Mission: Grow a Blog Readership

Whether you're trying to get noticed by magazines, publishers, or just want to banish the danged "comments" goose egg from your blog, it's all about growing an online readership. And while attracting thousands of online readers may mean actually understanding and using aggregators, SEO and web 2.0, the good news for newer bloggers is that there are easier ways to get things moving. By making the few changes listed below, I've already attracted subscribers and increased the number of daily hits to my parenting blog.

Channel Your Favorite TV Program

There's always that one show that you wait for every week. And the producers and television stations put a lot of forethought and planning into making their show THAT show for you. They consistently give you great content, and deliver it reliably on a certain day every week. After awhile, you build the show into your schedule and wake up the morning looking forward to the evening (okay, that may have to do with a certain toddler's 7pm bedtime). 

Ever get hooked on a show that played on random days, at different times, without letting you know ahead of time when it will be on? Recipe for failure, right? And yet bloggers do this all of the time. Ehem.

The successful bloggers not only post several times a week and on set days, but they tell their readers in advance about schedule changes. Some even post "repeats" during vacation or other busy times, to make sure they don't let their readers down or lose interest. 

Zero in on a Topic

I've gotten the same advice from several professional bloggers, and it involves answering two questions to focus your blog posts and find a niche that will attract a target group of dedicated readers:  

• What do you want to get out of the blog? 
• Why will your audience want to read it? 

I created my parenting blog to grow a readership and attract book publishers to my writing about parenting. With that in mind, I've decided to write most posts as full essays, in the style and tone I'd use to write a book. All involve the theme of getting back to your former self after having kids, and so my audience would be newer mothers with young children, who want to commiserate and share suggestions. 

If I suddenly started writing about "how to blog" or "my sister's vacation," I'd lose that focus - and my readers.

Looks Matter

Once you've determined your niche, check out the design of other top blogs in the same niche. For example, if you scan the top writing blogs (links are listed on the right), you'll notice most have a "less is more" look: simple wordpress themes with plain white backgrounds, clean black font, and possibly a touch of color. Parenting blogs have much more personality, often incorporating pale colors, cartoon graphics and "handwritten" signatures on posts.

It seems the advice for all blog types is to make sure your "subscribe" box is in a prominent place where readers can easily see (and hopefully use) it, and that you encourage readers to stick around by providing links to related posts you've written, through services like linkedwithin. 

If you'd like more tips for growing a blog, check out the below Related Posts and articles:

Related Posts:

• From Unknown to Top Ten in a Year:  Are Bloggers Rewriting the Rules?
• Pinterested? Four Reasons Why Writers Should Be.

Related Articles:

• 17 Ways to Grow Your Blog from Top Bloggers
• 21 Things I Did to Get My Blog to Top Ten Status
• 21 Ways to Get More Subscribers to your Blog

Linklove,
Colleen

Pinterested? Four Reasons Why Writers Should Be

Don't let Pinterest's Social Sharing tag fool you into thinking it's just another time sucker. Want to know what catches a reader's attention and keeps them hooked? Pinterest has the answer - and it's neatly packaged in a display of images with thousands of followers.

Use Niche To Attract and Hook Readers

You can read one article after another about what niche is and why it's important - or you can simply spend a few minutes at Pinterest boards like this and this to see it in action.  Spend just a few seconds at these boards, and you know what to expect there (content, style, tone), who the audience is, and whether or not you want to follow, too.  And there you have it:  a general understanding of that abstract concept called niche and how it works.

Apply this to your own writing by trying to view it through a pinner's eyes (stay with me here). If you're a blogger, think of your blog as a pinboard with a certain theme, and of each post as a "pin" on that theme. Feature writers might view their topic of expertise as the pinboard theme, with each related article they write as a pin. Take my parenting articles, for example. I write about How To Make Learning Fun for Your Kids. That's my board theme. Related "pins" include Have a Blast with Science, Word Play, and Hook a Reader This Summer.

Visualizing it this way really helps to stay on topic, build credibility as an "expert," and continue giving readers what they want.

Use Images To Discover Your Target Audience - And Attract More Readers
Many times our topics are too general or broad, and we don't even know it. To discover your target audience or narrow in on it, try looking at your work  from your readers' perspective. Assume they're pinners. What related images would interest them?

I initially picked this image to post on the blog:

It fits in the sense that it's interesting to writers in general, and fits my humor. But it wasn't quite right, and asking WHY NOT gave me this answer about my target readers:  because this blog is for writers who need information, encouragement, and want to build a career of writing. The image doesn't inform, encourage, or address career writers. Something like this would be more fitting:

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com

An added bonus: if you're writing online and your readers really ARE pinners, you'll attract more readers when they pin your images.

Make Your Title Catchy

What will catch readers' attention and make them choose your piece of all the titles out there? Some popular pinners have figured that out, so it's worth trying to duplicate those qualities. There are writers out there who have already done some of the research for us. One writer analyzes 12 intriguing board titles to figure out what makes them work - and how you can make your titles work, too. While she's writing specifically for pinners, once again, writers can take away a lot of good ideas.

Pinterest is Quick Practice at Building a Niche and Attracting Followers

Just the 10-minute process of creating a board, naming it and picking a related image, based on the above, can teach a lot about how to better approach your writing with a readership in mind - not to mention the added benefit of a Pinterest following, should you decide to pin on.

linklove,
a Recent Convert