3 Ways to Radically Improve Your Blog
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Enhancing your blog is one of the best ways to maximize your online presence. I’m not talking about a complete overhaul here, but if it will improve your visitors’ experience, it may not be a bad idea .
Start getting better results from your blog right now by taking these three actions.
Publish more content
How often do you publish content on your blog?
To increase the impact of your blog, consider blogging every single day. Don’t worry – I’m not suggesting that you write an article every day. There are many other ways to create content for your blog. You can:
- Invite well-known industry leaders to blog
- Ask for submissions from your audience
- Use quality guest bloggers
- Add other writers to your team
- Use Private Label Rights (PLR) content
- Repurpose content
- Update older content
In fact, using a variety of blog post formats will actually improve your audience experience. Consider adding graphics, infographics, video and lists to your traditional blog post content.
The more often you blog, the higher your search engine rankings. And as your rankings increase, so does your inbound traffic.
Market your blog
According to Derek Halpern of Social Triggers, you should spend four times as long promoting a blog post as you did creating it. Publishing more content will only be effective if the right people find it!
Here are a few ways to boost traffic to your blog:
- Post links on every social media platform you use.
- Keep an eye out for Blog Carnivals and Link Parties related to your blog, and submit a post whenever you can.
- Add a link to your latest blog post to your email signature.
- If you send out a newsletter or ezine, be sure to include links to your best blog posts.
Add a Call to Action
You have to give your reader something to do once he’s finished reading your post. Otherwise, the conversation – as one-sided as it’s been to this point – is over, and you’ve missed out on an opportunity.
This is where many bloggers fall down flat — they don’t include a Call to Action. Even if they do, it may not be tailored to the content of the post or to their goal for that particular post.
Which of these actions do you think would benefit you most?
Image © alistairjcotton / depositphotos
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I guess I’d have to say call to action is my weakest point. I’m not sure what action I want to trigger… of course, I’m happy to have people reach out to me, but I don’t want my posts seem like a sales job. I often end with a question, so in that case, the call is for people to engage, which I really like!
It helps if you decide on the purpose of the post before you start writing – maybe even draft the call to action first, then write the rest of the post so it flows naturally to that conclusion.
I need to work on updating posts. The call to action is also something I forget on occasion. I have to make sure that I create the post and let it go and then revisit it another day to see if there is anything I missed. Thanks for sharing, Janet.
I highly recommend writing a post and setting it aside to review again before publishing, but I’ve fallen out of the habit. I think when you do something regularly, it becomes part of your routine. A prime example is the way I ended this post!
I think my weakest part is not promoting it as much as I should once it has been published. I am going to starting to use buffer again to post current and older content.
I recently turned all my blog posts into articles. Now, I’m thinking I’d like to start blogging again. The thing that turned me off of blogging was the ‘date’ inserted into each blog. I couldn’t find a way of turning that off on my WordPress theme and it was really starting to bug me. I figure that the older the article the less likely the reader/scanner will find it worthy of their valuable time.
I guess the way around it is to blog often and repurpose the old stuff, bringing it back to the top again.
Wendy, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with your last sentence. However, keep in mind that most themes can be edited – you may have to ask someone who “speaks” PHP to do it for you.
Thank you, Janet!
How many posts do I have to post every month :)? Around 15-20?
I think you’d really see a difference in traffic if you posted 15-20 times per month. But don’t forget quality always trumps quality! Better to post a few really good posts than a lot of filler.
I add a question and ask for a reply in most of my blog posts. As of now I still don’t get any comments. Any idea?
I looked at a few of your posts, but only saw one that ended with a question. Try doing this more consistently and you may find a difference. Keep in mind also that there are many other factors at play… Are people actually reading your blog? You’ve got some great information, so you may just need to spend more time promoting your posts.
I am going to start repurposing my old blogging material. Some of the other suggestions I am already doing and it is nice to be reassured that I am on the right path.
When you do, I suggest that you look for posts that you can improve by adding updated information, bigger and/or better images, and so on. We learn so much as we go along that often our older posts don’t seem as compelling as we thought they were when we originally published them.
Blogging once a week is the minimum. On the other site, it’s not recommended to post every day, it becomes kind of spammy. Use your Instagram account for that.
It’s not necessarily spammy to blog every day, but quality always trumps quantity. As Scott Stratten says, “blog as frequently as you can that generates quality.”