Having a blog is one of the best content marketing strategies you can implement. 69% of businesses say that their blogs give them the most lead generation, and 60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers.
If you’re not yet seeing the results you’d like, it’s time to kick your blog into high gear. Here are nine quick and simple ways to improve your blog and increase your traffic.
1. Share Your Posts More than Once
Many bloggers fall into the pattern of publishing a blog post, sharing it on social media and email, and then moving on to the next. However, you can squeeze much more juice out of your blog if you share it multiple times on each platform.
As you don’t want to spam your audience or come across as repetitive, you need to be strategic about how you’ll post. There are two easy options from which you can choose, both of which involve automation platforms:
- When your blog is ready to share, create multiple posts and schedule them ahead of time to post. You can use Hootsuite, Buffer, or a similar social post scheduler to help with this. For one post, you may use the title of your post. In another, you could pose a question. Highlight a key point in each post.
- A different option is to use a platform like Edgar to automatically repost some of your posts a few weeks or months down the road. The upside to this is that it’s less work. Create one post and it will eventually repost. The downside is the lack of variety and the slow burn of blog traffic, rather than a burst of traffic in the first week or so within posting.
2. Guest Blog
Guest blogging is one of the most effective ways to build links to your blog, encourage more traffic, and access a wider readership and potential clientele. Research blogs and publications that align with your blog content.
You may consider contributing to general news publications, such as Huffington Post or your local newspaper, or someone specific to your niche. For example, if you target doctors, you may contribute an article to a local hospital’s newsletter on retirement planning for doctors.
At the end of every article you contribute, make sure you include a link to your blog. If the publication allows it, include a link to another one of your blog posts within the article.
3. Repurpose Your Content
It takes time and effort to create a blog post. Make the most of it by recycling it into other formats. With every piece you curate or create, create a list of how you can recycle it.
Here are a few other formats into which you can turn your content:
- SlideShare presentation
- Video
- Podcast
- Infographic
- Report
- Whitepaper
- eBook
4. Add Your Blog Link to Your Email Signature
Business professionals exchange dozens, if not hundreds, of emails every day. This makes your email signature prime real estate for promoting your blog. Add a link to your blog in your email signature.
You can also go a step further and create a more visually enticing signature that captures people’s attention. With WiseStamp, you can create an attractive email signature with all of your marketing links. They claim that by adding your image and social media links to their signature see a 32% increase in email replies and a 10% increase in social network reach.
5. Send a Regular Email Newsletter
Most advisors aren’t posting on their blog daily or multiple times per week. If you’re posting a new article every other week or every month, send a consistent and designed email newsletter featuring your new article. Feature an image, a short blurb or introduction on what your blog discusses, and a link to the post.
6. Add a Newsletter Sign Up Form to Your Website and Social Media
Make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog and receive your newsletters. Add forms on all website pages, and only require a name and email address to encourage quick sign-ups.
On your Facebook Business page, you can also a call-to-action button. Update your button to direct visitors to your email newsletter signup. There are two different ways you can do this. The simplest way is to direct people to your website and hope that they see your newsletter signup form.
The more strategic option takes a little more work. Create a landing page specifically for newsletter signups. You can make this look as simple as possible — with just the signup form — or more complex with other information and visual elements.
7. Grow Your Blog Subscription List with Facebook Ads
For less than $10 per day, you can run a Facebook ad for a specified amount of time directing people to your blog or email newsletter signup page. It takes some time to set up and target specific markets, but these steps are well worth the time and you’ll get the most bang for your buck.
Try to target a niche market, be it a specific age range, geographic location, job title, or interests. You can review your analytics to see how the ad is performing and make adjustments.
8. Link to Other Articles
Make it easy for readers to discover related posts and spend more time exploring your blog. Within a post, link to similar articles you’ve written in the past.
9. Ask Readers and Clients for Feedback and Ideas
Annually in an email or one-on-one with clients, ask for feedback and ideas. What topics would they like to see you cover? What questions do they have that you could answer within a post? The more you can cover the topics your readers want to see, the greater traffic you’ll see.
It takes time to build up your traffic, so the best thing you can do is avoid frustration and keep blogging. Over time, people will find your blog and share with their friends, resulting in an organic uptick in traffic and views.
