If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear?
Isn’t that how it feels sometimes when you write a blog post and it gets lost in the crowded forest of the internet getting little or no attention – and then it’s gone!
For those of you who are more experienced bloggers you will realize by now that not all blog posts get the same attention, and having a blog post fall flat is not the end of the world.
On the other hand, you also realize that you do need some of your blog content to get attention and at the end of the day, that IS what is most important.
You will also agree that blogging has changed dramatically over the last few years from relatively simple to capture attention and visitors to quite challenging based mainly on the level of the noise as well as substantial changes to the search engine algorithms which have squeezed independent content producers in favor of some larger (and often arguably less relevant options that now frequently appear at the top of the SEO rankings).
Yet there are top bloggers who are thriving in this new environment, they get massive attention, have done a superb job at attracting targeted visitors, manage to achieve high levels of engagement and continue to see blogging as one of the most powerful techniques for getting traffic, communicating with their audience and converting that audience into buyers for offers they put in front of them.
So how are they doing it?
Here are 10 techniques today’s successful bloggers are using to get more traffic and response to their blogs
Know Your Target Audience And Commit!
At the start of blogging you could post pretty much anything around a target market and get some attention, arguably it didn’t do you a lot of good to post less valuable content as the mismatch would happen when it came time to gain the trust and credibility of your audience, but still, you could get a reasonable visitor count by posting nearly anything related to your market. Fast-forward to today, things have changed. To get visitors and engagement today it requires a finesse in knowing and understanding your audience, a powerful ability to communicate with them in simple yet highly emotional terms and, of course, a strong commitment to stick with them over time to build interest, attention, trust leading to desire and action down the road.
Stand Out From The Crowd
When the crowd grows thick, how do you stand out from the crowd?
It certainly is not by looking like everyone else is it? You want to be different. Different when communicating through a blog means taking a stand, clearly sharing your point of view (without shouting at people, but without holding back either), and most of all…allowing people to see you transparently in all areas of your life and business that are of relevance to them. Top bloggers often get the most attention by sharing tips about their life, their struggles, behind the scenes look at how they do what they do. You can do the same and it will set you apart from all of the average blogs out there in your space.
Taking Action – SHOW And Tell
Top bloggers know the importance of being active in their target market. If you write a blog about weight loss, then when you attend your next weight loss convention or event, take your audience on that journey with you. Blog from the gym, attend different training and seminar functions, show them your workouts – augment your writing with images and videos that help your audience see you are not only committed to telling them about your market, but that you are willing to get involved and share actual experiences with them. In our experience, posts that share live event summaries or show activity get double the attention to normal posts that tell people about a certain topic.
Integrate With Social Networking Activity
When we work with on-line marketers inside Information Marketer’s Zone around blogging we get some very religious points of view where people believe that blogging itself should bring in the traffic when the reality today is that social networking, branding and activities will pull much more traffic back to your blog than blogging alone will ever get you (either through organic or paid traffic directly to your blog). Putting time into Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pintrest help you grab the attention of your audience where they are hanging out these days and then pull them back into content you are posting and discussions you are hosting on your blog. The two work very well together, but only if you put the effort equally into building your social networking platforms as well as your blog.
Integrate With Streaming Video
Equally as important as traditional social networking sites is the use of streaming video from the likes of Facebook Live, YouTube Streaming, and Periscope (others will emerge) where you get to communicate directly via video real-time with your audience and then being able to guide them back to your blog or website where they can see what else you can offer, subscribe to your blog for updates and extend the engagement from streaming apps to your blog. Just like friends find you on social networking and become loyal audience members, they will increasingly find you via streaming video – another terrific traffic source for your blog.
Podcasts & Radio Shows
Podcasting has continued to grow, rather silently, but it is growing and those who know how to capture attention, and grow their audiences in podcasting see the huge benefit of pulling that traffic back to their blog. Our own podcast “Online Business Platinum Podcast” pulls new visitors from iTunes and Google network weekly as well as thousands of other podcast aggregation service sites – we then drive these listeners back to our blog via references to relevant content, back-issues of the podcast as well as both free (incentive-based) offers and paid offers resulting in direct traffic to our blog from the podcasts. Again, you go where your audience spend time, a portion of your audience will be active podcast listeners.
