Blogging is an effective way to expand your business, attract more clients, and maintain relationships with your current customers. But, how do you make your blog visitors into loyal followers? It really boils down to posting relevant content and finding ways to remind them about you via email, social media and even ads. Let’s look at the ways you can get more loyal blog followers and keep them coming back for more.
Post More Content
You’ve heard that before. But, it’s not that simple. You can’t post anything and end up with fans following you and begging for more. You have to know who your audience is, and what they need to know, and post that. Content needs to be relevant and of a high quality to be effective.
- Relevant – The only way you can ensure that your content is relevant is if you do the work necessary to get to know your audience so that you can deliver the type of content they want and need.
- High Quality – While you do not have to be perfect, don’t just slap up anything. If you buy PLR, ensure that you rewrite it and make it your own. If you outsource any writing, edit the writing and put your voice into it, and always add a watermarked image so that when it’s shared it comes back to you.
- Consistent – Finally, post consistently. You don’t have to blog every single day. You want to blog multiple times a week and provide meaningful content to your audience. Otherwise, they might get bored and stop visiting.
When you post relevant, high-quality content on a consistent basis in a variety of forms such as images, video, text and so forth your audience will be more likely to stay interested in what you have to say which will make them keep coming back, sharing and engaging with you. Plus, potentially buying something you created or promote.
Promote Your Content
Just posting content is not enough. There are more than 100 million blogs in existence. That’s worse than a needle in a haystack. In order for anyone, including your customers, to find you, you’re going to have to promote each piece of content that you post.
- Social – Whatever social media your audience uses, you need to be using. While you can’t use them all 100 percent alone, you can at least choose the top three that are most popular with your audience. If you can outsource some of your social media marketing, then you can do more, but at least start with the top three. Share and engage about your blog posts to bring more traffic and create more interest in your content.
- Make it Simple to Share – Don’t make it hard on your readers to share. Get a social plugin that enables you to add share buttons at the top and bottom of your posts. Make it a point to ask your audience to “click the like and share buttons.” Make it part of your call to action.
- Get Them on Your List – In addition, put a box at the bottom of every single page to encourage your readers to sign up for your newsletter. Leadpages.net offers a really great and attractive option for “lead boxes” that you can put on your blog to help people get what they need.
You can do this easily with a few plugins, but – do not forget to engage with your audience when they comment on your shares. You don’t want communication to be only one way. You want to build relationships so that they don’t just want to read your blog due to the great information; they want to read it because they care about you.
Provide a CTA
A call to action (CTA) is so important if you really want to make a difference. There are different ways to create a call to action. Your CTA can include asking your audience to share, like, follow, join, sign up, buy or whatever it is that you want them to do. If you really want them to take action, clearly state what you want them to do.
- Ask for a Comment – A great way to get your audience to act and come back for more is to generate more comments to your posts. You can get people to comment more if you ask them to.
- Be the Devil’s Advocate – If you really want to get comments rocking, try being controversial. This can be risky, so be mindful of the potential repercussions. Try calling out a situation that makes you mad, sad, and upset. But, try to end it on a positive note if possible.
- Put a Subscribe Button after the Post – A great way to get people to subscribe for blog updates is to put a Lead Box on the bottom. You can use Leadpages.net for this. It works well, and it was developed by marketers.
- Offer a Free Discovery Call – A great way to get your reader’s attention is to offer a short 15-minute discovery call. Put a sign-up box below the post, along with words that attract their attention and get them to want to give their email address to sign up for the call.
- Ask Them if They Want to Learn More – A really effective CTA asks your readers if they want to learn more, then using an attractive “learn more” button will entice the reader to click. On the learn more page, it can either be more information or you can make it an easy one step opt-in box so that you can send them more information via email.
- Give Them a Special – If you’ve talked about specific products or pain points in the blog post, and you know about a product or have created a product that will help them, make them a special offer at the bottom of the blog post.
- Offer a Freebie – Match your freebies with the topic of your blog post, and offer a download button for the freebie that relates to the blog post. Collect their email address so that you can add them to your list. If you use software like Leadpages.net, you can avoid sending to duplicate email addresses on your list, while still offering the freebie to your readers.
- Ask Them to Join Your Mailing List – Get right to the point and ask them if they want to learn more, get reminds of new posts, and so forth and ask them to sign up for your mailing list. Let them know the benefits of doing so, and you’ll get more sign-ups if the sign-up box is after your posts.
There are many more ways to get your audience to act on your content, but you’ll need to tell them what to do. People are relatively lazy, so make it easy for them. You’ll get a better response.
Give Stuff Away
Freebies, lead magnets, tripwires, ethical bribes, opt-ins, and so forth can be lucrative ways to collect email addresses from your audience so that you can market to them via email. When you give away small things to help them accomplish their goals, you’ll endear yourself to them in a new way.
