So you have a lovely little creative blog, but you aren’t getting that much traffic? What’s missing you wonder. Where are your readers hiding, right? Oftentimes, just a little bit of effort can result in a huge boost to your readership. Here are some tips on how to get more eyes on your creative blog. The following are basic principles of blogging and sharing online. I think you should have these foundational pillars covered, before you move into other methods of marketing and promotion.
Great Blog Content
The only way to keep readers happy is to give them something interesting to consume. If you don’t have great blog content, people aren’t going to come. So think about what you want to share and write about! For creatives the idea is to find the intersection between what you want to share and what others would be interested in seeing.
Blogging Schedule
The commitment to blog regularly means you will have a stream of content for your readers. You can get more traffic if you don’t have new content, right? It can be once every two weeks or more often… whatever fits with your schedule. It’s best to commit to some kind of frequency to keep yourself in check!
Make It Easy to Subscribe/Follow
Not everyone is super tech saavy, so make it super easy for people to follow your blog. Whether it’s offering the RSS feed, an email subscribe, a blog lovin follow button – maybe all of those – make sure people can get your blog content easily. You can’t assume that a reader will just visit your URL every week by typing it in their browser address bar!
Tell People
Whether it’s word of mouth, link in your email signature or social media posts – maybe all of them – you have to tell people that you are blogging and putting up new posts. You certainly shouldn’t be self promoting and spamming about it… but at the same time, don’t hide away! Especially for creatives, we seem to find it extremely difficult to share all the cool stuff we are doing. Don’t be shy. Be sure to put it out there!
Engage and Networking
This is sort of related to above, because if you start telling people about your blogging endeavors, ultimately you are networking and socializing. Part of being engaged in your community is to comment on your peers posts and making it super easy for readers to comment on your blog as well. It’s about starting a dialogue, being authentic and getting involved. You can’t just be up on a pedestal announcing things and never stepping down to discuss and let others take the podium, you know?
If you are consistent, your blog traffic will definitely grow over time. Make sure you install analytics, so you can track your growth as well. The online world is big and small at the same time. I always say that slow and steady, wins the race.
There are many more advanced strategies that you can try out like search engine optimization, advertising, guest posting and promotions. But have you got all your bases covered, first?
