7 Strategies to Attract More Blog Readers

Nowadays, everyone wants to run a blog. It’s the “entrepreneurship era”, in which every person stands a shot at accomplishing something big. There are numerous examples of individuals who have grown million dollar businesses out of simple websites and blogs –some of them started with absolutely nothing. However, the truth is that it’s not as easy as it sounds. It never is.

Making a blog famous takes more than just a good idea and a bit of luck. Besides the smart brand positioning actions that must be taken throughout the blog launch, one also needs to understand that in today’s digital marketplace, traffic (visitors) delivers performance (brand awareness, income, etc.)

Now – what’s in the middle are the marketing strategies that you implement and…the ways in which you implement them.

I know you want to get straight to the practicalities, yet it’s important to understand that whatever you might read now, in a few hours, in the next few days, will make almost no difference in case you don’t take action upon what you’ve learned. The knowledge we acquire is so rarely useful because we rarely implement what we know.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at some simple yet extremely efficient strategies that’ll attract you more blog readers.

1.    Perfectly Understand Your Audience’s Preferences

There are millions of blogs out there. You are most likely to encounter competition in any field you’d like to blog about, so you must ensure that your platform differentiates itself from the crowd.

The first steps towards developing an audience targeting are:

a. Finding out your audience’s preferences

Do everything possible to understand what your potential readers would like to consume from your blog. Figure out their problems, needs, wants, and desires. Go ahead and ask them, or use a survey service to ask the people you’re targeting what they are interested in.

b. Creating a target persona which you’ll use as a reference point.

Once you have an idea of what your target audience expects, go ahead and develop a “target persona”. This is the perfect imaginary blog reader that guides your targeting process. Whenever you plan your branding and marketing strategies, think of this person

c. Aligning your content creation process with your audience’s needs

So you found your target persona. Now you can finally start to plan and organize your content creation process. Whenever you think of post topics that you plan in advance, think about your ideal reader– Will he/she learn something? Will he/she find the information to be valuable and useful?If the answer is yes, go ahead and write that post!

2.    Deliver Great Content on a Consistent Basis

Content is king. I chose to start with the “content tips” because blogging is about content. People visit and revisit blogs because they’re actively consuming content. Yet, as more and more people start blogs and websites, the internet is getting even more filled with irrelevant and copy-pasted information.

In order for your blog to stand out and capture people’s attention, your content must be three times better than your competition’s. If you succeed to deliver great value to your audience on a consistent basis, be sure that you’re going to win no matter what competition’s ahead of you.

Practical Tip:

Before creating content, analyze the top 5 direct competition blogs. Spend some time on their platforms, read their content, look for both PROs and CONs, and note every relevant detail down. Then, strive to create the best version out of those 5 blogs, and incorporate only the great things from each.

Do the same with your articles, videos, or other types of content that you’ll distribute. Read or watch the 5 best materials on the topic and create something better out of them all.

3.    Focus on Social Media

Social media happens to be the greatest marketing engine at the moment. The reason is almost obvious: everyone spends time on social media. What’s even more important to note is that social media networks are in a continuous growth, and more and more people will be available to reach by us, marketers.

Perceive social media as a vehicle that efficiently transports your content straight to your audience’s door.

First off, choose 2 or 3 social media networks that you believe that are the most relevant to your blog. Relevant means that your audience of readers spends time on that channel.

Then, start focusing on improving your brand’s reputation on each of these social platforms. For example, you can develop a professional Facebook page that you keep growing and growing. People that’ll like your Facebook page will eventually visit your blog because you’ll obviously guide them through.

So build a great social media presence and your blog growth will be boosted. Moreover, you can also leverage the paid advertising features that each of the networks offers. That depends on your budget, but I’d say it’s totally worth trying.

4.    Come Up with Amazing Post Titles

Do you know why people usually end up reading a blog post? The title of the post caught their attention. Today’s digital environment is filled with a lot of ads and general fluff.Due to this, many internet users have started to develop a resistance towards marketing.

