5 Ways to Attract More Readers to Your Blog by Rachel Sprung

Is it easy for people to find your blog content?

Do you want to promote your blog content to more readers?

When you blog to promote your business or industry, it’s important to make sure your content gets seen.
In this article I’ll share five ways you can attract readers to your blog content.

#1: Get Found in Search by Optimizing Your Content for SEO

If you’re going to get new visitors to your website, you want to make sure they’ll be able to find you. And one way they’ll find you is by searching for you on their search engine of choice. That’s why it’s important to optimize your content for SEO.

Let’s take Social Media Examiner as an example.

If you search for “social media” and scroll through the different post titles that come up, they all reference social media, whether it’s a specific social media channel or the term “social media.” Throughout the posts, you’ll see the same content; everything relates to social media.
Now let’s look what happens when we search for “social media blogs”.

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Google search for “social media blogs.”

In both cases, the first search result for “social media blogs” is Social Media Examiner. They’ve done SEO right by optimizing their posts so people who are looking for social media content can find them.

Bing search for “social media blogs.”

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Before you publish a blog post, take the extra time to make sure it is optimized for SEO.

• Create a meta description.
• Check your content for keywords.
• Add alt text for your images.
• Link from your blog post to other parts of your website.

#2: Post Your Content on Social Media

The most efficient way to get more people to your blog is to post your content on social media. That way your current followers will start reading your blog and they may also share your content with their own personal networks. Social media content can spread like wildfire, so it’s important to post your blog content on different social media networks.

Let’s take IMPACT Branding & Design, for example.

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IMPACT Branding & Design tweets.

Whenever they publish a blog post, they put it on their social media channels. They also don’t just repeat the title of their blog post; they share a related thought that brings people in and makes them want to learn more.

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IMPACT Branding & Design Facebook post.

After you create your blog content, prep your posts to go out on social media. Think about how you can frame your post so that it’ll attract readers to your site. Pose a question or ask readers to consider a particular situation that will encourage them to click on your link.

#3: Create Interest With Engaging and Exciting Titles

We’re all human. We judge books by their covers and we judge blog posts by their titles. Knowing that, it’s important to spend some time crafting your title.

When you start writing your blog post, a working title is fine. Get the general topic of the blog post down and write your content. But before you publish it, come back to the title and think about how you can take it up a notch to make it more engaging and truly pull your reader in.

Yoh has done a good job of creating great titles.

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Yoh blog post titles.

After scanning down the list of blog titles, what do you find? They use a variety of techniques. There are some blog posts with numbers such as “5 Relationship Building Tips for All Your Relationships.” Then there are others with funny and catchy titles like “Ice, Ice, Baby! How Snow Days and Talent Are Linked.” But their titles are bound to get you to click on the full blog post.
Here are a few elements that can help you create engaging blog titles.

• Incorporate a number into your blog post. By that, I mean something like “5 Ways to do X” or “7 Steps to X”. Titles with quantitative elements attract readers.
• If there’s data in your blog post, mention data it in your blog title.
• Is this a breaking story? Is this new research you’re releasing? Tell your readers they’re about to read something they won’t find somewhere else.
• Make your title catchy or quirky so the reader laughs without even reading the post. Everyone wants more humor.

#4: Introduce Fresh Perspectives With Content From Guest Bloggers

Having a variety of topics is important for any blog. Having a variety of blog authors who approach a business or industry from different perspectives is also beneficial for a blog. Not only can you get content creators for free, but you also get promotion from someone else to his or her audience. If bloggers are going to take the time to write content for you, they are most likely going to promote it to their network, at least through social media.

Scan Entrepreneur’s blog, for example, and you’ll see an array of different names in the last few published posts. Many of these are guest bloggers like Luke Summerfield.

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Luke Summerfield’s Entrepreneur author profile.

When Luke contributes, not only does Entrepreneur get brand-new content from a fresh source, Luke gets an author profile on Entrepreneur that also appears in Google’s search results.

Search results for Luke’s article.

Luke, in turn, promotes Entrepreneur to his network by posting links to his article. The benefits go both ways.
If your content is getting stale, invite guest bloggers to share an outside perspective. The newer articles can really improve the quality of your blog content and the new writers will introduce your blog to their readers, who will come back for more.

#5: Make It Easy to Share Your Content

If you make a task easy, odds are someone will do it. The same applies for your blog content. If you want someone to share your content with their network, make it easy for them to do that through social sharing buttons or prewritten emails that your readers can send to their network.

Charity: water‘s blog posts always end with social sharing buttons. That way, when a person reads their content, the next step will be to share it.

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Sharing buttons at the end of charity: water’s blog post.

These buttons allow readers to share the blog content with literally the click of a button. Adding buttons like this for social media and/or email can increase the traffic of your blog.

Wrapping It Up
When you invest time and resources into creating content for your blog, you should also spend some time making sure it reaches as many people as possible.

Follow the tips in this article to optimize, publish and share your content in ways that are certain to attract more readers by making it more visible.

What do you think? Are there other ways you can attract more readers to your blog content?

