If you are just starting to enjoy and get into blogging then it is not very likely that you will have a good idea of what to do or how to make your blog more noticeable and notoriable among the internet community. There are several tactics that bloggers put in place besides the actual writing that they do and opinions that they have before thinking about posting. There are so many different ways in which you can increase the amount of people that go to your blog and the amount of traffic that you get over a long period of time, and so here are 8 top tips for any aspiring blogger that wishes to have a bigger audience for their daily or regular blog posting.
1. Be original – I cannot stress enough that boring blog posts about the same things (e.g. whatever is in the news or whatever is currently trending) are everywhere and the chances are if you write a blog or article somebody else has done one that is better and you will cease to look original (even if your work may be very good). For this reason you should look to discuss and challenge points of view or things that nobody else would in order to add controversy to the situation and give the reader something engaging and organic to read rather than just having the same point of view as everybody else. As much as relevance is important a differing standpoint on a subject can still be just as relevant in an argument.
2. Use as many social media links, likes and recommendations as you can – if you can get likes from your friends or have them recommend a blog post to other people not only will it give them the opportunity to become regular readers via word of mouth it will also give you more viewers in general from other recommendations (especially from Facebook), and from this you can get a domino effect in which your blog gets ten times more clearance and prosperity than it would have done before. Social media is too big and a large part of most peoples lives nowadays, and so it is for this reason that you should always look for your friends or followers to help you out by liking or sharing your blog to grow further.
3. Don’t be put off by people who dislike your blog or make negative comments about it – this is one of the biggest things that will put bloggers off continuing with their work and carrying on with their blogs. The internet is a place in which people can anonymously voice their opinions about everything and anything and whilst there may be some positive comments there will also be some negative ones (especially if your opinion is adverse or the subject is based around a hotly contested subject such as religion). If you have a good following for your blog concentrate on the positive comments and feedback rather than anything negative.
4. Start by doing your blog post for fun – a lot of people naturally do their blogs and post them because of enjoyment, but for some there is the end goal of monetising a blog very early on in this process – whilst monetising a blog isn’t necessarily a bad thing or something that can be an end goal for the future you should try and start out by just blogging to voice your own opinion for no gain at all. If you do this your blogging should be consistent in quality and the number of blog posts that you make per week, and so you will naturally make it easier for yourself to make money as the content is organic and written when you want to rather than having to post a certain amount of times per week. You should always be looking to enjoy blogging rather than getting something from it and so bear this in mind when you first start out with your blog.
5. Make sure that you are constantly looking to improve your standard of written English if at all possible – well written content that is original and not plagiarised is perfect when looking to be successful in blogging and marketing your blog well as not only does it impress and engage readers even more but it also can help when looking at it from a search perspective. One of the parameters around Google’s search algorithm is quality of content and originality, and so if you have a really good blog with a high level of written English then you should see a lot more success and a lot more organic traffic rather than those that are also produced from links on 3rd party sites.
6. Try and make your blog relevant to one subject or group of subjects – one of the biggest blunders that most bloggers attempt to do is to talk about too broad of a range of subjects that are not linked whatsoever and may have no interest to the reader at all (e.g. anything that they can find from the current news). If you only look to blog about certain things you will see a lot more returning and loyal visitors that enjoy and are interested in the subjects you are talking about, and by extension you should be able to see a larger following, more social media notoriety and more unique visitors aswell.
There are a few other things that you can do to generally improve your blog but I would say that these are the core factors in both increasing traffic and having a generally better blog for your readers to enjoy. In any case I hope you have the best of luck in your blogging exploits and wow your readers with adverse and well constructed arguments regarding whichever subject you are looking to specialise in.