Get People to Read Your Blog

Chances are people are not reading your blog, but it's not because they don’t like you or your blog - most likely they don’t even know you exist. You're lost in a soup of a gazillion websites, blogs, and other publications. How can you make your blog shine above the rest? Scroll past the jump to learn how to get more people reading and following your blog.

Steps

Using Social Methods to Create Interest

  1. Interact with other blogs. This helps create relationships with both the blogger whose blog you're interacting with and the people who follow that blog.
    • Make interesting, relevant comments on popular blogs. This will spark curiosity about your blog, and you may be able to pull followers.
    • Respond to every comment someone leaves on your blog. You want the person who is responding to your entry to feel welcomed, respected and deserving of attention. This will make them more likely to talk about and share your blog with other people.
    • Find blogs similar to yours to interact with - liked minded individuals will want to see your view on the interest you share.
    • Respond to popular, topical articles or blog posts on your own blog. People like to see how writers interact with each other and will be interested to see how you responded to someone whose opinion they care about.
  2. Cross blog! Simply share an entry from one of your blogs with another one of your blogs - either by providing a link or copy and pasting, or both. This is a great way to get multiple audiences interested in your material.
    • If you have more than one blog, cross post entries from the blog you want to become popular to your most popular blog. The people who follow you on one may begin to follow you on the other.
    • If you don't have more than one blog, consider creating another blog or two with different blogging programs - even if you end up just creating a replica of your original blog.
    • There are different sets of audiences who swear by different blogging programs. You can access these different bloggers and their followers by using as many blogging programs as possible to publish your entries.
  3. Submit your posts and links to your blog on tools like forums, discovery engines, peer-sourced news feeds and social networking sites. This is very natural way to create interest in your blog among bloggers and non-bloggers alike.
    • The goal here is similar to cross blogging - get your content out on as many venues as possible.
    • Consider using your personal social media accounts and email signatures to get people who are already connected to you connected to your blog.
  4. Write great headlines and subject lines. If people see an entry with a truly eye-catching lead, they're more likely to read it than something that seems dull or dry.
    • Consider how headlines affect the likelihood that someone will click on a cross posted or shared link. Interesting headlines and subject lines are essential to successfully gathering interest through third parties.
  5. Step back and analyze your blog as objectively as possible. Does your blog look poorly put together? And have people seen it a thousand times before? Are your images relevant to your topic? Content may be king, but if you present it in a bad way people just won’t read it.
    • Avoid small fonts, lousy contrast, poor design and difficult to read colors – they’re all turnoffs. Looks are important; first impressions last.
    • Make sure your blog is properly functioning. There are too many blogs with dead links, plugins that bug out, and other problems.
    • Clear out the clutter. Less is always more. No amount of widgets or other “cool things” will keep a person interested in your blog. It may even distract them away from your writing. Direct them to your content in an interesting and streamlined way.
    • Make sure you have a little introduction or indication of what your blog is about near the top of your blog's home page. This way people will know if your blog is relevant to what they're interested in. If you write it well enough, you may even convert people to your interests.
  6. Stay consistent. Don't lose followers because you failed to update for a while, or changed the theme of your blog unexpectedly.
    • If you're finding it hard to update at least weekly, look at similar blogs to yours and find entries that created a lot of comments. Lots of comments means that this person wrote about a controversial topic and you can use your response to someone else's blog as a foundation for your own entry.
    • If you want to post something unusual given the theme of your blog, consider mentioning that and posting it under a link instead - your followers will appreciate that you're thinking about their time and interest.

Using Search Engine Optimization

  1. Research search engine optimization, also known as SEO. SEO is a strategy that web developers use to increase the likelihood that someone will find their site in a search.
    • There are both complex and simple ways to optimize your blog for search engines. Read up on how other people do this and decide what strategy will work for your skill level, your needs and your content.
  2. Consider manipulating your content to include more key words. The most popular way to increase your search engine ranking is to make sure you're using the words that people are looking for.
    • Take on the perspective of your potential audience. Search some things related to your blog topic on a few search engines and see what sites are popping up on the first page. Read those sites carefully - what words seem to be in every paragraph, what words continually reappear in subject lines?
  3. Link to popular blogs you like and websites relevant to your topic. Make allies, try to convince them to link to your blog over time.
    • Share the link to your blog frequently. The more people click on your link, and the more closely related your blog seems to other popular websites, the more likely it is to show up on a search engine.



Tips

  • As you explore the blogosphere, pay attention to what works and doesn't work on other people's blogs - replicate the good, avoid the bad.
  • Be true to your interests, so that your writing reflects your passion. Failing a passion for the topic, at least have a system in place to make it appear that you are deeply engaged with it, one in which you show that you've done the research and know your stuff. If you can't reflect a genuine or well-informed interest, readers will stop reading.
  • If you blog is about a certain metropolitan area, come up with clever ways to create interest outside the internet. Try making stickers to leave at the corner store, or your local coffee shop.

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Sources and Citations

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