Many companies are now using blogs to generate traffic and gain exposure for their brand.
According to ManageWP Blog back in February 2014, there are over 74.6 million blogs which depend on WordPress.
WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) on the web and is highly trusted by many businesses all over the world.
Do all businesses make full use of their blog?
The answer is no. Many businesses make the mistake of only using their blog to sell their product or service. This won’t help your business attract visitors to your blog and generate those all important leads.
Managing a successful blog is more than just trying to sell your product. It is more to do with giving your target audience highly useful content/information so they will come back for more. In doing so, your target audience will be more inclined to subscribe to your blog.
And the more subscribers you have equates to number of leads you have gained.
So what are best practices in gaining subscribers on your blog? Here are my top four tips:
Get Your Readers to Subscribe to Your Email List
The most effective (and ideal) way for your blog to gain more subscribers is to encourage them to sign up to your mailing list, where they will get free updates to your blog.
You can add a ‘sign in’ form on your website and you can encourage your readers to sign up either via a ‘call to action’ at the end of each of your blog posts or by giving away something for free (usually an ebook) in return for signing up.
Promote Your Blog Posts on Social Media
Sharing your content on social media channels such as reddit, Facebook and Twitter helps to promote your content and initiates discussion. If your blog posts are well received by social media users, chances are they will start exploring your blog and even subscribe.
Have a Good About Page
Your about page is the most important online real estate. A well written about page can help your reader to both fully understand what you aim to achieve with your blog and get to know about your brand.
It is best to set up your blog as a separate site to your company’s website. Successful entrepreneurs like Tom Ewer, who runs his own writing business, built his reputation (5000+ subscribers) as a professional WordPress blogger through his blog, Leaving Work Behind. (www.leavingworkbehind.com)
Write Content That Meets Your Target Market’s Needs
When your customers have a question, they usually turn to Google. Google can help them by providing them with the answer in a form of a blog post or YouTube video.
Successful bloggers tend to understand what their customers type into Google. And this is why it is crucial to optimise your blog posts in line with good SEO practices.
So take the time to really understand what your target audience are searching for on Google. This will help you decide what content to write.
It is important to remember that Google prefers well researched and high quality content, the more effort you put into making your content amazing, the higher it will appear in the search engine results.