How Chris Brogan Could Grow His Blog 10x
How a few tweaks can get more leads and revenue
For those who don't know who Chris Brogan is, he’s the New York Times Bestselling author of seven books and counting, including The Freaks Shall Inherit the Earth. He is founder of Ownermag, and cofounder of the PodCamp new media conference. I’m sure I missed a few things, but you get the gist. This guy is a powerhouse.
I called to ask his advice about starting a blog analysis biz. This is my first time creating a biz and I loved the actionable information he gave me. He is highly personable and gave me great advice on what to do for college (I'm in the military, so we get paid to go to college).
Chris Brogan’s advice for college: Journalism. “It’s a way to communicate ideas and stories, which is always valuable no matter what time you're in,” says Chris.
Schedule a call with him here: Clarity.fm
Let’s see how we can get Chris more leads, revenue or both.
Chris Brogan runs an awesome blog over at www.ChrisBrogan.com. I wanted to analyze his blog to see if I could help him grow it with a few simple tweaks.
I ran the numbers and this is what I found.
The Best Headline Starts With The Word…
Across all of Chris’s articles of 2013-2014, “My” is the most shareable. The next best word, “Do” is 41% less effective. I love what Chris said when I told him this:
“I’m going to write a 1,000 posts with the word “my” in it,” says Chris. “It’s a canary in a coal mine and I’m absolutely seeing you’re right.”
He only wrote 5 “My” articles, but 10 “The” articles. 80/20 rule says to write more “My” articles. It’s one of his strengths, so do more of what works.
What’s weird about Chris’s blog is that “How” or “Why” posts aren’t at the top. For most blogs, these are the heavy hitters.
Why not on Chris Brogan’s blog?
In talking with Chris, he said this was because he is very personable and people feel like they know him within 5 minutes (it’s true- I felt that way, too). This definitely was translating into his writing, which explains why “My” was his #1 first word for headlines.
My advice to Chris: Write more “My” articles to take advantage of your huge strength of personability.
Readers Love…
Twitter!
Chris didn’t seem very surprised about this when I told him.
He has 284k followers at the time of this writing, but I expect that number to go up after I publish this article from the massive traffic I'm going to give him ;). Follow him here: @ChrisBrogan.
So how can we increase that number? On Chris’s blog he doesn’t include any way for us to tweet about specific quotes in his articles. The only thing we can do (which is very common) is share the entire thing on Twitter. No fun.
Since we know Twitter is huge on Chris’s blog, why not use this knowledge and install a simple plug-in called Highlighter from the guy’s over at Sumome.com?
This allows readers to share content within your posts by highlighting and clicking. Simple, effective and the best part… free.
The Best Days To Post Are…
Monday is the winner with 714 average shares across all major social networks.
Tuesday is a close second with 628 shares. I guess people only read Chris’s blog when they're bored at work… kidding of course.
What this kind of data shows us is what kind of readers Chris has.
Maybe they use Chris’s blog as a resource to start the week or to gain some advice for the week ahead.
Who knows- All I know is that it would be a good idea for Chris to post more on Monday and Tuesday.
