So you’ve got a writers website, and you’ve set up a blog to showcase your writing skills, talk about topics that interest you and to ensure you always have fresh content so the search engines will love you. However, you don’t have many followers. How do you increase your audience, so that you get more followers?
Here’s my list of top 10 ways to increase followers to your blog.
- Guest blogging – Network with fellow authors and write articles for their blogs. Tackle topics which will relate to their readership and relate back to posts on your own blog. Make sure your blog is mentioned in your signature at the end, or your byline.
- Social media mentions – Once you’ve written a good blog post, mention it on Facebook, Twitter, and all your other social networks. Obviously this works better when you have a substantial following, so try to work on that aspect first. Building networks is fun, but remember, you have to be a giver, as well as a taker.
- Interesting topics – Research your topics well and find interesting subjects to talk about in your posts. Common queries, problems and relevant news items always work well. But always keep your audience in mind. Give them what they want to know and your following will automatically increase. If your topics are interesting enough, others will link to them through pingbacks. This enhances your relevancy with the search engines as well as increasing your reach. I once got a mention in the Huffington Post and my traffic almost doubled after that.
- Keyword research – If you can incorporate the right keywords into your blog posts, they have a better chance at being picked up by the search engines. Use Google’s keyword tool to determine which keywords are the most popular – and blog about those topics. This way you’re giving readers information they want, rather than writing a blog post and hoping someone’s going to read it.
- Expert bloggers – Interview experts on your blog. This raises the credibility of your blog post and offers readers some valuable expert content.
- Video content – Use video in your blog posts. Browse YouTube and find a how-to or instruction video that suits the needs of your target audience. Link to it in your blog post.
- Syndication – There are many blog syndication services out there that can pick up your post and syndicate it out to others. Blog search engines like technorati are also useful to submit your blog to.
- Images – Use attention-grabbing and relevant images in your blog. Use captions and descriptive “alt” tags. People are more likely to follow blogs that use images well.
- Frequency of blog posts – Try to post as often as possible. Once a week is the maximum, ideally every day or every two days. This keeps your content fresh. You can schedule blogs on WordPress and Blogger, so when you’re in the mood, why not write four or five blogs posts and schedule them for the week?
- Commenting on other blogs – Participating on other blogs and leaving comments gives you extra exposure. In turn, people will start commenting on yours. This is a Quid pro quo thing, so be sure to get involved.
Read my related blog post: 30 Ways to Promote Your Blog – http://marketingforromancewriters.com/30-ways-to-promote-your-blog-post/
Writer’s Conferences are the idea place to pitch your novel to an editor. You have precisely ten minutes in which to convince her that your story has what it takes to stand proudly in their line-up. So how to go about securing that request for a partial or even a full?