However, humans are emotional beings that react more than they think. If your blog post titles are sparking curiosity, fear, desire, or any other stronger feeling, be sure that your article is going to be opened. Pay attention: when someone arrives on your blog post page, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to finish reading – that’s why you first need to take care of the quality of your content.

Again, you should imitate the best in your niche and add a new twist to your actions. The most popular blog post titles contain one of the following elements:

• A number (Top 10 Tips)
• The “How-To” element (How to Become X)
• Data (Facebook Has Reached 4 Billion Users Today)
• A breaking story
• Controversial statements
• Curiosity elements (Nobody Knows What is Inside This Fallen Palace)

5.    SEO Optimization

First off, make sure that you perform your On-Site SEO optimization. Find out more about that throughout this guide.Once you’re certain that the “inside house” job has been performed, you need to start focusing on backlinks. The best way to acquire high-quality backlinks is to write guest posts.

You find a blog that’s closely related to your niche that is not directly competing against your blog. Then, you contact the webmaster and offer to write an article for his audience if they allow you to place a link that leads straight to your website. Scale this process and you’ll build lots of important backlinks.

Moreover, you can optimize your content for long-tail phrases and keywords. Ranking your page by optimizing dozens of long-tail keywords with less competition is often more productive than trying to rank a keyword that everyone’s targeting and fighting for.

Nevertheless, you can check out more SEO tips on the web and try to implement them as efficiently as possible. The more you rank your blog’s pages into the SERPS the more long-term organic visitors you’ll obtain.

6.    Approach Influencers

Here’s an underrated strategy that will probably never die and it’ll continue to be extremely efficient for marketing purposes. You see, with the rise of social media channels and not only, many individuals have become “famous” in different niches.

A very good example would be the gaming niche. You can see famous YouTube channels with gamers that are followed by millions of other gamers. That person who holds such a great number of followers is a very significant niche influencer. People respect that person and they are unconsciously agreeing and liking the gamer who entertains them every day.

If you want to sell a game, your best bet to reach millions of people in a matter of days is to present your game through the influencer’s channel. You can find a lot of influencers around the web, and they’re present in every niche.Those that have great numbers of followers behind will often be expensive, but you can target others that don’t ask for too much.

Approach influencers in your niche and have them publish your content on their social media platforms and websites/blogs. This way you can reach a lot of targeted traffic because whoever follows the niche influencer is probably also a good fit for your content.

7.    Be Everywhere

Be everywhere. In order to improve your brand awareness and eventually your blog’s traffic, you have to give readers the opportunity to meet your blog and your ideas. That means aggressive marketing on all possible channels that are worth your time.

I will give you some ideas in case you don’t know where to look:

1. Niche forums – get involved in forums within your field of activity and help people around. Build your reputation in the field through these small or big forums.
2. Q&A platforms – Yahoo Answers and Quora are your best bets to find the people who might be interested in your content. Write valuable answers and direct users towards your blog.
3. Advertise on different apps and websites – Media buying works. You need to find the right websites and the right media buying campaign, and you’ll generate brand awareness and sales.
4. Podcasts – Create audio content and publish it on different podcast sharing platforms.
5. Magazines and Traditional Media – You can try writing an article for your local magazine and feature your blog inside. You can also approach different media agencies and ask for their posting guidelines.

Here’s the point: the more traffic sources you’re able to leverage efficiently the more you should do it. BUT, pay close attention not to focus on too many things at once. Figure out which traffic sources are the most profitable and focus more on those. Don’t forget about the others but stop putting a lot of emphasis on them.

Conclusion

The more you promote your business, the more it’ll grow. But, if you manage to promote it well and also consistently, you’re going to head on the right track. Improving a blog’s popularity and performance is definitely not easy. It is complex because, in the present moment, there’s an overload of information around the web.

Moreover, business was never easy and it will never be easy. Treat your blog like a million-dollar business, give your one hundred percent, and keep implementing new promotion strategies as you go along the way. Enjoy the process and reap the results!

Author Bio:

Chris Richardson is an editor and a blogger from London. He is also a part of Essaygeeks team. Chris finds his inspiration in writing. Meet him on Twitter and Google+.