TL/DR: Every brand can benefit from a great blog. However, it takes some hard work to create growth and ensure that your audience members stay engaged.
Writing a blog can be a rewarding way to reach out to your audience, and share your thoughts and knowledge on issues that are relevant to them. When used correctly, your blog posts can increase traffic to your website, and ultimately result in customer conversions.
Of course, this all depends on your ability to get new people interested in your blog each day. If you can do this, your success is all but guaranteed.
So, let’s get started. Here are 11 content marketing hacks that will help you to speed up your blogging growth.
Write Product Reviews to Establish Thought Leadership And Increase Traffic
One of the most popular uses of the internet is finding information on various products and services. In fact, there are entire websites dedicated solely to giving consumers a place to read reviews that have been left by others.
Not only will posting reviews help you to draw traffic to your blog, it is also a way to establish your own thought leadership and authority. Just one word of caution…
If people don’t believe that your reviews are unbiased and accurate, you can quickly face some serious backlash.
If you engage in affiliate marketing, be upfront and honest when you review a product that could potentially earn you money.
Put Your Own Spin on Trending Content
There are dozens of ways to find trending content to use as topics for your blog posts. BuzzSumo, trending topics on Twitter and Facebook, and Alltop are a few examples. The only problem with trending topics is that everybody is writing about the same topics.
The key is to add your own spin on each trending topic. You can do this by finding unique ways to approach these topics or by sharing your thoughts on the issues that are most relevant to your audience.
Remember that your willingness to be opinionated and put your own spin on things will be the reason that people subscribe to your blog as opposed to blogs from other writers in your niche.
When you solicit user generated content, you can accomplish many awesome things.
First, it is an amazing way to get engaging content added to your blog in short order. It’s also a great way to add new users to your subscriber rolls and to get your followers active and engaged.
Ask users to share their pictures, stories, and thoughts. You can even create contests around user generated content in return for anything from bragging rights to big ticket giveaway prizes.
Be Sure You Have Lots of Content to Promote
Quantity really does matter. Blogs that contain plenty of posts and that are continually updated are most likely to have more followers.
In addition to this, the more content that you have, the more search engine spiders will continue to crawl and index your site. This helps to improve your blog’s SEO ranking.
And to sweeten the deal even further, the more content you have on your blog, the more your trust and engagement you will receive.
Consistent and high volume posting will give people the impression that you are a trusted source of information, and that they can rely on you for a regular stream of posts in the future.
Have High-Quality Standards
Audiences are more discerning today than they ever were in the past. Content that is poorly written, repetitive, and boring simply will not do.
Because of this, each post you write must pass the highest quality standards before you publish and share them. This includes using tools to check for spelling and grammar mistakes, fact checking your posts, and reading them over and over again to ensure that they are engaging enough. Tools such as grammarly, hemingway, and any writing service are absolutely perfect for this.
Link to Your Blog Posts across Your Website
The more links to your blog content the better. Each link gives you an SEO boost and a bit of credibility. While getting other people to link to your content is ideal, you can also benefit by linking to your blog posts on your website as well as to linking from one blog post to another.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Internal Linking is a very underappreciated facet of SEO, and one we highly recommend adopting to show users and search engines additional content of interest across your domain.]
Make Sharing Easy
Social shares are amazing. They get your content out to a new audience and help to improve your overall analytics. Of course, high-quality content and engagement are two of the best ways to earn these shares.
Just don’t forget about one simple factor that many people overlook: If you want people to share your content, make it easy for them to do so.
You can accomplish this by placing your social share button in a prominent place and by making it stand out. These little tweaks can increase the chances that your content will be shared far and wide.
Get Influencers to Add Their Voice
Influencer marketing is big for one reason: It really does work.
Influencers are people in your industry who have the experience and respect that make them very influential. This might include entrepreneurs, local celebrities, well-known bloggers, and much more.
If you work hard to establish relationships with influencers in your industry, the payoff is well worth it.
Once an influencer has formed a relationship with you, you may be able to ask them to guest blog for you, share an opinion or quote on your content, or simply provide an endorsement for one of your products.
Work on Your Headlines
If you operate like many bloggers, you work very hard to write some really amazing posts. Then, just before you publish them, you quickly churn out a headline.
This is too bad because your headlines are much more important than you may realize. In fact, boring headlines can be a key reason why people are skipping your posts.
A great headline contains eye-catching elements that make people want to read what is inside. You should use power words, numbers, and other compelling items in your headlines.
To get some really detailed insights into your headlines, check out Coschedule Headline Analyzer tool.
If your posts have a practical application for your readers, the better off your blog will be. In other words, be sure your posts answer the following question: What is in this for me?
If you give your audience information that they can apply to their daily lives, they will be more likely to subscribe to your content.
This is why product demonstrations and how-to posts are so popular. They literally show people how to do something that they may not have known how to do previously. Other content that educates is also perceived as being valuable by readers.
Promote Promote Promote
The importance of promoting your blog content cannot possibly be emphasized enough. If you want people to read and subscribe, you have to be willing to aggressively promote your posts on your social media feeds.
Don’t worry, this won’t be seen as spammy, so long as you share only on your feed and not others. Of course, you can ask close associates to share your promotional posts as well.
Don’t make the mistake of only linking to your new posts once or twice. Instead use a tool. This will help you to get the word out across multiple time zones if you need to.
Conclusion
Make sure your blog works for you! The tips here will help you to grow your audience quickly, and make your blog even more influential.
Featured Image provided by the author under her own license.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Pat Fredshaw
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- 11 Content Marketing Hacks to Speed up Blogging Growth - January 4, 2017
