{"id":1542,"date":"2011-03-17T10:12:42","date_gmt":"2011-03-16T23:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=1542"},"modified":"2011-04-18T16:03:22","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T06:03:22","slug":"growing-your-blog-readership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2011\/03\/growing-your-blog-readership\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing your blog readership"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Starting a blog may have sounded like a great idea (and it often is!) but is maintaining it harder than you expected? What do you find particularly hard about it?<\/p>\n<p>I think a key to having a useful business blog (personal blogs have different measures of success so it may be very different) is frequent posts. From personal experience, I know the number of people viewing my blog are higher when I post every few days than when I miss a week or so &#8211; even when the popular posts at any given time are not the most recent ones.<\/p>\n<p>So here are a few tips from me on <a title=\"building your blog\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2009\/11\/building-your-blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">building a good business blog<\/a> that people will keep reading:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>post regularly &#8211; if it suits your style, choose particular days to post so it becomes habit which also helps your readers know when to look at your blog<\/li>\n<li>remember that posts don&#8217;t all have to be long &#8211; the occasional short one can be effective for variety and to maintain the frequency<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"good links\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/04\/what-makes-a-good-link\/\" target=\"_blank\">link to other information<\/a>\u00a0from your blog &#8211; previous posts of your own, your own website, blog posts by other people, relevant websites. This gives people further information, shows your commitment to sharing information (rather than just chasing a sale) and also has search engine advantages. Note this doesn&#8217;t mean having a <a title=\"big blogroll is not good blogging\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/03\/good-blogging\/\" target=\"_blank\">big blog roll<\/a>&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>encourage a community within your blog &#8211; ask questions, answer comments and share other input (for example comments from people you met in real life)<\/li>\n<li>how much do you <a title=\"blog promotion\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/05\/promoting-a-blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">promote your blog<\/a>? Just having a blog and writing in it won&#8217;t get you hundreds of readers &#8211; you need to let people know it exists which you can do in many ways, including joining <a title=\"blog carnivals\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2007\/11\/blog-carnivals\/\" target=\"_blank\">blog carnivals<\/a>, commenting in related blogs, <a title=\"keywords in blog posts\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2009\/06\/keywords-in-promotional-articles\/\" target=\"_blank\">using keywords effectively<\/a>, <a title=\"find more blogs\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2009\/03\/finding-more-blogs\/\" target=\"_blank\">getting listed in directories<\/a>, adding your blog URL to signatures and business materials, and being a guest blogger.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If time is a big hurdle in your blog development, consider <a title=\"7 blog tasks to delegate\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2010\/09\/7-tasks-to-delegate-for-your-blog\/\" target=\"_blank\">delegating some of the tasks<\/a>\u00a0so it builds momentum without relying on you as much.<\/p>\n<p>If <a title=\"finding material to blog about\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2008\/08\/finding-material-to-blog-about\/\" target=\"_blank\">finding things to blog about<\/a> is causing you worry, set aside an hour or so and brainstorm potential topics. That list can then be used any time you need inspiration.<\/p>\n<p>If you have been blogging for a little while and are worrying about its popularity, think about these points:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a niche or tips blog will have fewer readers than a blog associated with a major newspaper or movie star so don&#8217;t judge your success against blogs that are totally different to yous<\/li>\n<li>depending on your topic and style, people may read your blog but not comment &#8211; either your audience is not the type of people who want to comment or perhaps your topic just doesn&#8217;t inspire comments (for example, a controversial news story will generate discussion but if you are giving 5 tips on how to care for your lawn, not as many people will have anything to add)<\/li>\n<li>in a business sense, a successful blog could have a number of purposes &#8211; building credibility, <a title=\"developing trust through a blog\" href=\"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2009\/07\/blogs-and-trust\/\" target=\"_blank\">developing trust<\/a>, sharing expertise, bringing in more website traffic &#8211; so look at more than the number of comments as a marker. Other factors such as number of new leads, visits to your main website and number of time-wasting emails may show you the effectiveness of your blog<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Back to my original question though &#8211; what do you find hard about maintaining your blog? Let us know and you may just get some solutions to rocket your blog success!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Starting a blog may have sounded like a great idea (and it often is!) but is maintaining it harder than you expected? What do you find particularly hard about it? I think a key to having a useful business blog (personal blogs have different measures of success so it may be very different) is frequent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,60],"tags":[75,73,1180,867],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-content","category-writing","tag-blog","tag-information","tag-readership","tag-useful"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1553,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions\/1553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}