This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com
There are a lot of reasons why your blog might not be growing, but I don’t have enough time or space in this article to get into all of them.
What I am going to do is give you the one thing that changed it all for me. This idea, although simple in nature, is very powerful.
I don’t know where I first heard it, but I owe the success I’ve had with my blog to this one single sentence. OK. I’m done building anticipation; here it is. The best way to grow you blog is to leave it. Right about now you’re either having an “Aha” moment or you’re confused as hell.
Either way, let me explain why most people aren’t practicing this idea and how it helps you specifically.
You’re Programmed To Work On Your Blog
Yes. You are being programmed to keep your blog where it’s at right now. Most of what you see online about building a blog talks about on-page search engine optimization, writing better content, getting a nicer looking theme, and posting longer articles more frequently.
Here’s why doing this alone won’t grow your blog; everything I just mentioned happens ON your blog and no one sees it. I’m not implying that doing SEO, and writing better content aren’t important, but that advice alone gets you nowhere fast.
The best content is not going to get spread across the web if no one reads it. The nicest theme in the world is not gonna get compliments if no one sees it, and all your search engine optimization tricks is not going to start bringing in loads of free traffic if Google doesn’t see you as an authority yet.
Unfortunately, this is all we see online; with the exception of some really talented and experienced people that are putting out the right information. Francisco and I try our best to reverse this bad programming by giving people the advice they need to take their blogs to the next level.
They Won’t Find You Until You Find Them
You can’t grow your blog by tweaking your blog, the same way you can’t make new friends by staying home. If you want to grow your network of friends you have to get out there and mingle, right?. What’s the first place that popped into your head when you read that last line?
A lounge?
A bar?
your neighborhood starbucks?
maybe you thought about that supermarket around the corner from your place.
Whatever and wherever you were thinking about, I bet it wasn’t your house. New friends are made when you leave your home and socialize, and it works the same way online. The only thing that changes are the places you meet your potential audience.
Social media can take many different forms; blogs, video, podcasts, microblogging, forums and social bookmarketing are just a few of them. So how do you leverage these forms of social media to grow your blogging audience? Simple, spend more time on the most popular sites that represent these forms.
How To Reach An Entirely New Audience
You can leverage other people’s audience through guest blogging. You can get into video marketing on YouTube, and you can build a large following on Twitter that will follow you to your blog.
But the single greatest decision I’ve ever made to grow my blogging audience in the last 10 months of blogging was starting my business blogging podcast.
There are many benefits to starting a podcast to grow your blog, here are just a few:
- It sets you apart from your competition
- It gives you a direct line of communication with your audience
- It creates networking opportunities with other bloggers
- It increases your blog’s reach – and this is the most important of all.
iTunes has a thriving marketplace with over 100 million active users and growing. If you’ve been paying close attention to everything I’ve said in this article, you know why this is important. Getting your podcast in the iTunes marketplace allows you to get found by hundreds and even thousands of people.
These are people that you would’ve normally never reached if it wasn’t for your podcast. This entirely new audience is waiting for your advice. They’re waiting for your content and your value. The best (and smartest) thing you can do right now is to give it to them.
If the benefit of getting more traffic doesn’t excite you enough, maybe more subscribers and brand recognition will; and podcasting helps you do that, too.
On To You…
Are you leaving your blog or are you still in the tweaking phase? What forms of social media are you using right now? Have you considered adding a podcast to your blogging strategy? If so, I’m releasing Podcasting For Bloggers on March 1st that will teach you all about that.
See you in the comments section…
Disclaimer: some of the links included in this post are affiliate links.
This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas – Hector blogs at HectorJCuevas.com, where he writes about lessons learned through blogging, taking fearless action and successfully building a blogging audience. He is also the host of the weekly podcast Business Blogging Podcast. You can check out his latest project at PodcastingForBloggers.com – where he’s going to teach you how to start a podcast of your own.
