Personality

Be yourself. After all, you are unique, just like everyone else, so it should come as no surprise that there are other people who will relate to you. When you infuse your writing with your personality, you would be surprised at how you resonate with other people.

Write like you talk
When you write, lay down the pretenses and write like you talk, y’know? How many people read textbooks in their free time? Not many. By writing like you normally speak, people will get more of your personality in your writing. Think about what you would say if you were talking to someone and write like that.

Write what you know
You’ve heard the saying fake it till you make it. Honestly, that’s just tiring. If you want to sound credible, write about topics that you know about. If you are going to write about something you know little about, at least do your readers the service of doing research about the topic. Since most of your content is going to be about what your site or company does, this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. A well-researched article can bring a lot of credibility to your site and trust from your visitors. It is even ok if you don’t know something, and by admitting that up front, your readers will give you the benefit of the doubt if you flub up the details. Plus, it is a great way to solicit feedback: ‘Hey, I’m no widget expert here. Let me know if I got this right...’

Build relationships
The reason why you create content for your site is to develop relationships with real people. Real people read your blog, leave a comment, and can even bump into you at a trade show.

One way to involve people and build relationships is by talking about what other people are doing. It is one of the fastest ways to get other people to read your content. If you see a cool project happening somewhere in your industry, write about it. Then, email them and say, ‘I wrote about you! Care to comment?’. Not only will they comment, there is a good chance they’ll write about your post on their site. Boom! Instant readers and connections.

Interactions are key. If someone posts a comment, reply! Even if it is just ‘Thanks for the comment!’. You are at least letting your readers know that you are paying attention and appreciate the effort. If someone asks a questions, reply with a good answer. If possible, send them a personal email since they might not come back to the site to see your reply.

If you say something controversial and it causes a firestorm... good! That is going to bring more readers. Don’t let someone say something bad about you without responding though.

Great content will get you great links. A quick way to accelerate that is to link to other people in your blog posts. There are many blog services that will alert site owners when there is a new link to their site. Simply by linking to other people, you will see more traffic to your site when they come see what you said. Say some nice things and they are likely to talk about it and link back to you.

Finally, the most important thing to remember is to not stop. One of the quickest ways to kill traffic is to shut up. It can be discouraging in the early months of blogging or writing content when you have three readers, one being your mom, but it is that way for everyone. Keep writing great content. Publish your RSS feed far and wide. Interact with others and slowly your readership will rise.