How to increase traffic to your blog without really trying

I blog to express myself (therapy!), to document our joys, to make new friends and keep in touch with longtime ones. I don't really market or promote this site because I never really set out to make it into a thing, you know? As a result, I don't obsessively check my blog's statcounter (well, not really obsessively...I do like to know whether anyone's reading it now and then) but when I clicked on it this morning at 9:30, this is what I saw:

What?! Five+ times the usual traffic yesterday?! This might be the norm for many of you awesome blog writers out there but it's insane for me and mine! A closer inspection revealed that most of the clicks were coming from one site, who, after I had done that post late last week, put a link to my little blog. (Thanks, guys, very generous.)

So, here's what you do:

1. Find an awesome site that not many people have yet discovered, about, say, a dad who dresses up in a different costume every day to wave at the bus.

2. Write a blog post about them, linking to their blog.

3. (Here's the part you have no control over...) Ride the wave of the other site's sudden popularity as they get discovered by newspapers, facebook, twitter, and other sites and as they generously link to you.

4. Realize things will get back to normal very soon as everyone will be disappointed you are not also dressing up in a different costume every day.

5. Consider dressing up in a different costume every day. 

That's it, friends, all I've got in the marketing department! 

. . .

 

Part of Christie's How-to Tuesday project...

I said "tapas"

Last week I was thrilled to have a visit with this wonderful lass. Liz and I met between my hometown and hers at a new tapas* bar where she treated me to a birthday lunch (don't you love it when your birthday kind of spills over into the following week?). It was fabulous (the meet-up and the food) and so much fun to sit for a couple of hours with a kindred blog friend.

I'm lucky we live in the same corner of the world. [Now I'm scheming to have my middle daughter meet her son at one of the multi-stake church dances...shhh....don't tell the kids...they tend to resist my matchmaking suggestions...]

Thanks, Liz. You're a treasure.

*when I told someone about this, they misheard me and asked "a t@pless bar?" As if.