Are you struggling to attract a significant amount of traffic to your blog? If the answer to this question is yes, there are a number of tactics smaller businesses can use to gain a loyal readership and achieve the goals you desire for your business blog.
Increased traffic provides the visibility you need to engage with a wider audience and sell the services or products you offer. Without traffic, your efforts for creating useful content are all made in vain.
If your blog is struggling to attract the attention it deserves, read on. My helpful tips provide a set of beneficial strategies used by the top marketers across the globe.
For starters, create an effective content calendar with a range of compelling topics to be published frequently and to a specific schedule. To boost your blog’s traffic you need to connect with readers through regular posts and please the search engines at the same time. Why? You will be seen as an active industry leader with the knowhow, and one who devotes time to connect with their readers.
Without a content calendar your content marketing strategy can falter, leaving you unfocused with an audience left uninspired and underwhelmed.
The quality of your content is the key to keeping your readers interested in what you have to say and frequently returning to your site. The helpful tips and information you publish needs to answer the questions your audience is looking for. If your readers don’t understand what you’re trying to demonstrate and they can’t relate to the information presented, you will struggle to capture their attention and loyalty.
A good example of a popular blog creating compelling content on a regular basis can be found below. When you provide interesting information people find useful and beneficial, you will craft a pool of readers who will be truly excited to receive your next post.
As marketing expert Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner highlights, there are two forms of content which contributed towards his marketing success; primary and nuclear fuel. Both forms of content are used to generate a large number of advocates for his work and have a lasting impact on his ideal readership and experts alike.
This is a free or relatively low cost content production which answers the reader’s questions to provide them with solutions to their problems while creating a loyal fan base.
Nuclear fuel is a highly researched and designed piece of content created to leave a positive effect on a substantial number of targeted readers. Usually involving a higher production cost than the former.
Provide an option for your audience to be regularly informed of the latest posts published on your blog. If they find the information to be useful and beneficial to them in some way, they will gladly choose to use the RSS feed option. You want the reader to feel the excitement in expectation of your post; like a child on Christmas Eve. When you secure this feeling in your reader, you’re on to a winner!
Consider including an opt-in page. Where readers can part with their email address in order to receive your latest posts – a more traditional but fantastic method to build your email list and interact with your target market on a consistent basis.
SEO should be another crucial element to your overall blogging strategy. This however is a long term goal and will not provide the instant results you may be looking for.
By including highly searched for keywords throughout your text, you can significantly improve the Google ranking of that post.
When Google’s clever little spiders crawl your site, they will decipher the relevancy of your site to those searching for the terms within your post. This will then increase your visibility to those seeking your expertise, and ultimately, your target market.
Google authorship is a very effective way of connecting and boosting content in the search results.
When you link your Google+ account to your content, you will not only benefit from a nice photo [Editor: this is shortly due to be withdrawn based on tests seen by Google] and byline when your content appears in search results, it verifies the connection between that quality content and the author who created it.
This gives Google the ability to decipher quality, relevant content, and differentiate it from those falling behind.
When you write a guest post for a highly popular blog, you increase your visibility to a wider audience you may not have had the opportunity to access previously. In normal circumstances you will have the pleasure of including a by line at the bottom of your post with a link to your business blog.
Take full advantage and construct another content calendar for guest posting and write as many as you possibly can.
Write a follow-up post on your own blog and ask them to enter a link on the relevant guest post. This all helps towards showing you as an industry leader and an accommodating authority in your field.
Include social sharing buttons at the bottom of every post. Make it easy for your audience to share and like your content. If they found it useful, the reader will be more inclined to distribute with their followers through just the click of a button. More shares will put you in front of a larger audience while directing more people back to your blog.
Post a link to your blog content through the large social media networks – Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
Join communities on Google+, create lists on Twitter - engage with big influencers in your industry and ask them to share your content, connect with people in LinkedIn groups and join relevant Facebook groups.
Once you build your online communities through your social networks, people learn to trust you and form relationships with your brand. This creates advocates for your brand and a following who are more than happy to share your content.
There are plenty of ways to spread the love and boost your blog’s readership through social media.
When you’re in possession of a substantial email list and send out your monthly newsletter, include a link to a specific blog post in relation to that particular newsletter.
Inviting people to indulge in further reading gives your following of avid readers the opportunity to increase their knowledge on a specific topic, and a bonus opportunity for them to share your content through social media with those special social buttons I mentioned earlier.
Keep the conversations flowing! When someone takes the time to leave a comment on your blog post, ensure to thank them and offer a reply to their question, statement, or suggestion.
If you ignore those people who’ve already found your post and liked it, you’ve already lost out on repeat visitors. Make your blog a happy and engaging place to hang out and you’ll build a group of loyal followers who interact and rely on you for your advice and guidance.
We’ve all struggled and felt the heavy burden of an unsuccessful blog. Worst scenario is you’re crafting all this great content but no-one’s reading it. I hope these tips will support you in boosting your blogs presence and help you on your way to engaging with bigger and more targeted audiences.
Thanks to Karly Edwards is the Director/Content Marketer for Design Smoothie. She is an experienced marketing professional specialising in providing content marketing strategies and writing quality copy for businesses across the globe. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, read Design Smoothie's blog , follow on Twitter or Google+.
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