5 quick and easy ways to skyrocket your blog traffic

As a business owner, I'm sure you regularly hear how beneficial?blog traffic?is for your business. However, when you're juggling everything else that comes with running your own business, you don't really want to add another item to your ever-growing to-do list unless it's actually going to be worth your time.

And regularly blogging can undoubtedly do great things for you. Here are just some of the benefits of blogs:

• Positions you as an industry expert
• Builds know, like, trust with your audience
• It's always helping drive blog traffic back to your website
• Improves SEO and overall visibility
• It's an opportunity to show your brands personality

However, for a blog to do all of those things, there are some essential steps you need to take. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as writing a few words and hoping for the best.

So, I'm going to share my 5 steps to writing a successful blog AND show you my top 10 places you can share it to skyrocket?your blog traffic.

Let's dive in...

Give your audience what they want

With so much content available online, it takes something special to make someone stop scrolling and say, "I need to read that!" And, the only way you are going to do that (without resorting to clickbait) is to make your reader think you are speaking directly to them. By the way, this isn't just for blogging; this principle should be true for all of your marketing. So, once you know exactly who your target audience is, you need to find out what they need to know. An excellent tool for this is AnswerThePublic. You just type in a search term or keyword relevant to your audience, and the site will generate a massive amount of data that you can then use as content ideas. The example below used the keyword "shorts" (although I suggest being a little more specific) and the returned results. Pretty clever, eh?

Another great feature is having a free plan giving you one free search per day. You can also download your results, so one search per day is probably sufficient for most small businesses.

Create a killer headline

Whilst we already know it's difficult to get people to stop and read your content, recent research showed just how challenging it actually is. 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest of the content. This means your headline has to be irresistible and tell your target audience precisely what problem your content is solving. Fortunately, there is another excellent free tool for this, so you don't have to try and figure it out yourself. The?Headline Studio from CoSchedule?gives you unlimited headline analysis, so you can keep tweaking it until you find the ideal headline.

If it can't be found, why write it?

Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is often a term that strikes fear in small business owners. There is so much information available online, and it often sounds like another language; however, it doesn't need to be scary.

SEO is the process of optimising your content to easily be found and understood by search engines and, therefore, shown to your ideal client when they search for a specific word or phrase. Now, I'm not going to go into detail here as it would be an unbelievably long piece; however, again, I have a great free tool that will help you optimise your content.?SEO Content Editor?allows you to copy and paste or write directly into the editor and will give you suggestions to improve the SEO of your blog. Now, as with all of these tools, the free versions are never as good as premium tools; however, if you are on a budget or just getting started, they are certainly a huge help.

A picture tells a thousand words

While blogging is predominantly about what you write, adding images helps break up the content. It also means when you share your blog, a picture is included and helps draw attention to your content.

So what images should you use? Firstly, they should be relevant to your topic, and if you can use original pictures that you have taken, this also helps improve your SEO as search engines love originality. Infographics also work well for breaking up large pieces of text - as I have done below - and also makes the content more "shareable."

Just be aware of copyright when using images that aren't your own. Even some images from sites such as Canva may not be free for you to use, so always do your homework and, if unsure, err on the side of caution.

Share, share, share

So, by now, you've written a blog for your audience about a topic that's important to them, you've got a killer headline, some shareable images, and Google can't wait to share it with the world. So what's left to do? Well, it's time to skyrocket your blog traffic and here are my 10 favourite ways to get my blog out into the world...

Your email list

Now, depending on how often you blog, you might not want to send every blog you write. For example, if you blog weekly or more, you could include a snippet of each into a monthly newsletter where people can click on a link to read more. If you blog monthly, or less, you could send each blog out or do a quarterly round-up. To be honest, frequency really depends on the time you have available and how often your email list likes to hear from you.

Your email signature

The humble email signature is often an untapped resource when it comes to sharing anything. And just take a second to think about how many emails you send every day. You can have links to your website, social media channels, and even adapt your signature to promote your latest blog.

LinkedIn Articles

You can certainly share your blog directly to LinkedIn; however, LinkedIn has its own article platform that is extremely powerful - LinkedIn Articles. If LinkedIn likes your article, they will promote it to other users, potentially opening up a whole new audience. LinkedIn Articles are searchable on Google and other search engines. And LinkedIn prefers you to use it, as you aren't driving traffic directly away from the platform like when you link to your blog.

Facebook Page and Profile

This one needs little explanation. Ensure you share your blog to both your personal and business page using a short, punchy caption that entices your followers to want to read more. It's also important the images you use are displayed correctly, as this will help grab attention.

Facebook Groups

Similar to above, if you have your own Facebook Group, you can share your blog there. However, there are other groups that allow you to share your blog on certain days. Now, with anything like this, don't take advantage and take time to support the group overall.

Social Media Comments

Like my last point above, this has to be done with a degree of tact. However, if done well, it can be extremely powerful. Hopefully, you are a member of groups where your ideal client hangs out, or you know common hashtags that your ideal client uses. If so, take some time to look through posts from your ideal clients, and IF (and only IF) you see a post where you can add value by sharing your blog, then do so.

Let's use this blog as an example, I have published it today, and in 2 weeks, I come across a post on Facebook where someone is struggling to drive traffic back to their website. It would make sense, and add value, that I leave a quick comment and share this blog with them.

Pinterest

This is a great place to drive traffic back to your blog. Create an attention-grabbing image and a teaser caption with a link directly back to your blog.

Instagram

As with Pinterest, create a beautiful image and compelling caption. However, you can only add a link back to your blog when sharing your post to your stories or adding a link in your bio. Now, Instagram only allows one link in your bio, so use a free tool like Linktr.ee to enable more links. Furthermore, be aware that Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours so remember to add them as a highlight, so they continue working for you as long as you want.

Medium

Medium is an excellent platform for writers or anyone who blogs. It's an open platform to share your writing with other users. There is also a chance your article will get picked up by Medium and shared via their daily newsletter that reaches over 100 million readers.

Typeshare

Typeshare is relatively new, and many writers use it as a portfolio type platform; however, it's still worth creating a free account and adding your blog to gain more exposure, increase SEO and drive links back to your website.

BONUS TIP

ASK! That's right, remember to add a call to action whenever you are sharing your blog. Some common CTA's you could use are:

• Tag a friend who will find this helpful
• Share with your network
• Send this to any friends that might be interested

So there you go, my top tips for skyrocketing your blog traffic. I hope you found it helpful, and if you have any questions, drop them in the comments; I promise to get back to everyone.

ATB, Em x

PS. If you want to be more confident and have more fun writing your copy or creating your content, join my FREE community here for tips, copy reviews, content ideas and more.

?