Do you know what the hardest part about blogging is? It isn’t writing content or growing your traffic. So, what is it? The hardest part about blogging is getting that initial traction… Sure, you can get your first 100 readers by hitting up your friends and family, but it won’t be sustainable. What you need to do is get 500 qualified readers legitimately. Then, you’ll have a solid base that will be easy to grow further.
How to get those first 500 readers
Once you have a bit of traction, you can push for more serious publishers. Be smart about where you send your link, though. You don’t want to submit the link to blogs that have big traffic, or maybe even just a decent amount of traffic. You want to submit the link to blogs that have a lot of potential for authority, or more importantly, authority followers. Getting authority followers How can you start picking up authority users? 1. Think in terms of related topics. Instead of sending the link to big blog hubs, I recommend targeting niche blogs that are related to your niche. For example, let’s say you sell running shoes. You can think about niche running blog posts that can get you lots of traffic.
What content to create
You’re probably wondering what I mean by writing “quality content.” Well, for starters, you need to make sure that you’re actually providing value to your readers, not just spamming them with advertisements or re-posting content that you’ve seen on other blogs. My two main pieces of advice: Write about what matters to you. This means you need to think about what matters to you at the time of creation. What do you want your readers to take away from reading your blog? So write for your audience and not about them. This means you need to ensure that your posts are unique and don’t plagiarize from other bloggers. Blogs that post copycats will end up looking like a mess and will get pulled down fast. Write frequently.
How to engage your audience
You’ve come this far, now it’s time to get your 500 readers. The good news is that it isn’t rocket science. Here are a few ways to get your 500 readers: Participate in forums that your target audience frequents (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter). Blog about the products and services your customers use and recommend. Join Google+ circles, forum communities, etc. Share and link to your blog posts and social media. Promote your content. Bloggers send email to their list to encourage signups. Share blog content on social media and tag friends. Add tags on your posts so people can easily find you on Google. Participate in relevant events. Join groups where your target audience hangs out (e.g., wine connoisseurs). 1.
How to grow your traffic
Think of 500 readers as the Holy Grail. You can’t go wrong if you focus on that number. If you’re targeting 500 people, that means you’re aiming to hit them across three key areas: E-Mail signups (with potential for lead magnets or discounts), Social media sharing (with potential for affiliate marketing), Spam checking (for bot traffic). Before we get into the nitty-gritty, you have to get 500 people to trust you and your content enough to do that for you. If you hit these 500 people, this article is yours for the taking! Let’s dive right in… Why 500 Leads are essential to your success 500 leads are important because this is how you build an effective mailing list. Now, if you’ve never built a mailing list, this might seem daunting. But, it’s actually easy.
Make It Easy To Find
When you start a blog, it’s easy to be forgotten about. And when you write great content, you can also fall behind on SEO. So, if you want to get more readers, you need to get your blog more visible. That means making it easy for them to find. SEO is all about keywords. If you want to get more searches, you need to maximize the SEO potential of your blog content. You can’t have one keyword in your title and other phrases in your blog post. To help you rank higher, add meta keywords to every post. A meta keyword is a keyword that appears in the title, meta description, and in your content.
Make Your Content Easy to Read
What makes the best articles and content great is that the readers can skim through the content. That is why it’s important to make sure your content is easy to read, because when the reader is getting 80% of the information, 80% is better than 10%. That is why you want your titles to be short, especially when you are writing about a short subject or article. Your titles should be between 15 and 30 characters. So, if your article is about a story about common desk supplies, your title could be “10 Ways To Create a Paperless Office.” The easier you make it for the reader to skim the content, the better the article or content you are going to write. Make Your Content Actionable What makes great content even better is the “why” behind the “what.
Make Your Blog Consistent
By consistency, I don’t mean every post should be a 5-star review of the latest SmartRider. Consistency means that you have a daily content schedule. Every single day, you publish at least one article. For me, it’s 3 to 5. Whatever it is, make sure it’s at least 500 words. It doesn’t have to be in perfect grammatical or punctuation. I just look for a minimum of 500 words and think about how I can use my unique experience to solve a problem for someone else. Does Your Content Satisfy the needs of your target audience? Do you create content that appeals to them? Be Opinionated Are you opinionated?
Make Your Blog Valuable
Most bloggers make their blogs super promotional. They launch a blog and throw some content on it, hoping to gain enough traffic to pay the bills. But this isn’t a scalable way to grow your audience. If this were, everyone would be doing it. But the truth is, you don’t have to be that desperate. Start by making your blog valuable. The ideas are endless. Write a tutorial, make a list of awesome hacks for easy living, or even just document your own life. And then you’ll have your 500, and a book or two to add to that. Boost Your Income As I mentioned above, 500 qualified readers is the most you need to make a living. At a time, that may not seem like a lot.
Conclusion
If you want to get your content in front of the most eyes possible, you need a blog. But, there’s much more to blogging than simply writing content. There’s many other factors that are crucial for success. If you are stuck, don’t worry. There are tons of resources out there that can help you with blogging.
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