The number of strategies that can be implemented to boost your growth is endless. There are great strategies and crumby strategies. In this post, I’m giving you the five superior strategies to boost your growth. This article has everything. What you’ll find has brought growth to many bloggers.
1. Blogging Networks
Blogging networks are just groups of bloggers helping each other out. Both online and off, these range from groups of hundreds of thousands to as few as five. Using these the right way is the key to blog networks. Spend time and find a good one. The last thing you want is to have this hurt you blog. Wealthy Affiliate is the biggest one I use, and it’s the only one I recommend other than having a small group of ‘masterminds’.
Mastermind groups are exclusive and a lot smaller. You may have to start one with a close group of friends who have similar goals as you do. When making a mastermind, it’s a good idea to have the majority of the members more successful than yourself. With at least one person who you can help give advice. The purpose behind the mastermind group is to learn from experience you don’t have. To learn from the mistakes of others you can avoid the same mistakes and make your own. As you make your own mistakes you share them with the group to get advice from others and help them stay away from the same mistake.
2. Social Media
By far, the most popular topic these days. Everyone seems to think that gaining a metric ton of followers will solve all their blog growth problems. Sorry, but it won’t. Most people with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of followers don’t make a dime from those networks. I won’t even get into the low conversion rate that comes with them in this post. But, there is still a use for social networks and you still need to share you content on them.
The usefulness of social media comes from the community. Like blogging networks but in a much more broad sense. The most effective use of social media it reaching out to those who need your service. I’ve done this several times, and it has made those people lifetime readers. Those people also want to help out my site now. Did you catch that, they want. I’m not even asking for their promotion, they are doing it of their own free will and kind heart. They will also share your profile on the social network you reached out to them on and you gain more followers. These people need the help you offer and will click through to your site.
3. Email Marketing
With all these new networks email sounds old and archaic. But it works better at driving readers to your blog than social media ever will. Because email is super targeted to the people who signed up. These people told you, “yes, your blog is great and has helped me a lot. I will be happy to get emails from you.” Guess what they do when they see an email from you in their inbox? Yup, they opening, read the contents, and click through if they will benefit from the article.
You might think that this is how social media works. They follow you, see your post, and click through. Check out these statistics that twitter released. In 2009, Twitter’s lead engineer told QCon, that the average twitter account followed 126 other accounts. Now it’s 2016 and is most likely higher. Every second 9,100 tweets are sent which totals to 1 billion tweets every 5 days. This is why the conversion rate from social media is low. And why conversion rate from email will always be higher.
4. Long Content
Just because it’s long does not make the post good. It still has to be longer than blog posts were 10 years ago. Long content shows you know what you are talking about. A long post shows the search engines you are an authority within your niche. You’re passionate about your topic, show your readers. Seeing a long post will get the thinking there is something in the post they need to know. When writing long content make it scannable. Most people do not want to read your whole post. They are looking for that missing piece in their own understanding the subject. Let’s be honest, we all have short attention spans online.
Once you are done writing the epic blog post for your niche you need to run it through an english grammar checker. Nothing is worse than making it hard for your readers to understand because of poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Poor grammar also makes you sound, for lack of a better word, stupid. Don’t throw your time out the window with bad grammar. There are tools online that will do this for you. The best ones cost money but they will catch the most errors in your writing.
5. Headline Research
For the longest time I neglected this strategy. Once I took the time to learn what makes an effective headline the study helped my blog vastly. Again there are resources online but I also recommend getting a few books on the topic. The best headlines stand the test of time. Even a book from one hundred years ago will have valuable information. Learn about lists, like this one, and why they work. Learn how to build a sense of need in under seven words. Figure out why the fear of loss gains more action the possibility to gain.
What is the point in writing great content, working hard to promote that content, and getting no clicks. Think about the number of headlines you see every day. How many of them do you click through to read? Study your own habits to see what headlines draw you to click through. Making the best headline you can is crucial to getting your content read or your product sold.
Write your headline first. That way you answer any question you draw up with the headline can be answered. This also gives you the ability to flush out the information needed when you write. Writing to your headline makes sure that your readers will not end up disappointed. Happy visitors lead to readers, readers lead to fans, and fans lead to traffic.
Let’s Tie it Together:
That’s a lot of information, so let’s boil it down. First make sure you’re a part of a blogging network. Whether it be online or in person, to learn from others and save time from making the same mistakes. Second, use social media the right way. Align your goals with the goals of your followers. Helping them will give them the want to bring more people to your content. Third, have an email newsletter. Don’t fight the noise on the internet when your readers agreed to receive your emails. Fourth, create long and authoritative content to show both Google and your reader you know your niche. Last, learn how to write good headlines for you content. Why bother writing a one thousand plus word article if no one will read your work?
About the Author
Jaron Swab is a husband, blogger, and entrepreneur. His main site, jrswab.com, is dedicated to helping bloggers to achieve success. Featuring posts that both the new and veteran blogger will benefit reading.
Hi PJ and Jaron,
I’m trying to leverage on social media to increase traffic to my blog. Do you have any suggestions how I can increase the number of subscribers on Twitter?
I like to use the 80-20 rule on Twitter. I’ll retweet other peoples helpful Tweets (typically on SEO, Marketing tips, Content Marketing, etc.). When they comment or like the Retweet, I follow them. Because they are active Twitter users they are more likely to follow you back. Also, within Twitter, use a hashtag and follow it with a niche term (one of your keywords) in the search box. This will provide you with a bunch of Twitter user in your niche. Follow them!