You might love writing, but if you have chosen to publish a blog rather than a private online notebook there is a good chance you want people to actually read it. If you are checking your stats month after month and seeing hardly any visitors it is disheartening so how do you get more people to read your blog?
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| 8 ways to get more people to read your blog post |
How To Get More People To See Your Blog Posts
Write Quality Content
I believe the most important thing when you have a blog is to focus on good quality content. It's more important than the number of posts, length of posts or the subject area you write about. Aim to write useful, meaningful content that has a purpose: either providing information people want to know or relatable content that connects with people. This will ensure that with time your traffic will grow.
Understand Basic SEO
Right from the beginning of writing a blog you want to have a basic understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) because this will help search engines, like Google, to understand what your posts are about and to send traffic your way.
Search traffic can bring a huge amount of readers to your blog every day for very little effort. Once a post is published you don’t need to do anything more to bring in search traffic if the post is well optimised. It is the single most effective way for most people to get traffic to their blog.
SEO works particularly well if your posts are useful for instance, people will search “how to make a good cup of tea?” and click on one of the top answers to find out the answer. They are less likely to type into Google "what did Kate get up to at the weekend?". If your posts are interesting and relatable they may bring in regularly readers, but if they aren’t answering a question they are unlikely to get search engine traffic.
Pin Your Posts To Pinterest
Some people find Pinterest a very good source of traffic. You need to be using it effectively, but it’s a search engine in it’s own right and lots of people will search on there for inspiration. Pinterest can work really well for crafts, recipes and interiors, but my most popular post on Pinterest for my 'Family Lifestyle' blog is a post on PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) so other types of posts can do well too. You need to create images with text that will catch the attention of people when they are "pinned" and encourage them to click through to your post.
Share Posts On Social Media
If your posts are more personal eg talking about your opinions and experiences, they are more likely to get traffic through social media than search engines. For instance on my Family Lifestyle blog I wrote a post after home schooling finished called “Sorry teachers, I have failed”. It was a relatable post where I talked about how I hadn’t done a very good job teaching my children while the schools were closed. The post resonated with lots of parents and clicked through from social media. A version of the post was also published in a magazine. The post has never received any search traffic, but it did get lots of social media views with parents across the country.
Social media is a great way to direct readers to your blog posts if you already have an audience, but what about if you are trying to reach a new audience?
Ways To Reach a New Audience For Your Blog Posts On Social Media
Use relevant hashtags. Nearly every social media platform allows searching using hashtags so it can be an easy way to identify what your post is about and who it will appeal to.
Use a location tag of either your location or the location of the place you are writing about.
Tag other accounts. This can work well if you review a product or attraction because the company you tag might reshare your post helping it to reach a larger audience. Do not just tag random accounts though, you will annoy people and it's unlikely to have any benefits.
Drop useful links in groups. Sharing blog posts in relevant groups on Facebook can work really well, especially if someone asks a question which your blog post can answer well. Make sure you don’t spam groups though and check the rules of the group to make sure they allow link dropping or you will be removed.
Promote your post. You can pay to promote posts to a wider audience. Well written ads that interest the readers sufficiently to click through to a post can work well, but think carefully before doing this. If you aren't selling something in the post you will be spending money just to get page views, you need to convert those visitors to regular readers or to customers to really have a benefit from paying to advertise your posts.
Link Parties
Linkys have massively dropped in popularity, but there are still some around. They normally work by a host having a post where you can add your post link and other people taking part are expected to visit some or all of the other blogs on the list and leave a comment. A linky will normally have a theme and you should check the rules of the linky before you sign up.
A linky can be an interesting way to find other bloggers and sometimes they will share your posts on their social media, but there is no guarantee of traffic from them. You might be able to find relevant ones by asking in blogger groups or searching "#Linky" on Twitter.
Commenting On Other People’s Blogs
While I have some blog posts people comment on to share similar experiences or to ask questions, most of the people who comment on blogs these days seem to be spammers or other bloggers. Commenting on blogs can help raise your DA which is why bloggers do it, plus there is an etiquette that if you comment on someone’s blog that you check out their site and return a comment (some do, some don’t). In most blogging niches bloggers are friendly and supportive and will reciprocate when you support them, sharing their posts on your social media is another way to do this.
Host Giveaways
If you care less about the quality of traffic and just want to boost the overall numbers visiting your site then giveaways can work well. Superlucky.me has lots of great advice on how to host giveaways and once live if your share them on competition websites (like prizefinder.com) you will get traffic. Prizes don’t have to be expensive, a surprising number of people will enter just for a chocolate bar, but to be cost effective you really want to convert the visitors into subscribers or followers on social media. You can use Gleam or Rafflecopter to record entries and ask people to follow your social media accounts as a method of entry. If a prize has too wide an appeal though you will get people entering just for the prize and they wont be interested in any of your other content. To get a long term benefit you want the prize to appeal to your blog's target audience, and just your ideal target audience.
Ask People To Share Your Posts
At the end of your post you can add a call to action which encourages people to share your post. For instance you could write “if you found this helpful please share the post”. To make it easy for people to share posts ensure you have social media share buttons which allow readers to share posts with just a few clicks.
If you have found this post useful and you think it could help others, I would love it if you could save it to Pinterest or share it on social media, thank you. You see what I did there?
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