Creating a blog is a great way to share your voice and even your expertise in a certain subject. It can be a creative form of expression and a way to connect with other people. Yet, the challenge lies in not creating a blog itself, but rather attracting an audience.
After all, there are so many blogs out there, that it can be difficult to catch people’s eye. Whether you’re starting a blog for people reaching retirement age, or you want to appeal to a younger generation, here are some tips to help you build and expand an audience for your blog.
Define Your Niche
The first and most important step is defining exactly what your niche is. Blogs that are too far across the board and try to cover too many different subjects often struggle to build and retain their audience. Instead, focus on one single thing that you and you’re good at talking about.
Perhaps most importantly, research your target audience so that you get to know their interests and pain points. That way you can tailor your content to specifically address their needs.
Create High-Quality Content
High-quality content is the most important aspect of retaining your audience. Pumping out content simply for the sake of having content is not going to keep people’s interest. Whereas if you can manage to post things that people are genuinely interested in and bring value to people’s lives then you will be sure that they’ll come back and visit for more content.
Ideally, you should maintain a consistent posting schedule to keep your audience interested and engaged. Develop a calendar which posts things on a schedule. This way you don’t really have to think about posting things, it will simply happen on its own without having to remember.
Optimize for SEO
SEO, which stands for search engine optimization, is one of the most important strategies for attracting an organic audience to your blog. Use relevant keywords and sprinkle them throughout your blog to make sure Google references your blog when people search for similar terms.
The more keywords and significant links you can insert into your blog posts, the more Google will favor your content and improve your visibility on Google.
Promote Your Blog
Creating a blog and hoping people will just show up is not going to be entirely effective. You also need to make sure that you promote your blog to your friends, family, and network. Promote your blog in a wide variety of ways, from word of mouth to posting on social media.
This will largely depend on where your target audience is located. You may find you’ll have more success promoting your blog in places like LinkedIn if it’s a professional blog, whereas somewhere like Facebook may be more successful with people over the age of 50.