Are you looking to get more people reading your blog posts? Wondering how to supercharge their reach and get a consistent flow of new subscribers? In this article I'll outline three great ways you can increase traffic to your blog and get more eyeballs reading your content.
1. Promote your post across multiple social media sites
Promote your blog post across as many social media channels you feel it could work on. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Pinterest, and Reddit can be great ones to focus in on. With Twitter, it's a good idea to use a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule multiple tweets throughout the week about the particular post. With LinkedIn, you'll want to promote it on your company page, personal LinkedIn profile, and in relevant groups.
I also recommend creating your own LinkedIn group. As a LinkedIn group manager, you have the ability to send out an email to every group member. Remember, you personally don't have these people's email addresses so it's valuable that you're still able to get a message directly into their inbox via LinkedIn. You may want to send an email about a white paper or e-book you created that will help your members with such and such.
Moreover, it's useful to consider paid ads, such as promoting a tweet or boosting a Facebook post, across your social sites. This will ensure you get more people reading the social media update and clicking on the link to your blog article. With Facebook's most recent algorithm changes, paid ads are becoming increasingly more essential in getting your updates seen.
Lastly, be sure to give readers the ability to share your blog posts on the social media site of their choice.
2. Promote your post in relevant communities and forums
Find out which communities and forums your target audience is involved with. Then make an effort to become a part of these communities by sharing helpful tips and ideas, engaging in discussion, and answering questions. If you or someone on your team just wrote a blog post that you think the community can benefit from, go ahead and share it with them. You may get people replying to the thread with questions or comments, and if so, be sure to respond to each one of them.
You don't want to take the wrong approach here, which would be to simply register on a forum and then blast out your blog posts each time one is published, regardless of its relevancy and without engaging in any discussion with other members.
3. Leverage your email list
Be sure you make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog. This means having a subscribe form above the fold with a clear and compelling call-to-action. You may want to incentivize people to subscribe to your blog by offering a free guide or e-Book once they do. When a new post is published, send an email update to your list with a snippet of it and a link to read the full article on your blog.
Your goal should be to get the email address of every relevant visitor to your blog. A large and growing list of subscribers means that you're boosting the likelihood of your posts being seen by as many people as possible. Make certain that your subscribers can easily share your email with their friends or family on their social media sites.
And here's a tip: pick a few of your best performing or most popular blog posts and highlight them in your company's monthly e-Newsletter.
In addition, another great email promotion strategy is to reach out to key influencers who could benefit from a particular post and share it with them. As well, contact anyone mentioned in the article (or any company you linked to) and let them know about it. You'll find that this could be an excellent way to help the post go viral or at least generate more traffic.
Build greater awareness of your blog using the techniques I discussed in this article. Over time, you'll find that your traffic will increase and your posts will have the chance to get you the business results you're looking for.