There comes a time when every blogger wants something somebody else has. They either want a super awesome design that looks so much better than what they've got, and what they can afford, or they want to have beautiful graphics that just look fabulous on Pinterest, but the most common feature on a bloggers wishlist is an increase in their audience and the people that follow them.
We live in a time when the quantity of people interested in what we have to share dictates our popularity. Statistics and impressions are absolutely huge in terms of creating hierarchy, and through hierarchy comes popularity, and through popularity comes, less popular people with a grudge to bare.
The amount of people following you is not always equivalent to the amount of people who care about what you have to say. Scratching your head yet? Let me tell you story that may well help you out.
Psst, before I do, let me tell you you can highlight any sentence in this post and share it!
Before I waved goodbye to Facebook, at one point, I had over 150 friends that I'd never met in my life. They were 'online' friends, people I opened up to and people I was eager to share my stories, my knowledge, my experiences, my
life with, and one day, poof, they vanished off the face of the earth. I later found out I'd been catfished and that all of those 'friends' were actually one person, pretending to be many different people in an effort to get the maximum amount of information out of me.
Why is that life lesson at all related to this post?
Through that experience, I quickly learnt that just because I had those 150 'friends', didn't mean there were 150 people actually interested in what I had to say. Just because I had a number of people surrounding didn't mean I actually had people waiting to hear what I had to share next.
Related: Get Blog Followers From the Right Places
So, back to the topic at hand. We live in a world where our popularity and expert 'name' is held accountable by the amount of people following us, but that's simply not the case. Still, getting fresh eyes upon your content and new followers intrigued by your content is something everybody wants a piece of.
Related: How To Get First-Time Visitors Hooked on your Blog
Attracting a fresh audience to your blog seems like a difficult challenge, but it doesn't have to be. There are some really easy, simple ways to get different sets of eyes on your content. Here's the 3 ways I've managed to gain fresh viewers on Nellie and Co. and a further 10 tried and tested methods proven to get you results.
1. I shared 'behind the scenes' tutorials and tips
Last month, I talked about
sharing blogging secrets and shared some of the positives of doing so. Within that post, I quickly mentioned how many of my most reviewed posts are actually tutorials, or 'How To's, and I'm going to dive into why that is a little more now.
Let's take a look at
Google Adwords: Keyword Planner. Adwords is a program used through Google that allows the user to check out most searched for words or terms in order to create pay-per-click campaigns. I don't create campaigns, but I do like taking a sneak peek at Keyword Planner to see what search terms are most popular and when, and whether there's anything I can create content wise that puts me in the spotlight for that specific sector. In other words:
Ashley talked about
what the heck quality content is and means last month, and she touched upon how quality content can and does solve a problem or provides a solution. By scouring Adwords every now and again and checking out different keywords in relation to their search results in a set period of time, I can work out how well my content 'could' rank in Google results, and how much competition I've got in terms of other similar content if I were to write the post.
Related: Using Adwords to Write Profitable Affiliate Posts
Not only does Keyword Planner and SEO play a big part in my increase in fresh audience and my increase in organic search results, creating tutorials people want to see and are encouraged to share is also a big reason behind why tutorials do very well. People want to learn how to do things for themselves, rather than just hear about how you've done it yourself, and when you give them a walkthrough and the tools to achieve the best they can, they're more likely to share your content with other people.
Take for example my
Picmonkey and
Canva tutorials. A lot of bloggers struggle to create their own graphics with these two programs, and I'm asked quite a bit how I create my blog graphics, so to inform my current followers and teach them how they can easily create graphics just as I do was a really simple way of solving a problem for those interested. Both tutorials showed a step-by-step process of the graphic coming together, showing how simple, how quickly and how easily it could be done. The entire post is the exact content my current followers and new followers alike are interested in reading, and that's why it brings a fresh audience to my blog on a regular basis.
2. I put my name, and my content, in front of new eyes
There are so many ways you can put yourself in front of people, and it's much easier to achieve online than it is in real life. If you had something to share, stood in front of a group of someones and said 'I can show you why x,y and z are going to make achieving Goal A possible!', there's a pretty good chance you would be shunned, and in some dodgy areas of the North West, beaten black and blue. Alas, with the help of the world wide web and some social media know how, getting what you have to say in front of people that actually care is a lot easier than you might think.
Promoting content on social media
Say you've written a absolutely fabulous post, honestly, it's super amazing, out of this world mind blowing. You want to make sure you're not just shouting that post out into a void of nobody and actually getting your content in front of the right people, am I right? With your post all written out, it's time to take a look at what your post is.