Courtesy of Social Media Examiner

25 Outreach Tools That Can Take Your Business to New Heights by Helen Nesterenko

Do you think a solid content marketing strategy exempts your brand from needing to do outreach? Sorry, but it doesn’t. Check out these 25 awesome outreach tools for your smash business strategy. We’re living in an era of content saturation. Over 2 million blog posts are published each day. Research by Technorati has found that digital influencers are quickly outpacing traditional media in terms of ability to win consumer trust. The world’s best-known bloggers have the ability to make or break their brand’s reputation with a simple Tweet to their massive audience. Perhaps most notable is the fact that blogs fall just behind retail websites in likelihood to influence purchase decisions.

Traditional PR just isn’t as effective as it used to be. It’s time to discard traditional outreach tools and tactics, and focus on connecting directly with digital influencers!

To learn more about this concept, we recommend Why Digital Influencers Can Explode Your Company’s Bottom Line.

Outreach isn’t just important–it’s crucial for brands who hope to expand their audience, develop credibility, and gain notice in a crowded online world. To streamline your entry into this practice, we’ve reviewed 25 of the most powerful outreach tools:

1. GroupHigh

This product is the secret behind the viral content of many notable brands, including Home Depot, GoDaddy, and Groupon. The software acts as a one-stop shop for digital influencer outreach, allowing content marketers to quickly identify, contact, and manage communications with thought leaders.

2. InkyBee

Designed especially for agencies and PR Pros, InkyBee is a product for managing your influencer outreach and communications – with the added benefit of visually rich, easy-to-consume reporting.

3. BuzzStream

This product is robust enough to handle and track social media outreach at major enterprises, thanks to its unique feature of collaborative list-creation and maintenance. Even large outreach teams can communicate remotely with prospects, customers, and influencers thanks to its organized interface.

4. Blogger LinkUp

This free service sends emails on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays featuring guest content requests and offers, products for review, and interview opportunities. Membership allows you to both subscribe and submit requests to other content marketers.

5. BlogDash

This company’s stellar outreach tools help connect brands and bloggers. Users are able to perform detailed searches on content marketers, using qualifications like reach, categories, and demographics.

6. Boomerang

Persistence can be key, which is why outreach tools that remind you to follow-up are important. Boomerang allows Gmail users to schedule outreach, and reminds you if it’s time to follow-up on a message.

7. Mention

If you’re starting to outgrow Google alerts, it may be time to invest in Mention – a tool which allows real-time monitoring of any keyword, from industry terms to your brand’s name.

8. Signals

Gmail, Salesforce, and Outlook users can closely monitor their outreach with Signals, an app that informs you minute-to-minute when your emails are opened, read, and forwarded.

9. Klout

It’s hard to define Klout – is it a social network? Or is it better categorized as outreach tools? Regardless, it’s the world’s leading measure of the digital influence and reach of people and brands.

10. Haro

With a tagline of “free publicity,” Haro is a free subscription service that features interview requests and media opportunities from entities as big as the Associated Press and ABC News. Submit your own request, or keep close tabs on their thrice-daily emails for publicity opportunities.

11. Alltop

Founded by social luminary Guy Kawasaki, Alltop is among the world’s largest content repositories. Sort by category to connect with well-known blogs in your niche, or syndicate your own work for daily republication.

12. MyBlogGuest

Notable SEO blogger Ann Smarty is the brains behind MyBlogGuest, one of the largest forums dedicated to connecting would-be guest bloggers. Threads are separated by industry, so you can easily find the right authors and requests for your brand.

13. FollowerWonk

Do you really know who’s following you on Twitter? FollowerWonk is one of the sharpest ways to analyze your social following, including the demographics and top influencers of your audience. These outreach tools also come with gorgeous visual reporting.

14. Google Alerts

If we had to select just one option from these outreach tools that every blogger needs, it would be Google Alerts. This notification service is free, easy-to-use, and takes just minutes to set up.

15. Little Bird

Brands worldwide are still learning how to leverage competitive intelligence and thought leaders for marketing, which is why Little Bird can help you stand out. The service offers rich social research and content curation capabilities.

16. Outreachr

Though these outreach tools are still in Beta, there’s no doubt this is going to be epic. Outreachr retrieves lists of invaluable contacts in response to your searches around keywords.

17. RavenSEO

This smart tool provides the best options for your outbound links for content marketing, allowing you to establish relationships through SEO efforts.

18. WordTracker

These outreach tools are a platform for ethical link exchanges – allowing you to connect with other content marketers to provide outbound links that offer a high chance of links in return.

19. Topsy

This tool is essentially a search engine for the “social web,” which provides users with the opportunity to explore social trends, viral content, and influencers.

20. All My +

This data visualization platform provides a to-the-minute overview of your personal or company’s social graph.

21. Kred

Much like Klout, Kred is a measure of digital influence, but their outreach tools offer the additional benefit of content promotion and social networking.

22. FollowUp

This platform integrates with your Salesforce or calendar to allow you to set reminders as easily as including a time and date-specific note in the BCC field of your emails.

23. Ahrefs

Ahrefs site explorer is something of a search engine for backlinks, allowing you to scope out page authority of competitor’s domains and their best-performing content.

24. OXO

Product-oriented brands can connect directly with bloggers through OXO, a service which specializes in being an intermediary for relationship-building.

25. RavenTools

It’s easy to centralize your strategy with RavenTool’s extensive list of outreach tools, which range from social monitoring to easy reporting on your paid advertising.

Courtesy of Business 2 Community