With such a huge number of blogs for every topic imaginable available on the internet, estimated at over 275 million by this source, it is important to ensure that your business can make its blog visible to its target audience. Although it would be great for a business for readers to be able to randomly stumble upon your content, in reality it takes some work to build up an audience but the results can be worthwhile for making a good impression on customers! But what is the best way to drive readers to a blog?

1. Content

If your content isn’t interesting and relevant to your target audience, why would they want to read your blog in the first place? Ensure you follow a clear theme, decide on a target audience and ensure you are conveying messages that they will want to read. According to this source, studies have shown that including visual content in your blog can increase people’s willingness to read by up to 80%, so it’s important to consider including not just photos but infographics, videos and recognisable visual links to social media platforms – enabling and encouraging readers to share your content with others. According to Briffett & Ruebke (2013) modern marketers need to give consumers multiple platforms through which they can engage in meaningful conversations with a business in order to succeed.

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2. Promote

For many businesses there is a mentality of sharing a post once and then forgetting about it, but this should not be the case. Many people will miss the first communication but would pick up on subsequent shares at differing times and dates, meaning you can draw more of an audience by alerting them, or even nudge someone who may have seen something the first time to read it later. Be careful not to spam potential readers though, or you risk being unfollowed on social media platforms, instead try tweaking your post by sharing the title, a question, a fact or even a quote from the author (Some great examples here). As Taylor (2013) states, a social media strategy will determine which platforms are most suitable and will allow your business to share the same content across relevant channels ensuring synergy and accurate brand representation.

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3. Title

Make sure you give each blog post a catchy and descriptive title, relevant to the content as not only is this the first thing that a potential reader will see – and what will help them to decide whether to read on or not – but it is also one of the factors used by search engines to determine what your blog is about. Keep it short, and stay on topic! There are some great tips on writing a good title here.

4. Keywords

Keywords are the key to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and driving more traffic to your posts. Choose words in the title that you believe readers may search for to find your post and ensure you use these within the post at least twice, helping search engines to understand what your page is about and ultimately driving more people to your blog. Make sure to add links to other valuable sources, what search engines want to do is prioritize good quality information. As you can see in the graph below, SEO provides a huge opportunity to gather additional page views and increase reach and is only growing:

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As you can see it really pays to put some effort into improving the reach of your blog. It is important to remember to monitor your blog statistics through a free service like Google Analytics, to work out which methods are effective at getting your content out there and ensure that your hard work is successful. According to Ryan (2014) it is still important to remember that direct response, such as number of clicks, is not the only measure of success and to stay responsive with other metrics such as shares and comments.

Here are some other sources about driving traffic to check out:

20 ways to drive more traffic to your blog

21 tactics to increase blog traffic

How to drive more traffic to your blog

References:

Briffett, S. & Ruebke, S. (2013) ‘The role of content in creating meaningful conversations online: Case study of Henkel Beauty Care’s digital campaign in Germany’. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, Volume 1, Number 2, 1 January 2013, pp. 128-135(8)

Ryan, D. (2014) ‘Understanding digital marketing: marketing strategies for engaging the digital generation’. Page. 3^rd Ed, pp. 76-77

Taylor, N. (2013) ‘Choosing between social media platforms and understanding the markets they reach’. Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, Volume 1, Number 3, 1 December 2013, pp. 283-291(9)