If you want to build a better blog, you need a thriving audience based around your blogging community.
And you can only build a great community around your blogs when you have active readership. When I talk about improving readership, what I mean is generating traffic which doesn’t stink.
Good traffic is targeted traffic, and it converts better in every sense. As a subscriber, as a product buyer, and as an engaged audience member, these kinds of visitors are the ones who will be marketing your blogs in the offline community.
The hard part is building this active readership; you need to be consistent and patient. It takes time to build this improved audience base.
But don’t worry. In this article, I will share a few strategies which will help you build an audience base around readers who need your blog.
The Definite Guide to Growing Your Blog Readership
1. Use social media sites to grow subscribers
Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ can REALLY provide a great platform to build your online reputation. If you want to build a great readership for your blog, an active social media presence will you help you do that.
Regardless of how busy you are with your online businesses or offline work, make sure you are spending quality time on social media sites to engage with other bloggers and influencers in your niche.
One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make with their social media pages is they focus on getting more likes and shares, but fail to build a community. Once your readers are engaged, they’ll be the ones getting you more likes and shares.
The key is to make your readers/blog followers feel like they are part of your community. That’s one reason why I always call Bloggeria readers, “Bloggers“.
Try promoting your best content and comment on them regularly to build healthy relationships with your audience.
But, don’t be a scumbag and promote ONLY your stuff; no one will care about you or your blog if you only talk about yourself. Use a win/win approach by sharing other’s content and, in turn, sooner or later, they will share your posts.
This is how to build great long-term readership on your blogs using social media sites.
2. Connect with other bloggers
Connections are everything in blogging.
Blogging is an online business. It needs good contacts, relationships, and a healthy network with other bloggers and influencers to succeed.
The more relationships you have built up around your blog, the better your quality of readership will be. Once you have a thriving audience, everything else becomes super easy.
You will get:
Use other people’s blogs to connect with them. Try guest posting, blog commenting, and sending them emails about their posts to quickly build these great relationships.
Again, don’t be selfish! Introduce their blogs or best posts to your readers on your blogs. This way you will be actively building a great online reputation and a strong network of fellow bloggers.
3. Use guest blogging as a weapon
Guest blogging is no doubt one of the best ways to quickly build a brand around your blog.
Guest blogging not only brings you quality back links, but it also gives you more online presence and more readership for your blogs.
Tips for successful guest blogging:
4. Make sure you have quality content on your blog
If you don’t have great blog posts on your site, no one will be interested in reading your stuff.
Even if you have a lot of influence online, it won’t help you if you’re writing mediocre, generic posts.
Identify what problems your audience is having. This will help you write much better blog posts. Know what they want and build a network around them and what they need.
Research well and connect with other influencers to know what they are writing on their sites. Observe how they are connecting to people on their blogs to improve their readership.
5. Invest money on blog design
First impressions are crucial in blogging.
If you want to quickly grab other bloggers’ eye balls, make your blog design look professional.
Make sure your blog serves up a mobile-friendly theme, as smartphone users are increasing every day. I use & recommend Genesis theme as it has inbuilt schema markup & is responsive.
6. Respond to everyone
No matter how busy you are, spend the time responding to your readers.
Try to engage with them through your blog comments, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and respond to emails. Most readers will express their problems using blog comments and emails. When you quickly respond to them and solve their problems, they will become loyal fans to you and your sites.
Take the time to respond to your readers and other bloggers and you will surely create a great impact.
Take the time to respond to your readers and other bloggers and you will surely create a great impact.
Don’t forget the importance of creating healthy relationships with your blog’s readers.In order to build an amazing long-term blog, you need active, engaged, ravingfans supporting you.
These are some of the strategies which work for me. This is the reason ShoutMeLoud is as successful as it is; we are a community of bloggers.
Try to implement few of these strategies and you will notice the difference.
Do let me know about some other tips which will help a blogger build a strong readership around their blog. Share your advice in the comments.
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