AskKen Corner - First Sound in Seaykopitiam
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Dear, Reader. This is the first week of the official launch of AskKen Corner. I’m Ken Xu, your host of this saturday AskKen Post.
It’s my honor to be able to share my personal experiences in blogging with you through Jamy’s Blog. AskKen Corner will answer all of the general problems regarding to blogging and the technical matters. I will try my best to help you.
All right, Let’s fire up the question! 
Question 1:
How to Increase Blog Traffic?
Ken’s Answer:
To tell you the truth, this is the most classic question of all times. Every blogger who steps his/her first step in the blogosphere demands high traffic (Traffic = Human Visitor to your Blog).
But somehow, most of them do not have the answer to this BIG QUESTION and they give up sooner than they have thought when they set out for their blogging journey.
I read an article on Business Week Magazine that LiveJournal’s 12.5 Millions blogs only capable of drawing seven readers.
LiveJournal is a Blogging Platform Like Blogger or Wordpress.
That’s the fact you must face, anyway. But don’t let that dampened your spirit yet! There is a common secret that they have ignored that result in their blogs’ fate.
The secret in drawing traffic lays in the “Quality” of your blog post. If your blog post has no quality, don’t even dream of having sufficient traffic flow to your blog.
It’s cruel fact but it is a hard fact that beginner bloggers has to swallow. Find your Quality and over times you will build your traffic.
Question 2:
How to Build a Strong Community?
Ken’s Answer:
“Rome is not built in one day” is a good quote for this answer. Strong community is a result of a consistent interaction with each of the individual in the community for a certain period of time.
When you continue to interact with your readers in a consistent basic, you are building a strong relationship among your community.
Strong community is a tight relationship between each individual on the community
There is no secret at all in building strong community. The How-To-Guide is also simple, but still, only a handful of people are willing to go that extra mile to make that happen.
How to build Strong Community?
- Say Hello Regularly
- Be helpful
- Stay Motivated
- Be Healthy in what you bring up within your community
- Respond ASAP if you get any question
Hope this post have helped you in one way or another in your blogging journey! You should try to browse more tips and tricks on traffic building in my blog at Mysites-Advisor.com. And don’t forget to leave a comments or shoot me with another question at: kopi.support@gmail.comCheers!
Ken.
The keyword is .. Quality Content.
Good and quality content is the best way to build up your blog traffics
You right. If you can, make your content “GREAT” instead of good only. It will bring your great traffics of people who interested by your content.
Great by adding some more information on overdelivered it to your reader.
Kuanhoong got the whole image of the traffic secret.
Quality content ..hmm. How come that fella with the silly cats can attract so many visitors? Is that quality content, or is it because that kind of content has some kind of following? Like that perez hilton guy too. I know gossip about celebrities is always popular. Esp first hand gossip or from ppl in the know, or rub shoulders with celebrities.
Good job, Ken! I’ll be sure to follow you column on Jamy’s blog. And yours too Kuanhoong!
It’s very nice of Jamy & Ken to come out with this helpline/support
Cheers.
Doris,
As you proceed on your blogging journey, you will realized content is king. Of course after you established your reputation with good contents and values to your readers, marketing aspect comes into picture. The later aspect will lead you to the How-To aspect of search engine optimization.
I personally believe in : first build your content then market your content. Content of your blog is like the foundation of your house.
I personally think that the cat blog owner is very creative. Of course now many of us will sit back and said what ? so silly, how stupid of people going to a blog with only cat pictures ?
However, how many of us would even in our wildest imagination come up with such a killer content ? A content that entertain ?
I might be stretching it a bit far here but when we look back on many inventions, we often times said to ourselves, how come I never thought of that, it is so easy ? But, I don’t think it is easy if we have not seen it in the first place. So I still give credit to this cat blogger. And if you really look at it at a deeper level, this guy should not be taken lightly of.
How many of us can come up with a picture of a cat day in and day out ?
Many of my girlfriends wanted to blog but after I helped them to set up blogs, they emailed me and said they don’t know what to blog. They don’t know what are the niches they should focus.
How many of us are systematic & creative enough to give a caption that is relevant to the cat picture day in and day out ?
There are two lessons that I have taken home from this cat guy, he is creative and he is very systematic (a good quality of a system analyst).
I might have to disagree with you here but I think he does have a good content. We might not necessary benefit from all those cats caption like we would benefit from say an invention of a light bulb but he does keep his readers entertained :):). And that is one of the main ingredients of a successful blog :):).
Thank you Ken for the statistics, and let us all be spared from this statistic “LiveJournal’s 12.5 Millions blogs only capable of drawing seven readers.”
And let us continue to learn from Ken’s AskKen Corner and Kuanhoong’s Techtalk column, and may our readership increase 10 folds, 100 folds, 1000 folds in our blogging journey !
Bee,
Thank you.
It is the wonderful result of blog’s friendship and network.
I can be sure of you that the results will far exceed any affiliated marketing.
Pray that I will live long to see this happen ! :).
