You are perhaps happy to see the statistics on your blog go up as would temperature on a sunny day mid winter. It’s good to be read – and it’s even better to be read by many. What started off as a trickle has become a good deal in their hundreds or perhaps thousands. That is a good sign – and that implies that you have been doing the right things, to begin with.

If your blog has regular visitors and the traffic is increasing by the day, it means that your blog has something in it that makes them come to you. It could, perhaps, be the consistent quality of contents that you have been maintaining all through; it could also be the focus that you have shown on your theme, which might have got you a decent pagerank which, in turn, has generated a lot of organic traffic to your blog; or, it could be the consistent pace at which your blog has been getting updated or the variety of topics that you have been choosing on your given theme, without moving out of the basic idea behind your blog. It could be because of the efforts that you have put on social networking and promoting your blog to perfection. It has to be one of these or similar reasons that you are experiencing an increasing traffic to your site.

Retain your Readers: Now that you have managed to bring in readers, the next step is simple – and yet crucial. You need to keep your readers. While that may sound simple, that definitely is not as simple as it sounds. In fact, it is a lot easier to get traffic with a good push on your blog, an initial momentum that you gave it with your impetus to make your mark on the blog. There are lots of blogs that have become initial successes but haven’t been able to sustain that success – surviving in the long term and sustaining is a different ball game that requires persistence, perseverance, a lot of application and absolute lack of complacency. You are at risk of becoming complacent and falling a to victim your own success, if you are not conscious and if you are too casual about your readers.

1. New Readers are More Costly: It is, in marketing terms, 7 times more expensive to get a new customer than what it costs to maintain an existing customer. While, in the blogging sense, it may not cost you much financially to retain or get a new reader, the fact is that you could retain a reader much more easily when compared with getting a new reader. An existing reader has read your contents, has seen your stuff and knows what to expect of your blog. And as long as you keep giving him what he wants, your reader is going to be yours. But to convert a casual visitor who landed on your page by accident into your regular, if not hard-core, reader is going to be much more difficult.

2. New readers are tough to Satisfy: If your reader is new, he could perhaps have dropped into your site using a keyword. He might have seen your contents and would have got some value out of it or not, depending on what your content is. And your first time reader is most probably a reader of your competitor’s site as well – at least, the chance is very much there that the reader has read contents in lines with your blog. Thus, a new reader would immediately tend to compare like with like – your content with what he has already read elsewhere. And when he does, if your content doesn’t stand up to his expectations, he is possibly not going to come back to your site – a simple reason why each of your blog posts has to be the best you can give.

3. It takes time to connect with readers: Your new reader would not know who you are, even if he has read your content and sampled your writing and the value you provide. An existing reader, who has already been with you, would have got familiar with your way of approaching issues, your style of putting things across, your emotions and your reactions to issues, your beliefs and the value that you have towards issues and your readers. For the new reader, you are just another content provider on the internet. There is no connection or bond between your new readers and you. Again, this is one more reason why you need to focus a lot on your existing readers and not take them for granted.

The idea, therefore, is simple – despite all your successes in blogging, despite your having been able to garner all those readers, despite all your experience, your blog is only as good as your regular readers. You may do all the tricks to get new readers, you may promote yourself in social networking sites, you may do your SEO to perfection and feature among the top of search results, and you may find new readers. But then, if your efforts of all the years are to pay off, you do not have an option but to realise the importance of your existing readers and do all that you can to keep them with you. Serve your existing readers to satisfaction – your new readers would easily get converted into followers of your blog.