Contrary to what many people think, blogging is still relevant! Maybe even more than when it started, although not for the same reasons.
Today’s internet is based on search engines, after all, which better way to find what we want quick and easy?
And because of that fact, the good and abundant written content is more valuable than ever. So, if you were having second thoughts about continuing or starting your blog: Blogging doesn’t seem to be going anywhere!
We prepared for you 8 steps that can help you reach a bigger audience. Let’s get to it!
Improve Your Blog’s Content
First of all, make sure yours is great content. In today’s world, Google decides who is worth visiting and who doesn’t. If your content is scarce, inconsistent, or offensive, people will leave, and your rank in Google will go down. On the other hand, if people stay or even share your content, your rank will go up organically.
Let us break some of the steps to create amazing blog articles for you:
1. Use Seo Keywords
One of the best ways to drive readers to your blog is by using SEO strategies and to do that, you need to start paying attention to keywords and search results. Don’t worry! There is a whole section about it ahead.
2. Writing A Good Headline Is Key
Your headline is the first thing people will read about your blog. Not only that, the headline is the main reason why people choose to write or not a piece of content. So it’s not overestimating to say that your header may be the most important part of your post.
Remember the goal of your title is to catch your audience’s attention, so keep it simple. If they see complicated words or ideas, it is probable they just leave. Remember your headline is bait.
Still not sure about how to write a good header? Check out these 5 Simple Steps To Write SEO Headlines That Increase Click-Through Rate.
3. Find The Right Niche For Your Blog
One of the most common mistakes everybody makes when starting a blog, eCommerce, or brand webpage is to think they will sell to anyone. Spoiler alert: They won’t.
To succeed in today’s competitive digital world, the first thing you need to do is to find the right niche.
What Is A Niche?
To put it in plain English: Niches are groups of people with similar characteristics and interests. For instance:
- Classical Music Lovers
- Skaters
- Cosplayers
- Tech-lovers
- Gamers
- Foodies
And an unending list of etceteras
Finding the right one for your blog is important because it can lead you to grow exponentially. Besides, within a niche, a satisfied customer can turn into 3 more customers. And if you manage it correctly, your brand, blog, or product can even become part of the community, leading to even more growth.
4. Pay Attention To Trends And Take Notes
When doing research, you’ll find many topics that are present across different blogs and pages within a niche. Those are the topics you want to write about. There are two main reasons:
- It is a proven topic since it is already out there
- There is already an interested audience across many blogs and web pages
5. Choose The Right Topics For Your Blog
There are many ways to find good topics for your blog, let us give you some ideas!
Comment Section
If you already have a blog, webpage, or Facebook page about your business. You can go to the comments section and look for the most asked questions or the topics everyone seems to be interested in.
Quora
Quora is a community specialized in asking questions. Because of that, it can become a great source of fresh ideas to write.
Facebook Groups
Remember what we mention about niches? Facebook groups are niches. The best part is they are really easy to find and join. If you are struggling to find the right niche for your brand, this is a great place to start
SEM Rush
This tool provides valuable data about keywords, like how many people are searching for them, or which keywords are related. You can even find how difficult it is to rank in google with each keyword.
6. Take Advantage Of Text Formatting -use Bullets And Lists
As readers, we all avoid dense blocks of texts, but as writers, we sometimes forget that. Break the information as much as you can, in small, but relatable chunks of information. A great way to do this is by using bullets and lists.
And when you think of it, it’s a pretty simple and elegant way to break information into reader-friendly paragraphs.
7. Add Images To Your Blog Posts
Images can help you connect emotionally with your audience. Take the time to choose the right images to illustrate your blog post.
Sharing your photos and images is always the best option, but if you don’t have images to share, you can use stock images.
8. Proofread And Double Check All Your Content
Do not skip this part! Proofreading is important because people always prefer to read well-written content, but also because of the Google Search Engine, which favors grammatically correct blogs and websites. Grammarly is a great tool for all types of writers.