Love
Jamy
All hail Master Ken-nobi. This is a community of embrace thy blog addiction and might as well make a buck out of it. I am a bit negative when it comes to the part about being quick on answering questions though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very appreciative of it, but isn’t it a recipe for blog addiction disaster? I’d be stuck at my computer, waiting for any pings just so I can be quick about answering questions.
Hi, Cirnelle.
No need to worry. I love negative as much as positive thinking. They both help us to grow.
the context of “ASAP” will not become a disaster for blogger. The key is to be “flexible” in the way we approach to it.
In my cases, I will make a limit for myself to reply comments and questions in no longer than 24 hours. Because longer than this limit will annoy my reader and they’ll likely won’t communicate with me anymore.
24 hours is a reasonable limit for everyone.
You won’t be able to reply when you are sleeping, right?
and won’t be able to reply when you are shopping at mall too!
Just set up a special time to reply each day, and your reader will happy with your hard work.
Ken,
I love your answers.
This bring me back to my BRICK AND MORTAR business experiences.
One of my maternal uncles was a HR director for one of the local bank back then in the 90’s. He’s extremely ganho about excellent customer service. He was a public speaker and an author of several books mainly on topic such as how to deliver excellent customer service.
He is a hardcore believer of ‘no more than 3 rings’, that is, any front line service people (receptionist, secretary, PA etc) will not let the company phones ring more than 3 rings. It is a big SIN as far as he’s concerned
I think with the e-age now, this principal can be appled to email and now with blogosphere it is readers’ comments.
I think to a certain extend many concepts in brick and mortar business model can be applied to the blogosphere :).
But of course, blogosphere is even more sophisticated than convention 3 or 4-years degree. With conventional degree, you have a curriculum and a set period of time to complete that curriculum but with blogosphere, it is you who set up your own curriculum and time frame. Though there is hardly any barrier of entry, anyone can set up a blog within 2 minutes. However to set apart from the statistic that in every 2 seconds there is a birth of a blog, it require more commitment than a 3 or 4-years degree.
Of course these are purely my observation in my blogging journey and only worth less than 2 cents :).
In the blogosphere, I’ve heard about the same “4 years degree” like you have stated out. But the time is a little bit shorter.
We known it as “the 6 months Wall”.
It’s the kind of myth of blogger to believe that if they could pass the 6 months wall, life’s would easier. and things will get better.
Well, myth remain myth. The reason why the myth exist may because of some studies said “95% of bloggers will give up in the first 2 months and more 4% of them will collapse before breaking the 6 months wall.
Only 1% of blogger who survive from the obstacles and rockery road, will get what they want depend on the approaches to their dreams.
Depend on your perspective, it may be true and may be a mistake opinion.
A statistic is a statistic, whether you are part of the statistic is entire up to you.
I am afraid the saying about if there is a will, there is a way still applies in blogging :)-
Cheers !
I am not saying that the guy who started the silly cat site wasn’t creative, but I think he never expected to get that kind of response when he first started. Part of the attraction of the cat site is that he got his readers to submit their own cat pictures with funny captions.
Like I said, there are ppl who like that kind of content. Ok, we might have disagree on what “quality” means! Porn sites have a large following, does that mean quality? Personally, I feel that there is a niche for that kind of content, and quality has little to do with it.
For a long time my blogs were almost readerless, and it didn’t bother me at all because I don’t write diaries and the blogs became my diaries.
But ever since I started putting ads in my blogs, of course I want a little more traffic to my site, but if I continue to write what I am writing now I don’t expect it to be as popular as John Chow’s site or perez hilton’s!
[...] at Jamy’s Ask Ken Corner, emphasised, among other things, the quality of the content of you blog. I won’t dispute [...]
Puteri,
I think initially, blog started as personal online journal nature but as it expands in quality , number and popularity, business people realized it is too big of a market size to ignore, that is when it started getting commercial.
Yes, I believe in niche. I am very sure within the gambling and porn niche market, only the ones that the provide the quality for that niche market will be the top 10 of that niche market. I am sure not all gambling blogs get into the top 10 spots.
Yes, for every niche market, there are a few blogs that will stand tall, regardless if it is celebrity gossips, political, tech, offic ranting, personal hobby, personal journals and etc… I think at the end of the day within a particular niche market, the ones that come to the top spot are the ones that deliver better content, better service for that niche market.
I am sure after the cat blog, there will be a number of similar nature blogs spring off on the blogosphere but eventually who will take the majority shares of the market will be those ones that can provide better content within the cat blogs market.
Readers are also very flicker minded, in order to maintain a certain rank and readership, professional bloggers have to constantly provide quality content. It does not mean the rank and subscription rate will maintain if the readership goes down.
I think everyone of us start blogging with a different motive and objective.
I personally will not stick around too long if I don’t enjoy what I do. If making money is the only reason I blog, I think I can find easier mean and ones with shorter learning curve. There are many means to make money and I knew I am pretty good at it, ha ha ha. I don’t think I need to elaborate but my portfolio in gold and tax lien investment speak for itself
:).But I enjoy blogging 
and if I make $ out of it, why not ?