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What to do when a blog post is suddenly popular

By JNSwanson

By Jon Swanson

I write blog posts five days a week. A post that I wrote three years ago, and reposted a year ago started getting a lot of traffic about three months ago. In fact, about three times as much traffic in the last three months as in the nine months before that. It’s one of those posts that gets bounced around, kind of like a useful post that you might write about some topic related to your industry.

I was excited when I saw that daily traffic. I started thinking that I should direct those people to other parts of my site. So I tried adding links to other posts. It didn’t make much difference.

Then one day, I was reading Christopher Penn’s Almost Timely newsletter. Can’t tell you what I read, but I thought “I just need to put an invitation to subscribe on that post.”

See, I use Mailchimp to email those posts every day. And I know that people can look around the site to find out how to subscribe, but why make it difficult.

So I added this at the end of my post:
If you found this post helpful or challenging, subscribe to 300wordsaday.com for daily words about following Jesus. 

And in the month after I made that change, my mailing list grew 20%. I even started adding that invitation to all my posts. And when I emailed Chris to tell him, he said that he puts the same kind of invitation on every post he writes.

Two lessons here:
1. It’s okay to mess with old posts that suddenly get traffic.
2. It’s okay to invite people to subscribe by telling them what to expect.

Next week: A welcome change that increased conversation.

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  • About the Author
  • Latest Posts

About JNSwanson

Jon has been a regular reader and occasional contributor around here since 2006. Jon works as a pastor, but he understands business better than many so-called business people. He gets that it is about people, relationships, service, and yes, even love.
  • When the planes are coming in to land - July 18, 2016
  • Are you mortgaging your time? - April 24, 2013
  • A customer service story - September 12, 2012
  • What to do when a blog post is suddenly popular - May 2, 2012
  • Review: The official guide to QuickBooks 2012 - January 23, 2012
  • Two discussion questions for you - December 8, 2011
  • From scrap metal to skilled crafts - November 23, 2011
  • How a small business can be huge - November 16, 2011
  • Banding together - October 12, 2011
  • Show the love - October 1, 2011

May 2, 2012 Filed Under: marketing, social media Tagged With: Jon Swanson

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Comments

  1. Glenda Watson Hyatt says

    May 3, 2012 at 3:49 am

    Jon, so simple yet brilliant! Kind of like a “Please Come Again” sign. Thank you.

    • jnswanson says

      May 3, 2012 at 11:16 am

      That’s a perfect example Glenda.

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