Guest Posting – Active Blog Sharing
Another very effective technique for getting instant visitors to your blog is to actively seek out other blogs in and around your target market and offer to exchange guest blog posts where you can link back to your blog and allow them to do the same. In the case where you are approaching a blogger who has a larger reader base, then do 2:1 or 3:1 offer where you commit to 2 or 3 guest posts over a 2-3 month period if they post once for you. You want that guest post to be some of your absolute best content because you want their readers to absolutely love the content enough to click on your link and come back to your blog. Even better, offer them a link back to something valuable such as a directory, a video post on your blog with some instruction, a case study or something that they cannot ignore. Your click through rates will go way up and guest posting will be much more effective for you.
Paid Advertising
Paying to drive traffic to a blog post instead of an offer or at least a squeeze or landing page may seem counter-intuitive to many of you, but top bloggers use this technique to pull new visitors all of the time. This technique can work extremely well if you do a good job of matching the ad to the content on the blog post and then tie that blog post to further action (such as getting part 2, an additional case study, a free pdf or download, etc…) that captures them to a list, to subscribe to your blog feed or otherwise engage with your blog (which tends to bring people back to that post in the future as others engage in conversation.) Social media expert Corinna Essa shared some amazing tips for free with Online Business Platinum Podcast listeners here – you can use these tips to effectively try some paid advertising for your blog and website on-line.
Attention Getting Topics And Headlines
Perhaps for than any other technique, this one still does make the biggest difference in how many people will click through and visit your blog. No matter how someone finds your blog content (search engine, link from social networking, guest post tagline, etc…) the headline and topic will dictate whether that person will click through and read your blog post. For many bloggers, they spend 99% of their time on the content and 1% of their time on the headline. Given the importance of your headline, you want that split to look more like 70/30 or even 50/50 if you are starting out and if you struggle with the basics of copywriting – at least until you get better at your craft. A few practical tips are: try and keep your headline between 5 and 12 words, use ACTION words, keep it focused on audience and reference facts where possible. To succeed with any marketing on-line, you want to learn the basics of copywriting – one of the best places to start is with this great guide – “The Copywriter’s Handbook”
Frequency And Consistency
Most important to gaining a vast audience of targeted readers to your blog is being consistent. There is nothing that will do more harm to the visitor, engagement and effectiveness of your blog than inconsistency. Readers that arrive at your blog based on initial interest in something you wrote or posted on your blog will be interested enough to check out what else you have written and will often subscribe or at least come back to your blog one more time…if they go back and find your last blog post was a month ago or that there are huge gaps in your posting schedule, they will most likely leave permanently. Likewise, if they subscribe or keep you in their mind and don’t hear from you again for a couple of weeks, they will ignore you and have already put you out of their mind. Our advice is to post at least 3-times a week consistently – and as you find specific types of content that appeal to your audience (podcasts, video blog post, survey, q&a, etc…) then place those on a regular schedule so you train your audience to come back frequently to get their “fix” – so important to the success of your blog.
BONUS TIP – Format & Layout
As blogging and websites in general become more competitive, you will gain added points in the mind of your audience for professional layout and presentation. This tip is last for a reason, all of the other pieces that make up effective blogging will trump presentation for most topics (unless your target audience is focused on topics where visuals are very important such as fashion for example), however having an effective presentation can be a weighting factor to trigger an action such as a subscribe, a comment post or click through to an offer or link you have in your post. Over time presentation will continue to play an increasingly important role so you may as well get it right now. Ideally you leverage a blog theme like this one, that gives you many options to easily improve the professional look and feel of your blog without having to pay someone a fortune or steal time away from your content generation with complex design.
Blogs That Boost Your Brand And Your Business Results
At the end of the day your blog plays a very important part in branding you and your business, attracting visitors and customers and, if done correctly, will play a pivotal role in your ability to generate profit on-line. Use these tips to not only attract a bigger audience, get more visitors to your websites, but to boost your engagement and profit and gain customers for life allowing you to beat your competition, stand out from the crowd and dominate your market.
Do you have another blogging tip you want to share with our readers, leave a comment and let us know.
