1. Pick an interesting topic for your blog
2. Write interesting posts with catchy titles
3. Optimize your blog posts for the Search Engines
4. Promote your blog on blog directories and bookmarking sites

If you do these things, the forumula says, you will get the attention of the Search Engines (especially Google), and they will send you a “stampede of targeted traffic”.

In case you haven’t noticed, this formula relies almost exclusively on the Search Engines for traffic, and because of this it is seriously misleading. I can state with no hesitation at all that if you use this formula to get traffic to your blog you will almost certainly be disappointed by the results.

Yes, there are bloggers who get tons of traffic, and much of that traffic is driven by the Search Engines. But what you’re not told is that these bloggers have built up their list of followers over quite a long period of time, usually using a strategy other than simply relying on the hit and miss results you get from the search engines.

And if you are a local business – a real estate agent, accountant, lawyer, chiropractor, restaurant, landscaping company, etc., etc. – you are addressing a narrowly targeted local niche where the fact is only local followers matter to you. You will soon find that to rely on the search engines to deliver a lot of traffic from such a relatively small target market will be extremely disappointing.

For more ideas on traffic strategies that do (and don’t) work, get this free report called Blogs That Work.

Getting traffic to your blog is the biggest and most important issue for bloggers. Not topic, not content, not design.

Traffic. That is where your blogging strategy should start. If you don’t have a traffic strategy you’ll be spending a lot of time writing stuff that very few people will ever see.

There’s no doubt that a blog can often be the best way to put a consistent face on your business. Rather than a static website that makes no attempt to invite visitor interaction, a blog can be a perfect way to engage your people and build a relationship with them.

But there is a problem with blogs, and we might as well state it right at the beginning. Your blog will only be effective if it has two things: good content and quality, targeted traffic.

And of these two things (content and traffic) traffic is by far the more difficult issue. Getting quality traffic is the problem for web marketers. In fact, if your website or blog has no traffic it might as well not exist.

– Blogs That Work – Get The Free Report

So, this may sound odd, but it is really the place to start in developing a blogging strategy.

Ask yourself: “How can I generate traffic to my blog?” If you don’t have a good answer to this question you should probably stop before you go any further.

The two critical ingredients that make a blog work are content and traffic. You need content that people want to read, and you need a way of driving traffic to it. Otherwise all the time and effort you spend creating, maintaining and promoting your blog are wasted.

Can blogging be an effective strategy for finding new leads and developing new customers. Yes it can.

Download Blogs That Work.