So you’ve finally put in the effort to develop a respectable blog. You’re posting regularly and consistently, and you’re posting about topical material relevant to your target audience. But nobody’s reading it. A common challenge we see with businesses trying to beef up their online presence is that they haven’t done enough to drive traffic to their blog. Here are some basic tips to help boost your blog traffic.
Crowdsourcing
One of the best strategies we’ve used to help promote blog content via social media is to crowdsource content for blog posts, include sources and their company names – along with links to their websites –and then involve them in helping to distribute and share content through their social channels.
So, for instance, if we’re creating a blog post on “best practices in digital HR recruitment” we would invite input from HR experts and recruiters on their ideas and what’s worked for them. We’d include the best tips along with sources’ names and the names of their companies as well as the links to their websites. Then we’d provide them with a link to the piece and ask them to promote and share — and we would do the same. In social media posts we would then tag the contributors in various posts which often prompts them to like, share, tweet, etc.
The idea is that your blog post is providing a benefit to your contributors, so why not share the responsibility for promoting it and driving traffic to the blog? Your contributors will also realize benefits from pitching in on the promotion. In addition to sharing the burden of the promotion, you are capitalizing on networks that are distinct from your own, thereby expanding your reach.
Quality Counts
The important thing, here, is to make sure the quality of the content is high. You’ve probably seen posts that are simply a laundry list of comments and sources that are not necessarily high quality, relevant or interesting to read. You can do all the promotion you want for your blog, and you might drive plenty of first-time visitors to your page. But if you aren’t providing anything of value, people aren’t going to return.
Remember, if you really want to have a popular blog, you can’t be living in Salesland. Nobody likes to read ads. People want to find relevant content that is of value to them. The benefit you should be seeking isn’t someone reading your self-promoting blog. The big benefit is creating content that results in readers coming to see you as a thought leader and source of useful information. That’s what will boost your brand and set up potential sales in the future.
It definitely takes time and effort to generate quality, useful content, but that’s what you have to do if you want people to keep coming back. This, again, is where crowdsourcing can help. Work with your crowdsourcing partners to share relevant and timely information from thought leaders across the industry.
Measure Your Results
It’s surprising how many bloggers will remark on how well or how poorly their blog is doing without having any objective data. It’s essential to measure your blog traffic and to measure changes over time. What type of content do readers seem most interested in? What crowdsourcing partnerships are the most effective?
Susan Gunelius, writing for Lifewire, recently highlighted multiple tools for analyzing metrics on your blog, titled “Top Blog Statistics Trackers,” which looks at four of the most useful tools you can use to measure how your blog is doing.
Generating a consistent, quality blog is only half the battle. You also need to drive readers to that blog if you want it to be a resource from which you can leverage greater sales. By enlisting strategic partners, ensuring relevant and quality information and tracking your results, you can boost your blog readership.
Need help creating, posting, monitoring and analyzing high quality content for your blog? We can help.
Tags: blog, blogging, blogging best practices, content curation, content management, content marketing, digital marketing, promoting content, small business blogging