. Comment on them wisely and try to build up relationships. Find areas where you can complement what others are doing rather than just copying them. For example, let's say your blog is specifically about flash photography. You could get interest to your articles from general digital photography sites! If you're going to be niche, find the blogs that are one thicker branch further down the tree.

- Blog carnivals ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog_Carnival )

- Get "outsiders" interested in your niche! I wasn't really all that interested in typography or logo design, but ILoveTypography ( http://ilovetypography.com/ ) and Logo Design Love ( http://www.logodesignlove.com/ ) hooked me with their awesome designs and modern, friendly approaches.

- Advertise with Google Adwords. You can target very precisely this way.

- Advertise on complementary blogs.

- Look for Facebook groups on your niche. If you find some (and there are millions), you have a whole index of people who might want to subscribe to your blog.

- Try to get included on to "planet" sites for your general topic area (e.g. for the Ruby world - http://www.planetrubyonrails.com/ ) and on to sites like Alltop.com.

- Guest post on complementary blogs.

- Engage with whatever audience you build up over time. These people need to be your advocates! If they blog, they should be mentioning you from time to time, assuming your content is good.

- Editorial mentions in magazines relating to your niche. Many smaller magazines like to mention Web sites that could be useful to their readers. You will probably need a bit of a track record first though unless you're really unique.

- Start your own Digg / Reddit-a-like on your topic area if one doesn't exist. If one does, use it!

- Start a podcast on your niche. Interview people. Start with lesser known people and work your way up until you have a good track record. Heck, even just interviewing people by e-mail and putting it on your site is a start. It's all about adding a human element.

- Have a Google Alert on keywords relating to your niche. Make sure you know all the news and make sure you get commenting on any blog that even mentions your niche in some way. You need to become known.

- Subscribe to both ProBlogger ( http://problogger.net/ ) and CopyBlogger ( http://www.copyblogger.com/ ). If you haven't visited them before, exhaustively read their archives. They are PACKED with tips on how to promote niche blogs.

It is important to remember that the techniques you use should be based upon your target demographic. If it's bridge playing retirees, then Twitter and Facebook probably aren't going to cut it.. whereupon I'd look at editorial mentions in magazines, etc.

Added: Check this out too: http://jessicaknows.com/2008/11/15-days-of-marketing-day-one...

SEO, blog carnivals, finding other blogs on similar topics and doing comments. Most of the standard advice for building traffic.

agree. high quality comments on related blogs can be very effective. and it can't hurt to define 'related' broadly.

Have great content, comment on other blogs, and link to other blogs, so they will link to you.

add porn, good porn at that. Everybody loves sex, if you've got a good blog about lets say Knitting, throw some good porn in there because lets face it, who doesn't love browsing their favorite knitting blog with a little porn on the side! Exactly!

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