As a writer, you’ll hear all about the importance of keeping up with a blog. During my undergrad, practically every professor in the communication department drilled in into my skull.
I must have had half a dozen blogs I was creating daily content for by my senior year. The problem was, my only audience was my class members and professors. Every day and every week, we had a different topic that we were to write about. It was difficult to give my blogs a specific theme – everything felt sporadic and random.
If you want to increase your audience – and as such, your success – as a blogger, the most important thing to remember is this:
Find Your Target Audience
It’s hard to gain an audience when you write about everything under the sun. If there are several different topics you want to address, your best bet is to split them up into different blog pages or even entirely separate blogs.
Say one day, you make a post commentating on some political movement. Then, the next day, you make a post about your favorite crockpot recipes. Maybe this is a bit exaggerative, but do you get my point? For whom exactly are you writing? Does your blog have a theme, or are you writing just for the sake of writing?
You are more than welcome to have your own personal blog where you write your own musings, as long as you understand that your online diary isn’t likely to gain much traffic. If you are online journaling, cool, write your heart out, Honey, but if you are looking to eventually monetize your blog, then you need to drill down who you are trying to reach. Ultimately, they will be who you are advertising to, so keep it focused.
If you want to increase your traffic and keep your readers actively engaged, you’ve got to let them know what to expect and then live up to those expectations. Give them a clear idea of what you have to offer them, then do it.
As you develop your own little niche, you’ll want to keep up-to-date on trends and news that have to do with your topic. You readers will know they can count on you – not only will they be reliable consumers of your content, but you can trust that they’ll share your work and refer others to you.
As a blogger, you have the opportunity to develop much more personal relationships with your readers than you would otherwise, and this gives you the opportunity to increase your traffic even more. Reach out to your audience members and ask them what types of things they would like you to write about and how you can improve your blog.
Even if they don’t have anything to offer you, they’ll appreciate your personal touch and willingness to please. And if they do have something to contribute, they’ll love seeing you put their advice to action.
As you develop your target audience and develop that trust with them, you’ll be ready to move onto the next steps of growing your audience and boosting your blog’s success.
