7 Simple Ways to Get More Blog Readers … Without Writing More

Wait…. what?! Write fewer blog posts but get more readers? Yes, I did just say that.

Did you know there are over 300 million blog posts written in a year. AND by 2020 the amount of online content is said to increase by over 500%. The first thing I thought when I learned that was “wow, that’s a whole lot of stuff to read.” Friends, there is a lot of noise out there and it’s only going to get louder.

Raise your hand if you can relate to this: You spent an ton of time writing the perfect blog post … your photos are great, your title is off the hook, but CRICKETS. No one seems to be reading it. Sound familiar? Yep –been there too. The problem isn’t that you aren’t creating enough content, the problem is you need better distribution. Doesn’t it make more sense now? The answer to your question isn’t to write more blog posts. The solution is to make the content you already have work harder for you. Produce less content but increase content distribution.

It’s like this: If you were baking cookies but no one was eating them, would you just keep baking cookies? No. You would take that tray and start passing them out.

You might be thinking right about now: “But what about SEO? I need to write frequently to gain SEO momentum.”

Well, not exactly. With so many changes in search engine algorithms, SEO signals are more increasingly “off the page’ now than in years past. That means, more weight is given to what’s happening with your content off your page than ever before. Are people sharing your post? Are other sites linking back to it? Are people talking about what you’re writing? These things are more important than if you’re posting over and over trying to rank for keywords like “printable notecards.” Make sense?

In fact, if you notice, I don’t post all that often here on my blog. I do however, make sure to give my content long legs. The great news is, you can do this too.

Here are 7 simple ways you can step-up your distribution efforts

• Share your posts across your active social channels in the correct format (meaning, a great vertical image for Pinterest, crafting a compelling tweet for Twitter, etc)
• Publish your post on LinkedIn and link back to your blog (here’s an example)
• Send out and email with your new posts to newsletter subscribers
• Chunk out your post into shareable tweets and send them out over a period of a week
• Mention influencers and other bloggers in your post and be sure to let them know. They’re likely to share it too!
• Target a few thought leaders in your industry who would enjoy your post and send it to them directly. Twitter is probably the easiest way to do this.
• Promote your blog posts on social media with an advertising budget. Oraganic reach is going down on social channels and we are seeing more of the ‘Facebook sponsored posts model’ occuring. Even a small budget used to promote posts on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter can greatly increase your reach.

Increasing your reach won’t happen over night and not all methods are right for every blogger (or even every blog post for that matter). I encourage you to test and learn. See what methods work for you.

Have other simple tips for increasing the reach of your posts? Share in the comments! What’s worked for you?