To really take your blog to the next level you need to grow your blog following. Your blog following is an important metric, especially if you are planning on monetising your content. Advertisers and sponsors will be interested to see how many people follow your blog as it reveals to them what kind of reach they can expect to have by working with you. Now, growing your blog following isn’t something that just happens overnight, it takes work and patience, so here are five free ways to get you started.
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Publish consistently
Consistency is key when it comes to growing your following. People have very short attention spans and to keep their interest you need to be publishing regular content. This doesn’t mean you need to publish every day unless you have the time and inclination to, but 2-3 times a week is a good place to start. To really ensure you publish consistently try to get ahead by writing a publishing schedule and pre-writing posts a week or so in advance, this will give you a little leeway in case life gets in the way.
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Ensure you apply the principles of SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. By ensuring your blog is optimised for SEO you give yourself and your posts the best chance of being clicked on through Google and other search engines. New followers have to find you somehow and if you are publishing good content that is ranked by Google then you have a very good chance of growing your following. The basic principles of SEO are fairly simple and revolve around the use of keywords and phrases, but if you don’t have the time or inclination to work on your SEO yourself then this is something you can outsource to professionals such as Ignite Digital, though of course, this would no longer be free.
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Provide plenty of different ways for people to follow you
To really maximise the number of people who follow you, you will want to make it as effortless as possible. Enable people to keep up with you via a number of different channels, such as through WordPress, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bloglovin. Everyone is different and many people will have their preferred way to follow their favourite blogs, provide them with plenty of options to make sure you don’t miss out. In addition to social media, you may also want to look at starting an email follow list, this is a very valuable took and enables you to not only remind your followers of any new posts as and when they go live on your site but to build a mailing list in which you can also promote advertising from your sponsors.
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Provide value to your followers
To gain followers you need to understand what they are looking for, a good place to start is to sit down and ask yourself why you follow people. Is it for the discount codes, their writing, free downloads or something else? Providing value is one of the main reasons people will follow you, so think carefully about what value you are providing. Once you have gained followers you don’t want to lose them.