To give away stuff without giving away the farm, follow these tips:
- Show Off! – Here’s your chance to really wow a potential customer, so take it! Write up or record something that will appeal to your audience and help further your relationship with them while showcasing your knowledge and expertise.
- One Problem – Help them solve one small problem, not the entire kit and caboodle. You want them to come back for more, so in your freebie give them enough to show them your work quality and skills, but don’t give them the farm.
- One Customer – Don’t try to please everyone, make each of your offerings focus on one persona / customer at a time. Create a profile for the ideal customer and direct your product only to the people that fit the profile. This works better than trying to appeal to everyone.
- Make it Short – A checklist, a spreadsheet, a simple app – these things won’t take much time and money for you to create but will make a huge impact on your audience member if you are careful to ensure it fits your audience.
Remember that you can also choose to “give it away” for just a buck. Not all ecommerce solution providers will allow this (Akzis.shop does) but you can let them pay whatever they want if it’s at least a dollar. When a freebie isn’t actually “free” but is very inexpensive, it can mean more to the user and make them value you more. When they value you more, they’ll be more likely to come back. Remember, inside your opt-in provide a link back to your blog, and to other products, services and offerings you have.
Get Visual
People get bored without pretty and interesting things to look at. In the case of your blog, you also want the images to be relevant. You want them to expand on your point and help your audience not only understand but to remember the information you provide. Images can brand you in such a way as to ensure that your audience really remembers you.
- Graphics – Infographics, memes and charts are a great way to explain hard concepts to any audience. There are awesome programs. A great infographic software to try is Piktochart.com. You can also hire a graphic designer to help you. If you have the data, they can create the graphic.
- Images – You can get stock photos from a variety of sources including StockFresh.com, StockUnlimited.com, and others. Be sure to read the licensing agreement and try to learn about copyright laws and fair use.
- Video – Today, video is one of the best ways to create a loyal audience as well as engage with them. They love seeing your face and feeling as if they know you. You can create video the easy way or the hard way. Easy – use your phone and decent lighting. Hard – buy professional equipment. Either way, video will get great results.
You can use programs like Canva.com to create amazing graphics, and use your phone to make video. Today, it’s not impossible for an amateur to create wonderful images, video and graphics, but if your skills aren’t up to par, don’t think it’s too expensive to get help from a professional.
Build Authority
Another way to get more loyal blog followers is to become the go-to person in your niche. You can be viewed as the authority by being a guest on a podcast, TV show, blog, and so forth. You can also build authority by demonstrating your skills by creating amazing products and services that your audience wants to use.
- Write Long Form Posts – Long posts, more than 1500 words in length, are a great way to show what you know. Well-organized, long content pieces show that you know your stuff. When you know your stuff, people will gravitate to your content.
- Publish a Book – When you can put your knowledge down in book form, people automatically view you as smarter, more successful, and intelligent. Don’t let a book scare you, if you can write a blog post, you can write a book, one page at a time.
- Speak – You can speak in public events, or by creating a YouTube channel, or even by recording talks and publishing on your blog. When people are able to speak clearly, tell a story and explain concepts in this manner, it automatically makes them seem more authoritative.
Another way to build authority is simply by finding your authentic voice and using it on your blog and across all social media networks that you and your audience use. When you are simply yourself, it’s a lot easier than being false because no one can be false forever.
Engage With Others
As a blogger, there is almost nothing more important than truly engaging and interacting with your audience. You want your audience to comment, like, share and sign up to your lists or buy your products and services, and you can accomplish that is by being engaging and encouraging. To encourage engagement, it’s important that you know how to get them to respond.
It all starts with truly knowing your audience. Understand that even if you did a lot of audience research five years ago when you began your blog that even when demographics stay the same, often audiences grow and change. For example, imagine what it would be like if Dawn dishwashing soap still marketed to you using the same techniques and issues from the 1950s? The message probably wouldn’t even reach you and if it did, it would not go over well. Stay up to date and interact with them in a way that makes them happy. After all, it’s really about them, not you.
The Money’s In the List
The final thing you need to know about blogging and keeping a loyal fan base is that you should focus on bringing them back to your blog, every chance you get. There are many ways to do this.
- Blog Broadcast – If you have an autoresponder, for every post you create, also create an email to talk about a similar topic and then link back to the blog post so that they can learn more.
- Social Media – Announce blog posts on social media with a unique blurb. You can post about the new post more than once on each platform, more on Twitter, but don’t make each post a duplicate of the other. Instead, add a unique blurb to each one, even if it’s the same link.
You want to find ways to bring readers and customers back to your blog to read your new blog posts, as well as learn about your products, services, and programs. When you have a way to interact with your audience on a regular basis through blog comments, social media, email, books, public speaking and more will help people become even more loyal to you as a blogger and an expert.
You don’t have to do everything at once, but you can start by adding sign-up boxes to your blog posts and sharing more on social media. As you build up your blog, do more. Track everything so that you know what works and what doesn’t work. Do more of what is working and less of what is not working.
