Not getting the blog traffic you want?
Obviously the first thing to do is to share your posts.
That’s something most people and businesses do. They share each post when it’s published.
The next step is to share old posts. Make it a habit to share old posts. How often you share them will depend on how many you have in your archive.
For example, if you have 100 old posts you can share maybe one old posts every other day so you’re not sharing the same things everyday.
If you have 1,000 old posts you can share multiple per day and your followers won’t see the same thing all the time.
Once you do those things there are still a few others you can do to boost blog traffic.
1. Snippets On Social Media
Post the snippets natively without a link back to your blog or even to your site. Take a recent post. Find a section that will work well for social media. One tip. One paragraph that has a good bit of advice. A story that you wrote about. Then post it on social media.
The goal here is to post things on social that get attention. Native content does better on social than content with links so more people will see it. Over time, the more consistently you do this the more followers you get and the more traffic you’ll get to your website and blog when you do share links and when people simply click the link in your profile or google your brand name.
2. Repurposing & Duplicating
Snippets are a form of repurposing. So it just duplicating the content you create. Take a blog post from your site and post it on LinkedIn and Facebook. Obviously there can be some potential issues with Google, but for the most part Google just wants to know what sources of information have original content. If the original source is your site then there shouldn’t be any major issues. And as long as you’re not using other people’s content on your blog that is also posted elsewhere.
I look at it this way, nobody gets upset that episodes of Friends are available on local TV stations, TBS and Netflix. It’s duplicated all over the place, but it just brings the show to more people. That’s how you can look at your content.
Allow the different audiences to get exposure to your brand and traffic to your website and blog will increase.
Also look to turn your posts into videos for YouTube and podcasts. That’s another form of repurposing.
3. Occasional Roundup Posts
Roundup posts would be pulling quotes and things from people and from other sources like podcasts, posts and things like that. Some big bloggers do this using Help A Reporter. They ask for quotes and then compile them to create great posts and usually each person that contributes will want to share it so it gets more exposure.
I would do this just on occasion. Maybe once a month or a little less often. I wouldn’t recommend doing this for every post. People still want to hear what you have to say.
4. Occasional Blog Interviews
Building on the last one is doing the occasional big interview on your blog. You can record it for a podcast and transcribe it for a blog post. Or you can do it via email and then post it as a blog post.
The person you interview will usually help you promote it. And they likely have an audience searching for content about them so that’s a way to indirectly attract new readers.
Think about the old Rolling Stone feature stories where writers would follow rock stars on tour and then publish a big writeup. The fans of the rockers would buy the magazine because they want as much content about their favorite star as possible.
5. Guesting
And you can be a guest yourself. This is a great strategy to add to your regular schedule. Guesting on podcasts. Writing guest blog posts. Giving your quotes via Help A Reporter. Doing whatever you can to get exposure to new audiences. The more exposure you get the more people will search for you and your business. More traffic and more eyeballs on your blog posts.
6. Forum Q&A (also on Social)
If you’re looking for a way to post more on social and even old school social like forums, answering questions directly on those sites is a great place to start.
Find questions that you can answer and answer them. As many as possible. Set aside time each week to do this. It’s a long-term strategy, but the more you contribute the more exposure you’ll get. And as we’ve seen, the more exposure you get the more people will seek you out via your website and blog.
Final Thoughts
The first step in getting blog traffic is to share every new post on social media. The second step is to share old posts regularly. The steps that come after that are the things we just went through. Try them all. Try one or two. You’ll see more traffic over time to your blog posts in various ways. Usually from organic search.