Use Social Media To Promote Your Blog
Undoubtedly, social media is one of the first options we all think of when trying to promote a webpage or blog. According to eMarketer, 73% of internet traffic comes from social platforms, so it won’t hurt to try!
However, you’ll find quickly that using social media for your business is different than just scrolling around. Let us help you come up with a social media strategy that increases your audience.
9. Bring Something Valuable For Your Audience
Have you ever googled, let’s say, pink curtains out of curiosity… just to find a couple of hours later, every one of your social apps showing you pink curtains ads? That is pushy and a little bit creepy right? So let’s avoid any type of push strategy and let’s focus on developing an effective pull strategy.
The best way to catch people’s attention is by giving out valuable content upfront. And don’t worry! This sounds way harder than what is.
Bringing valuable content to your audience, sometimes is as easy as connecting dots. Let’s say for instance you want to get into a foodie community on Facebook.
Of course, you could start by asking strangers:
“Hey! Visit my blog where I talk about international food”
BUT…
People will be far more interested if you start by OFFERING one of your favorite french dessert recipes… that happens to be hosted in your blog.
See? Just by choosing the right post to share and by switching the mindset, you can turn the posts you already have into valuable content for any new audience.
10. Develop Visually Appealing Content
Social media is a visual experience, and there is no better way to catch people’s attention than with good visuals. Sometimes you can even use the same images from your blog.
This is an important part of your social media strategy because people are more willing to share images, gifs, or videos than any other type of content.
11. Interact With Your Audience
One crucial aspect of social media is interaction, pay attention to your audience and help them have a great online experience. Spark conversations, like their comments, and answer their questions.
12. Make Your Content Shareable
Of course, we meant paying attention to all of these steps, but also to add social media buttons to your blog. This way, people who love your posts will be able to share them instantly. We suggest using only three social share buttons to avoid excessive visual distractors.
Remember adding images, videos, or gifs to your content can also make it more appealing.
13. What To Share Across All Your Social Platforms?
You may already be doing this, and if not, start right away! Remember all platforms work differently, and even if the content you share is the same, the message should be adequate for each platform.
Due to this platform format, the best way to share something is by using mixed media. For instance, you can share an image from your blog and a little extract from your most recent post. Try and keep it aligned to the community rules, if that’s the case, and avoid sharing in groups that don’t allow link sharing
Same formula, but give priority to the image. Try to keep the text as short as possible and if you can avoid it, better. Use hashtags related to your niche and content.
If your blog has anything that may sound controversial, Twitter is the best place to share it! You can also use images and brief text. Do not forget to use hashtags.
VideoBlogging is not going anywhere soon. If you feel comfortable in front of a camera, you can start turning your written content into video content and reach different audiences.
The best part about TikTok is that you can be as creative as you want! You can talk to the camera, use animation, filters… share images of your cat while you read your content. Just keep it under one minute.
14. Post Consistently
One crucial aspect of social media is interaction, pay attention to your audience and help them have a great online experience. Spark conversations, like their comments, and answer their questions.
Develop Digital strategies to reach more readers
Sometimes we forget the internet is way more than social media, and there are many other platforms and strategies you can use to promote your blog for free. Here are some of them.
15. Optimize Your Blog Posts For SEO
The best way to promote your blog is SEO optimization. The reason is simple: SEO optimization can help you reach audiences already interested in the topics you write about. But the best part is you can do that organically. Another big advantage is that you can even optimize your old blog post to drive more visitors.
Consider these aspects if you want to start using SEO optimization:
Pay attention to permalinks
Instead of this:
www.myblog.com/Yr0kC-Wg5KQ5MdhV8bnQ1uH1dwbdj.html
Your Blog’s URL should look something like this:
www.chavezwebdesign.com/12-strategies-to-grow-your-restaurant-with-email-marketing/
This is the best way to tell search engines what your blog is about. All web hosting platforms allow you to change your permalinks settings. If you are a WordPress user, here’s a video guide that shows you how to do it.
