Approx 9 months ago I had to go to the Supermarket with my girlfriend for our weekly shopping.

Yes, I know…. that is a pretty boring intro to a blog post! but it turned out to be an experience that saved my blog and changed it into one of the 38,000 most popular sites on the Internet.

My Story

I was walking around the supermarket with my girlfriend, and what eventually became one of the most important conversations of my life started like this:

ME: I started my blog last month and it is doing quite well, but I really want to get it to the next level. I have so much to share and it is such a shame that I don’t have lots of readers.
HER: Well why don’t you try some new techniques to attract more readers? You must surely know of some techniques that you could try.
ME: Yes, I know of a few techniques actually… for example…………..

The next five minutes were spent by me trying to explain to her the techniques that successful bloggers use. But my technical explinations were not being fully understood by her, so in a last ditch attempt to get her to understand, I used the supermarket as a metaphor.

It went a little something like this:

SHOPPING LIST: Blogging shares many similarities with a supermarket. For example, you would not be able to find what you are looking for without your shopping list. Lists are also a great way of writing blog posts. For example, if you go to Digg.com you will see that there are thousands of popular articles with titles like “Top 10 best Games ever” or “The 10 best designed websites”.

Using the list format for your blog posts is a very powerful technique for getting a popular blog post.

There are many theories as to why readers love list type posts, my opinion is that the readers find the information easier to digest if it is split up. With the list format you know exactly what you are getting, and you can digest the information very quickly.

FARMING: I then pointed to a frozen chicken and lead into a discussion about link farming. I explained that link farming is basically the technique of mentioning other blogs in your posts.

I explained that link farming is a great way of getting other blogs to talk about you. It is also very useful if you cannot think of anything else to blog about.
I explained that each link in your link farm is like an egg, and a blog that links back to you is like the egg hatching. I think at this point she thought I was going a bit crazy.

PERSONAL TOUCH: We paid for our shopping and then the woman behind the till offered us a VIP membership card where we would save 5% on all future purchases. Three days later we got a VIP card through the post and it had our names on it and a selection of offers related to the shopping we had done earlier that week.

This method really added a personal touch to our future shopping experience, and the personal touch is also something that is very important in your blog posts. Your readers are reading a blog written by YOU, so give it your personal touch by explaing a bit about yourself, your personal experiences, your personal opinions on industry related matters etc…

That evening we returned home and I started using these three techniques on my new blog. Within three months my blog was in the top 38,000 on the Internet and received over 150,000 unique visitors for one month.

So next time you are at the supermarket, remember these three blogging techniques and start getting the traffic your blog deserves.

Dean