Zero Readers? Master The Art Of Promoting Your Blog

Promoting your blog doesn’t always involve the use of direct marketing. The way you actually create and manage your blog, as well as the type of content you choose to upload, has big effects on how many people may stumble upon it. If you’ve not got enough readers, then maybe it’s time to check out the advice in this article.

Easy Shareability

So how exactly do blogs get big? Most of any given blog’s hits will come from search engines. But sharing is also a massive part of why certain articles become widely read, which then leads to more people becoming regular readers. You’ve probably clicked on your fair share of blog posts that people shared over Facebook or Twitter. And this is why you need to ensure that your content can be shared easily. You should consider using a social media widget plugin on your blog. This places links for instant sharing right there in your blog post.

Guest Starring

There are a lot of bloggers out there who look at guest posting the way a vegan would look at slaughterhouses: with a lot of disdain, and perhaps even a hint of nausea. Many of them claim that you should always keep your original content to yourself; and besides, guest posting doesn’t really work in driving traffic. Well, it’s true that guest posting isn’t guaranteed to bring in traffic, the way that some outlets would have you think. But there’s no question that it can be extremely useful, and can even help you increase your skills. Guest posting convinces people that you’re an expert on the subject at hand, and also gives you networking connections. You should search sites accepting guest posts.

Email Subscriptions

It’s sad that so many people seem to think that mailing lists don’t have any further use in the 21st century. They see it as a product of the nascent World Wide Web era. After all, if your readers follow you on Twitter or Facebook, then won’t they get notified about new content there? Problem: on social media, you’re fighting against a tide of other websites vying to get their content seen. An email subscription list – which is still extremely effective, by the way – gives you your own promotional space. It also allows you to contact all of your readers whenever you want to share something a bit more exclusive with them. Sorting out an email list isn’t as hard as it used to be. There are email subscription services out there that make it easy to manage all your subscribers.

Images

Is a picture worth a thousand words? Well, it can be – but if that were a universal truth, then we wouldn’t have any need for blogs! Still, images are extremely useful when it comes to blogs. You can get high-quality and free stock photos from several places online, but you shouldn’t be afraid to try creating your own. Images don’t just make the website itself ‘pop’ a bit more – it also helps direct traffic to your blog. Creating your own shareable images can also have a powerful effect.

Trends

Sure, it may seem a bit “lame” to some of you who don’t love the idea of chasing trends. Hey, I’m with you there. We would all prefer to set trends, to work successfully against the grain, rather than simply follow the herd. But sometimes the herd are walking in the right direction. Keep an eye on trends in marketing, subject matter, and technology. Your blog should be consistent and have a distinct character, but it should also be able to adapt to changing environments. Remember: just because you’re following a trend, it doesn’t mean you can’t take an interesting, exciting new angle on it!

Don’t Make It All About You

A lot of blogs are incredibly self-centered. And I’m not just referring to personal blogs that are basically just diaries. I’m also including the blogs of many businesses. If your blog only has content that relates directly to what is happening to your business, then people are going to lose their ability to relate to you. And that relatability is very important.

Controversy

A bit of controversy definitely helps pull readers to your website. But you definitely need to be careful about this sort of advice. You shouldn’t really aim to be controversial. To push buttons for the sake of pushing buttons is quite possibly the most boring thing in the world. So what use is this advice? What I’m saying to you is that you shouldn’t stick to a “safe” formula if it isn’t what you want to do. Do you have an opinion you feel strongly about? Then write about it. Don’t worry too much about it being an unpopular opinion. Just try not to alienate your readers completely! There are right ways to state unpopular opinions and then there are very wrong ways.

Search Engine Optimization

Here’s something that probably shouldn’t be surprising to you by now. The beings that read your blog posts aren’t all flesh and blood humans. Bots are actually all over your blog, assessing its content. These bots, of course, are the artificial intelligence that companies like Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo use to gather data for their search engines. If your website isn’t optimized so that these bots can easily read your website, then this will affect your position in search results pages. If you care even a little about getting more readers for your blog, then you need to learn more about the art of search engine optimization – which, yes, you may have heard referred to as SEO.

Time

Maybe you’re reading this blog, worrying yourself sick about the fact that you don’t have many readers, and you’re hoping this article will give you the answer you’re looking for. But how long have you actually had your blog for? If you’ve not long launched your website, then of course you’re not going to have that many readers! Even blogs with amazing, unique content and perfect SEO technique take some time to build up a solid readership. Don’t get discouraged. Keep at it. Upload new content consistently and don’t let the quality slip.