This was originally written as a response to several Quora blogging questions on blog traffic, starting a blog, and general blogging success. 

You must understand who you are writing for, what they need, and what urges drive them in this world. Your relevance to a sizable, engaged, and informed audience, persistently writing for them and engaging them, and constantly adapting to their changing desires is far more important than any online tricks, gimmicks, or the latest technological wizardry to drive traffic.

This relevance and focus on your audience is the best way to ensure blog traffic long-term.

And because anything that happens online, on the web, throughout the entire Internet and blogosphere is initiated and driven by real people, you must practice ongoing methods to witness how those people interact with you, your message, your blog, your site, and anything it offers.

What about SEO, SEM, content marketing, PPC, social media, back-linking, affiliate programs, banner ads, video, and ANY online traffic program you can think of? …can you name any of those that are not ultimately dependent on real humans making real choices in the real world?

Also, the greatest and most sustainable driver of your blog traffic will be ultimately be how much it gets shared, linked, re-posted, curated, and referred by all those real people. The more relevant you are - and the more you can validate that with your audience - the more successful you’ll be.

Have you ever heard the expression ‘one blog post changed my life’? In the history of the web, there are numerous stories of people who are now rich and famous who wrote that ONE BLOG POST that followed all these principles, and that got explosive sharing and blog traffic for a long period of time.

Further truths and principles:

•     All online user/human behavior is hidden, so you must find ways to reveal the invisible dynamics of how users interact with you - or you’re flying blind
•     If you learn even the rudiments of online human-computer interactions, you’ll be way ahead of most of your competitors - because this is widely ignored
•     There is perhaps no other applied methodology that is so little known and possesses so great an impact. Check it out.

Here’s a free Masters-level e-workshop on how to apply these principles (and several more) to your blog to generate more blog traffic.