Ask yourself the following questions. Better still, grab a pen and some paper and write them down;
- What is primary subject of this post?
- Who is the ideal audience for this post?
- What is the main purpose of this post?
- Have you featured anyone in this post? If so, who?
- Have you used any products/services? If so, what?
- What do you want readers to do after reading this post?
Ready to dig a little deeper?
Take for example, my post on
Free Ecourses. Let's answer these questions in relation to that post.
- Q. What is the primary subject of this post?
A. Free Ecourses
- Q. Who is the ideal audience for this post?
A. Bloggers. Online Business Owners.
- Q. What is the main purpose of this post?
A. Introduce and recommend ecourses.
- Q. Have you featured anyone in this post? If so, who?
A. Olyvia.co, Autumn Leaves.co, KristaRae.co, CaitlinBacher.com and TheAlishaNicole.com
- Q. Have you used any products/services? If so, what?
A. 21 Day Brand Detox, Transform Blog, Boost Small Biz, Sales via Social Media and Vision Clarity
- Q. What do you want readers to do after reading this post?
A. Check out the ecourses featured.
Those answer makes putting our content in front of new, awaiting eyes, 10x easier than it was five minutes ago. By answering those questions, we've managed to established
a clear subject,
two different types of audience,
five different professionals to say '
hey look, I featured you in my post!' to and
five different products or services you can connect yourself to. Now, when it comes to promoting yourself on social media, you've got lots of options.
Let's use Twitter as our form of social media for now.
An okay tweet could be: "Check out todays post where I review and recommend five e-courses!"
A better tweet could be: "Today's post is all about #ecourses for #bloggers and #business women!"
However, an awesome tweet would do more than just mention the subject of the post and use a few hashtags. To get your content in front of even more people, people who don't already follow you or use those #hashtags, you've got to focus your attention on the professionals you've featured and the products or services you featured/used.
"#detoxmybrand with @OlyviaMedia was awesome! Want a reason to check it out yourself? Look no further!"
"Hey @kristirae! I loved your #boostbiz ecourse so much, I recommended it on my blog! Would you be interested in a testimonial?"
These two examples are really great example tweets you could send out that would not only promote your content, but it would put your content in front of the people that matter, the people you featured, and the people that follow them if you're really lucky. In some cases, professionals will reply to your tweet, and some may even retweet or quote your tweet, putting your name, and your content, in front of hundreds, thousands of people who fit your ideal audience.
Related: How To Build a Loyal Blog Audience
Word of warning though. When it comes to promoting your content with the inclusion of other people, make sure it's not spammy in any way. You've seen those social media accounts that spend their lives tweeting famous celebrities countless questions, asking for retweets, begging for attention - you do not want to act like, or been seen as one of these accounts. Be friendly but approachable. Be excited to share your thoughts but consider the fact you're attracting the attention of a human being with feelings. Don't appear naggy or pushy, or look demanding, give the professionals you love some loving, first and foremost, because why not?
Promoting content on other blogs via guest posts
Everyone is aware of guest posts and how they work. You write a post or some content for another blog, they publish it to their followers and give you a link or two and there. Done. That's the thing though - it's not over until and it's over, and if you think that just by creating the content you can wipe your hands and get back to business, you're wrong.
Related:
How To Guest Post Like a Boss
Guest posting is more than just writing something and hoping it does well on another blog. When
I guest posted on Nosegraze and talked blogging niches, I thought I'd done a really good, and Ashley thought so too, that's why she featured it, but looking at that post now, I can see how I could have improved not only the content, but how I went about getting that contents value across to her followers, and how to get an exclusive guest post opportunity working for me, rather than me for it.
How do you encourage one bloggers followers to follow you though?
Create a 'Call To Action!'
Your post might be the best post you've ever written, and people reading that post might think so to, but once that post has been read, what is there left to do? Chances are, those readers aren't going to jump on over to your blog because they don't need to. You're not encouraging them to do anything other than read your post somewhere that isn't your blog, and you have to change that, now.
'Call To Actions' can be something similar to:
- subscribing to something
- downloading something
- checking out something
They encourage a reader to do more than just click out of your post. They create an action. Putting the right 'call to action' to include however depends entirely what your post is about. Let's go back to the final question in the list mentioned earlier..
What do want readers to do after reading this post?
The answer you give to that question influences what type of 'call to action' you should include in your guest post. Say for example I want people to subscribe to my mail list, I could (and probably should) create an exclusive content upgrade, something that gives a little more to the post and helps the reader out further. Creating exclusive additional content and making it available for those that go the extra mile and subscribe to your mail list creates a 'call to action' that doesn't feel gimmicky.
