I firmly believe that every author needs a blog. Hosting a blog allows you to connect with your readers and provide value. A blog will also help you generate more website traffic. Statistically speaking, the more you blog, the more traffic your site will receive. Blogging should also be at the heart of your social media strategy. Every post you write should get shared across your platforms and give followers a reason to visit your site.
Ways to Increase Blog Traffic and Reader Engagement
Many authors find it frustrating to build an audience by blogging because it typically takes time to build momentum. Following are effective ways to accelerate the process, increase traffic, engage readers, and improve the overall effectiveness of your blog:
- Share with Social Media – Each new blog post that you write should be shared across your social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Share the blog title with a link to continue reading on your site.
- Promote via Email – Summarize your recent blog posts in your e-newsletter by including the title, first paragraph, and a link to keep reading on your site.
- Write Captivating Titles – The most important element of any blog post that you write is a captivating title. You want to hook potential readers so that they will click through to keep reading. Study blog titles on popular blogs to see how they make them more enticing.
- Increase Blog Frequency –Ideally, you should update your blog at least two to three times per week.
- Retweet Past Content – If you have an archive of past blog posts, you can still tweet them out as long as they are still relevant. WordPress users can also install the Revive Old Post plug-in, which will automatically tweet out your past blog content based on parameters you set.
- Feature Guest Contributors – Invite others to contribute content to your blog, including industry experts and peers. Once their post is featured, ask them to share with their networks. To streamline the process, create submission forms on your site.
- Include Social Sharing Buttons – Make it easy for your readers to promote your blog posts by including social media sharing buttons. The major blog platforms each offer free plug-ins for these.
- Include Photos and Graphics – Images make blog posts more visually appealing to readers, and will make your posts look more professional when shared on social media sites because the photo will appear with the post preview. I strongly recommend adding a photo to every blog post. Make sure to use royalty-free images from a site like Clipart.com. Also, be sure to add a keyword phrase to the alt tag and description to each image to boost SEO.
- Feature Related Posts – At the end of each new blog post, it can be beneficial to link to previous blog posts. You can summarize these yourself or WordPress users can install the Yet Another Related Posts plug-in, which will automatically serve up links to related content based on keyword tags.
- Do More of What Works – Pay attention to the activity generated by each of your blog posts, noting which posts get the most traffic, comments, retweets, etc., and which ones fall flat. Do more of what works!
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