16. Improve Your Meta Descriptions
One crucial aspect of social media is interaction, pay attention to your audience and help them have a great online experience. Spark conversations, like their comments, and answer their questions.
The meta description is the small text that appears under the URL on the search results page. This text has no direct influence over SEO metrics but is vital to give people a glimpse of the content they are about to click on. Think of it as a Netflix synopsis about your blog post.
We recommend this tool in many posts because it works. The portent Serp Preview Tool allows you to check exactly how your URL and meta description will look on Google before you publish.
17. Use Online Forums And Groups
Online forums are another great tool to find niches. It doesn’t matter how specific a niche can be, almost sure they have a community on Reddit.
Keep in mind many forums won’t allow you to share your blog link just like that. Let’s say you have to earn it. And that is great! Because that is exactly the mindset you must follow in all your other strategies: Try to become part of the community first.
Not sure how to find a forum about your specific topic? Easy: Type “Your niche + Forum” in Google and that’s it!
If you are not familiar with online forums, you can start by joining Facebook or Linkedin Groups, which cover a very similar function.
18. Develop An Email Marketing Campaign
This is one of the oldest strategies, but amazingly, it still delivers very good numbers when used correctly. If by any means you happen to have a mailing list, that’s the best place to start.
This is also a great tool if you have an eCommerce store since regular blogging and regular newsletters are a great way to keep your customers coming back.
If you are interested in developing an email marketing campaign, this article is loaded with email marketing strategies to make the most out of those old mailing lists! check it out here.
19. Promote And Interact With Other Content Creators
Sharing another creator’s content is always a smart choice. There are so many!
- Excellent public relationship tool
- The best way to spark conversation in a new community
- Great Link Building strategy
- It gives you certain authority within the community
- People you mention may mention you back
Would you like a personality within the community telling their followers to read your blog? Promoting other creators’ content is the best way to achieve it.
Another great way to interact with other content creators is to guest blog. That means you can write one post for their blog and they can write for yours. This can help you both increase your audiences.
20. Promote Your Blog On Less Conventional Platforms
So now that you are ready to develop your marketing strategy, here are ten tools you can use to promote your blog
Medium
An online publishing platform where you can host your blog. This is one of the most famous platforms for bloggers and its reach is around 100 million visitors a month. A lot of thought leaders across many fields host their blogs here.
But Medium is also the favorite place for freelance journalists and writers, maybe because they can publish freely without any filters and because Medium allows you to use SEO in your posts.
But you also can appear on the Medium home page and get your content recommended to other users by Medium for free. To achieve that, your blog posts need to meet all Medium Standards.
This platform is a content aggregator site. Here the user can choose from a selection of content from multiple sources. And as a creator, you can create an account and start posting right away.
Each time you publish a new post, readers are redirected to your site. This way new readers can discover your blog regularly.
BuzzsProut
This is a platform where you can record and publish your podcast. Just as with youtube, you can turn your content into an audio podcast and share it with the world. One of the best things about this platform is that you can reach millions of listeners! This is because they make your podcast available in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and other platforms.
You can also record episodes and schedule a day and time to release them. This is an excellent tool to reach a different audience and get more visitors.
Conclusion
Blogging is more relevant than ever! The trick is to have high-quality content. Remember to take a look at these 6 strategies to write the perfect blog post, to find even more tips and tools.
Do you still have questions? Ask the experts! Click on the green button at the bottom right of your screen and we’ll be glad to answer all your questions!
Sources:
https://writtent.com/blog/14-ways-market-blog-free/
https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/3013/8-free-links-to-promote-a-blog.aspx
https://wpblogdesigner.net/promote-your-blog-for-free/
https://www.woorank.com/en/blog/promoting-your-blog-on-social-media
https://www.buzzsprout.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwhMmEBhBwEiwAXwFoETTPGvqOjbWn5G9d-tt7rr33Z0CxoPkeZWMP93SvuBjYgmR-l2ZoeBoCyiMQAvD_BwE
