A company’s blog can be a great marketing tool to drive traffic to its website, build relationships and establish a brand voice. In order to benefit from your blog you need to attract and maintain a readership and engage people – this is easier said than done. Sometimes blogging can be like shouting at the top of your voice in a vacuum.
Here are a few tips that will take you out of the vacuum and hand you a megaphone.
#1. Be frequent
Frequently updating your blog is as important as making your content engaging and is the first step to building an audience because readers know they can rely on new content regularly. Also, by posting often you will increase the chances of your blog being noticed by search engines.
#2. Quantity of quality
You are not the only blogger out there seeking the attention of readers, so make sure your content is worth reading, sharing and is relevant. The phrase ‘create great content’ is a horribly vague, lazy and overused directive, which is easier said than done. Just ensure that you are providing something that is unique, bespoke and a one-off that readers cannot find elsewhere, not only that make it fun and engaging to readers, so they think ‘I cannot wait for their next post’.
#3. Don’t be so selfish!
Empathise with the market or audience that you are looking to attract by putting yourself in their shoes when thinking of topics and discussion points. It is not about you it is about them – nobody cares that David has just thrown a scrunched up sheet of A4 into the waste paper basket from 10 metres. Think about common ground and what your readers care about in the context of your content.
#4. People will kill for recognition
Find ways to ask your readership to interact and participate, then when you get the kind of participation that you were after – reward it! The satisfaction brought by contributing and being recognised is powerful in the blogosphere. Recognising participants provides your community with highly regarded feedback and inspiration to share.
#5. Embrace Commenting
Actively responding to comment is an essential tool to increase traffic. By being responsive readers know that you value their feedback and they will become more loyal. Other readers will be encourage when they notice that you respond and may decide to comment themselves. You can also comment on other blogs and enter discussions to drive traffic back to your blog, just remember to leave your URL.
#6. Tag your posts
Tags can drive additional traffic towards your blog and it only takes an extra minute or so to add a few to the end of your blog post. Like links, tags are easily noticed by search engines and they are key to helping readers to find your blog.
#7. Be SEO friendly
Search engines are a window of opportunity for traffic if bloggers can utilise them properly.
Do not be greedy with your blog, share it! Share your latest posts on bookmarking sites, send it to key influencers and upload it to a variety of social media platforms. You can even tweet it a few times, just make sure you leave adequate time between each tweet.
Images: ”Blog with multicolored letters / Shutterstock.com“
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