If you build it, they will come

Since it's the Christmas season, I've been thinking about giving. I'd asked a fellow blogger some basic questions including how to build traffic to my site. However, I realized before he responded that it's just like classic branding: create and give value first to invoke the law of attraction. Whether we want to attract customers to a company or visitors to a site, attraction happens when we give value first. What goes around, comes around. In the blog world, that's creating great content and linking out to other's sites. In networking, it's giving free advice and leads. In the corporate world, it's creating and delivering on a promise of value. It's the same scalable principle. I've worked with clients who want to generate sales first in order to fund value creation, but that's like wanting the cake before you bake it. The law of causality won't allow it. On a related note, I really liked this blog tip called "link unto others" on Living Room, since it's a win/win/win for the blogger, the reader and the source:

LivingRoom >> A space for Life

Blog Tip - Link unto others The following blog tip was submitted by Phil Wolff from blogs such as Don't Blog, Blog Count, emblog and a klog apart.

Links make blogs different than paper. When you see something interesting online, link to it. Something useful, memorable, fascinating? Link, link, link. Each link is a vote. Your body of links represents your interests. Google understands links more than words. So does Technorati. So links become the gravity that attract like-minded people to your blog.
After all, if you write something that provokes thought, changes people's lives, you'd want others to point your way too.
This golden rule of blogging is part of what makes the blogosphere a community.
It also is part of what makes blogging like journalism or science. Good bloggers cite their sources by linking to them. This helps people trust that you've not only done your homework, but that you've made it easy for your visitors to do theirs.
So the next time you write a post, before you hit that publish button, ask yourself "Is it linky enough?"

Comments

[Peter Caputa]

I just left part of this as a comment on another thread. This post made me think of the analogy and add the following...

Going out to other blogs and commenting is the equivalent to saying hi to strangers in a coffee shop when you move to a new town.

Linking to another blog is like referring a friend to another friend.

Blogging is the easiest form of networking!

[Darren Rowse]

thanks for the link - I think you are spot on. People won't come to you unless you give them something of value to engage with.

Your blog is certainly making me think - thanks.

[David]

I find myself visiting your site again and again because your observations seem to parallel my own (great minds thinking alike) and your assessments of underlying causation seems to be spot on, as in, "attraction happens when we give value first."