Time for a change.

After two years of blogging, I’ve decided to try to take blogging a bit more seriously. It was a great way to get my portfolio up to date, and has given me the pressure I need to work on projects outside of work. But if I want to do something more with my blog, then I’m going to need a plan to get more traffic.

So I took a class on driving traffic to blogs. My local bookstore set up a Community Classroom with classes available on a range of topics. They offered several classes on blogging. The class for driving more traffic to your blog thru social media seemed like a natural. And the class was being taught by a professional blogger and social media consultant, Cendrine Marrouat.

A Designer needing a class on blogging?

So why does a long time Graphic Designer need to take a class on blogging? One of the problems with being a designer is non-designers tend to think that designers can do just about anything computer related. Print design, web design, photo retouching, writing, proof reading, blogging, social media, photography, video editing, 3D rendering, and many more hats get put onto a designer’s head. I’ve even been this close to having to do media buying and planning!

Most designers get a little overwhelmed with all the extra responsibilities that sometimes come with the job. Designers are pretty comfortable and confident behind a computer and even at this late date, there are plenty of people out there who feel intimidated by computers and may latch on to those who aren’t. It also doesn’t help that creatives tend to be people pleasers, and that makes it hard to turn down all the extra responsibilities that sometimes come with design gigs.

But no one can know everything about design and its related fields. Even an old veteran like me has to draw the line somewhere. All the ins and outs of actually running a blog is all new territory for me. And marketing strategies have always been one of my weaker areas.

Blogging and Building Traffic.

So I signed up for the class with some trepidation. I had attended a class at the bookstore once before on a very different subject, and while that presenter was very knowledgable, they were also a very poor presenter.

This class, however, was great! I guess it helps when the presenter is a professional. The intro part to blogging and the design of blogs I was already conversant with, but Cendrine was able to show me a few things I could be doing strategically both thru social media and a few Wordpess settings that can help drive more traffic to my blog.

Blogging as Customer Service.

I don’t want to give too much away (take her class or hire her as a consultant) but the best advice she gave was to treat my blog as customer service. That is, serve the needs of my audience and not serve strictly my own. Means more design tips and talks about design and fewer (but only fewer) posts talking about my art and design projects.

And I need to get more involved with my audience. And there was plenty of advice on how to use services like Mention.net and Scoop.it to help identify and engage my audience.

So armed with these tips, we’ll see just how much traffic I can generate over the next year or so.

For more info about Cendrine Marrouat check out her website at:

www.cendrinemarrouat.com

Or her blogs at:

Creative Ramblings

Social Media Slant

Curation Galore

More info about McNally Robinson’s Community Classroom can be found here clicking here.