By Matt Casadona
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Congratulations! You've written a blog. Now, it's time to get people to read it. While you can sit and wait, hoping that you'll get readers without putting in the effort, that simply doesn't work, especially since your blog will be competing with the hundreds or even thousands of similar blogs out there.
Everyone with a blog can tell you that it's very difficult to gain readership. It takes time and dedication to build an audience. While it can be difficult when you don't have readers, there are ways that you can get people to start reading your blog. Take a look at our list of 8 smart ways to get people to read your content below.
Optimize Your Blog Posts
One of the best ways to get people to read your blog is to make sure that your blogs can be found easily online. SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization, is an important marketing strategy that can help you gain readership through optimization. If you notice that your blog isn't getting attention online, you can use SEO tools to gain insight into optimizing your blog for it to show up in Google search results.
When writing your next blog, you can start by doing keyword research to determine how many searches there are for your terms and how difficult the competition is. Start going for keywords that are easier to rank for so that you can begin showing up on search engines faster. Once you get more viewers, you can start targeting the more difficult keywords with your blogs.
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Write More
Writing a blog post only when you feel like it isn't enough to gain and maintain readership. If you want to get attention from search engines, make sure that you update your blog frequently. This can also keep your readers interested in what you have to say.
Know Your Audience
It's important that you get an understanding of your audience and what they want to read so that you can aim to meet their needs. If you write a blog for senior citizens, you may want to focus on topics like retirement, end of life planning, senior citizen discounts, and more. When you stray from these topics, you'll lose your valuable readers, so make sure that you know exactly what your audience wants when they come to your blog.
If your blog is for a business, then it will serve as part of your branding, which means your voice will remain consistent with the voice your company uses on social media and advertisements. Your audience expects everything to be consistent, which can help you improve brand awareness in the long run.
You should also consider your audience when using photos and videos. If your blog is for your business, your images should be professional. However, if your blog's tone is fun and informative, you might want to take the photos yourself to provide a different experience for the reader.
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Use Social Media
Whether you're a blogger or a corporate business, you need to be using social media to promote yourself. Your social media page can give you insight into what your followers want to read about so that you can write blogs that cater to their needs. Make sure that you're using Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, depending on your audience and where they're most likely to spend their time.
You can use popular hashtags to help you passively gain readers while promoting your new blog content to your current audience.
You can also use a social media business page to promote your blogs to get more readers. Social media advertising is one of the most cost-effective advertising solutions to help you get more readers at a low cost.
Make sure to add social sharing buttons to your blogs so that people can easily share pieces they find interesting.
Include Photos and Videos Where Possible
Text-heavy blogs are difficult for many people to read. Photos can help boost readership to make your blogs more visually appealing. You can determine what's best to use for your blog by considering what you're writing about. For example, a blog that explains how to do something would benefit from both photos and videos.
When choosing which photos to use on your blog, make sure that you don't pick just any photo from Google. You'll need to ensure that you're legally allowed to use the images for your blog before you post them anywhere on your website.
You can also choose to take your own photos. If your blog is for your business, you may benefit from hiring a photographer who can help you take photos that directly relate to your blog. If you're a blogger who makes money from their blog, you can take your own photos to add a personal touch.
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Use Guest Posts and Become a Guest Poster
By asking others to write for your blog, you can add more content more frequently without having to write it all yourself. Not only that, but those contributors will share anything that they write for your blog with their friends, family, and networks, which means that your blog will get more traffic. You may also be asked to write a guest blog, which will link back to your site and earn you more readers.
If you're not asked to guest post, you can reach out to popular bloggers in your niche and ask them if they'll allow you to guest post for their website. Typically, popular bloggers are influencers who are trusted by their audience, so getting a guest spot on their blog can bring in more traffic.
Start a Newsletter
If you don't have an e-newsletter, it's time to start one. Readers who enjoy your blog will sign up to have your articles sent right to their inboxes, so they don't have to go searching for you on Google. In order to get people to sign up for your newsletter, you'll likely have to offer them something beyond your blog posts. Many businesses and bloggers choose to offer subscribers a free e-book in exchange for their email addresses. This will help you convert more of your blog traffic into subscribers, increasing the likelihood of people reading your blogs.
Not only can e-newsletters help you capture information about your audience, but it'll also remind readers who haven't visited your blog in a while to come back for more information about the topics you write about.
Your newsletter can provide the title and a teaser about what people can learn or expect to read in your blogs so that they will click the link to the full article on your website.
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Getting Readership
Getting readership for your blog can be more difficult than writing the blog itself. It may take a mixture of all of these ideas to get your blog off the ground. There is no "right" way to get your blog in front of the eyes of readers, so try everything you can to see what works best for you.
About The Author
Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology.
He is currently a contributing editor for 365 Business Tips. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys the San Diego life, traveling and music.
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