Even though blogging is an integral part of internet marketing, many people don’t know how to increase the readership of their blogs. The truth is that it’s much easier to set up a blog than to attract readers and popularize your blog. Unfortunately, the majority of bloggers, who venture into blogging, start with a lot of zeal. After a short while, they give up once they realize that their blog readership cannot double within a month as they had anticipated.
Just Before You Get Started
Before you start a blog, you should honestly examine your motives. If you’re going to blog for self-gratification or other self-serving reasons then you will simply inhibit the growth of your blog readership. Also, if your primary motive is making money online, then you need to re-think your purpose.
The truth is that people visit blogs because they want to find valuable information that serves their needs. So, if you write self-serving blog posts then you will lose big time. Having said that, let’s now look at powerful ways of growing blog readership.
Promote Your Blog through Social Media
Social sharing is an easy way to increase the exposure of your blog for online lead generation. Every time you write a post, you should make sure that you embed the link to the latest post in your social media accounts. You can use Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn Groups, and even Twitter to promote links to your latest posts.
While social media marketing channels are primarily used for network marketing, they also play a vital role in attracting readers to your blog. Sharing links to your latest posts gives readers an opportunity to read and also share the links with their friends. Eventually, your readership and subscription will grow to match your popularity in social media.
Encourage Readers to Share Blog Posts
It’s not enough for you to create and publish your blog posts regularly. You have to encourage readers and prospects to share your posts and content with others. You should add a call-to-action that prompts your current readers to share links to your blog or blog posts. To facilitate sharing, you should add social sharing buttons that allow readers to sign into their social accounts and share or comment on your article.
Provide Valuable Resources in Your Blog
If you want to attract visitors and convert them into exuberant readers then you should provide FREE useful resources in your blog. There are quite a number of things that you can provide free. You can write and share a free downloadable eBook, a whitepaper, a market report, or a podcast. You can also share links to valuable resources located in partner sites or 3rd party sites. When you share valuable resources, you will give readers a reason to want to join your mailing list and to share the link to your blog with others.
Be Charismatic and Approachable
Since blogging is about attracting people and engaging them, you should learn to be charismatic and approachable. You can easily connect with readers and establish life-long relationships if you are witty, compassionate, and remarkable. When you develop these traits, you will find it easier to leverage your blog as a tool for attraction marketing. Besides that, people will want to associate with you and even recommend your blog to their friends and colleagues.
Use Audio Visuals and Captivating Graphics
You can also increase blog readership by creating and posting content that features rich graphics. As part of online video marketing, you should also post audio visuals that capture the attention of visitors. Naturally, readers are attracted by captivating content. Images are more attractive than plain content. So, instead of writing a plain and boring blog post, create cool infographics and include them in your posts. This will attract the attention of readers and give them an easy time to digest the information and details of your blog post.
Create a Series of Great Tutorials
There is no better way of increasing blog readership than creating and publishing a series of blog tutorials. Though you can attract some readers, through your weekly blog posts, you stand a greater chance of doubling blog readership by creating unique and relevant blog tutorials. When you create tutorials, you’ll give readers the impetus to share links to your posts.
Unfortunately, many people waste time sharing their lop-sided opinions or writing boring subjects. It’s very important for you to understand that some readers don’t just want a weekly dose of your musings or rantings; they want good solid information that will add value to their lives.
Optimize Your Blog Posts
The majority of customers and prospects use Search Engines to find links to websites and blogs that are relevant to their needs. This underscores the importance of search engine optimization in increasing the visibility and traffic to your blog. If you optimize your blog posts for targeted keywords, then you will rank higher for those keywords than most of your competitors.
Besides optimizing your blog for the search engines, you should also optimize them for readers. You can do this by posting unique and relevant information that provides timely solutions that addresses their specific needs.
Write Killer Guest Posts
You have probably heard people say “Content is King”. That’s true. Successful blogs thrive because of good content. Writing killer guest posts for another blog is a surefire way of increasing your exposure and maximizing traffic back to your blog. You can write about a real life story of someone who conquered a weakness, or someone who excelled in his or her business, or someone who came up with a great innovation.
The other thing that you should know is that a guest post introduces you to a new community of readers. By being a guest blogger in someone’s blog, you will not only add value to the host’s blog, but also build a relationship with existing readers. As you write more posts, your will influence will grow, and ultimately, you will find it easier to attract readers to join your email marketing mailing list.
To sum it up, there is no one magic formula to get readers to your blog; it takes time, dedication, and effort to increase blog readership and popularity. You have to be cognizant of the content marketing needs of your readers. It also pays off to optimize your blog posts and to encourage readers to share your content. When you back all these with an inviting personality, you’ll attract more readers and build lifelong relationships with them.
By sticking with it you can run a rocking blog. Love the tips.
Be in it for the long haul. Create, connect, repeat.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you Ryan! Glad to know that you enjoyed the post and share the same style in your blog too!
Hi Anetta,
Thanks for the post. Useful as always. Attracting more people to your blog is what everybody wants. The topic is hot. Now, my thoughts about this:
1. Promote your posts through social media. I need to do more promotion. Usually I promote other people’s posts and sometimes I forget about my posts. 🙂
2. Share buttons? Yes. Did that.
3. Calls to action? Yes. For the moment I have 1 call to action at the end of each post.
4. Resources. It’s a very good idea. I think the best way is to create a page, a resource page where you put all your ebooks, reports and links.
5. Blog tutorials. It depends on the mindset of the blog owner. I like to create tutorials. I will do more of these in the future.
Good ways to attract people to my blog. Thanks.
Have a nice day
Thank you Silviu!
I think you have the right approach with social media sharing and promoting others. Promoting others through your social media has a lot of benefits. You give your social media audience a variety of content to read and enjoy. At the same time building your reputation in the niche. My Google+ and Twitter stream is mostly the content from others. In return I get a lot of sharing from other bloggers too.
Hey Anetta!
That’s a very comprehensive list on how to get people to your blog and a very informative one.
I believe that all of the points mentioned may seem like a more passive approach. Sometimes, we need to be the ones being more active, by helping others share their blog posts, comment on them so that they will return the favor.
This helps to get you exposed to people that are outside of your social circle, instead of the people who would usually notice your posts on the social media platforms.
Providing value, call to actions are MUSTs in my opinion. In fact, it should be the bare minimum that anyone who is truly a marketer should strive to achieve.
Thanks for sharing these great tips! 🙂
Regards,
Darren Spruyt
Thank you Darren for the valuable feedback! You are right about promoting yourself by promoting others! It does really work. When you share and help others they do definitely return the favor.
Hey Anetta,
I saw this post shared on BizSugar and I said I must check it out. Beautiful picture at the top 😉
Some of the tips you shared in this post will not only attract people but will keep them. If your blog provides valuable resources, readers will always come back.
Thanks for the post and do have a splendid weekend
Thank you Enstine for the comment, feedback and letting me know that the post was shared in BizSugar!
What’s up, just wanted to say, I loved this post. It was helpful.
Keep on posting!
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