Creating engaging content for your blog is pointless if you aren’t able to attract readers. Unfortunately, with a flood of both professional and amateur content from websites, apps and social media services, standing out in the crowd and attracting readers has become harder than ever. What are some of the more effective – and cost-effective – ways to draw readers to your blog?
Attracting A Crowd
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” is an old philosophical thought experiment that is familiar to many of us. For many bloggers and marketers, a more modern and relevant version may be, “If I write a great blog post and no one is around to read it, was it worth writing in the first place?” In order for your blog to be successful, either by profiting directly through advertising or as a marketing tool, you must attract and retain readers. However, your blog now competes with thousands of other blogs, websites and social media services that are all vying for the “eyeballs” of readers. What can you do to attract more readers to your blog? In order to publicize your blog and attract new readers, it is important that you do two things: leverage the existing platforms and tools at your disposal and improve the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your content.
Utilize Existing Platforms And Contacts
Your social media accounts, blog and website are all essential components of your online presence, and your social media accounts and blog should be used to “funnel” readers from those platforms to your website in order to convert them into paying customers. For most businesses, blogs are already part of their website, which means that funneling readers from social media to a blog is the primary goal. To accomplish this, consider promoting your blog in as many ways as you possibly can. When posting to social media, be sure to include links back to your blog whenever possible, especially if content you’ve created for your blog can adequately address a popular question or concern among your customers.
Promoting Blog Posts
Whenever you promote a new blog post through social media, prepare a summary that grabs a reader’s attention and entices them to click through and read your entire blog post. A good summary should be comprehensive and clear enough to make sense to a casual reader, but shouldn’t be so comprehensive that a reader is satisfied with the summary itself and chooses not to click through to the actual blog post. If possible, end the summary with a question that’s answered within the blog post. Finally, try to include an image with your blog post that will appear with the summary. Be sure to include an image that you have secured the rights to use, are free to use, or one that you have created yourself.
A Source of Announcements and Knowledge
In addition to promoting your blog through social media, be sure to promote your blog as a source of announcements and as a knowledge base to your existing customers. If a customer submits a question that you’ve answered on your blog, why not direct the customer to your blog? Not only will you save time, but you’ve also introduced your blog to a potential new reader! Referring customers to your blog is appropriate under many circumstances, especially for answering email and social media queries, but be sure that doing so is not an inconvenience for them, such as directing a customer over the phone to go online and visit your blog. Also be sure that the blog post in question actually answers their questions and addresses their concerns, and if you aren’t including a specific link to the post in question, make sure the post is easily found through a search query. In addition to promoting specific blog posts, be sure to promote your blog when presenting yourself as a subject matter expert to new clients and customers, professional partners and networking groups and contacts.
SEO, SEO, SEO!
When it comes to attracting new blog readers outside of your own sphere of influence, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is king! SEO will help ensure that more search engine users are able to find your blog content, leading to more readers and hopefully a higher conversion rate. The easiest and most straightforward way to improve the SEO of your current blog content is to ensure that your content includes words and phrases that are currently trending on Google, and the easiest way to keep track of those words and phrases is through Google Trends. This service allows anyone to track the most popular Google searches at any given time, and it doesn’t require a Google Account to use. Once you’ve determined the hottest trending topics in your industry, you can implement these keywords into your blog posts.