Growing your audience – it’s the main thing people struggle with when they first start blogging. It’s a struggle, especially, for those starting right now as it seems like the blogging community is moving away from blogs and more towards social media to maintain their audience. However, it’s not impossible. As long as you’re willing to put in the time to grow your audience, it can happen with these five steps –
Participate in the community
It’s more than just writing blogs and responding to the comments you get. Participating in the community looks like commenting on others’ blog posts, sharing them online, and encouraging them outside of just their blog posts. If you’re in Facebook groups for bloggers, be active in them! Reach out with questions, and when others do the same respond with answers! Don’t look at it as just promoting yourself and your blog, but instead as having actual interest in and care for your peers. Although it may start as a blog comment, you’d be surprised as to where your new relationships may go!
Make your content easily shareable
Allyssa talked a while back about how to increase blog shares on Twitter, and these types of things are really great ways to grow your audience. I can speak as a witness to this that when you add share buttons or tweetables to your content, you’re not only encouraging people to share your content, but you’re making it easy to do so. Now, don’t get too carried away – you don’t need a share button for every single social media outlet out there. Instead, pick a few that you feel are popular with your audience or that you’re active on.
Consider how you can help through your content
Think about it – have you gone through something that you learned from and could share on your blog? The issues we face aren’t always unique to us. Did you struggle with how to gain sponsorships but now you run a successful sponsorship program? Share that with your readers! Do you know a lot about photography or maybe you’ve recently uncovered a “secret” to how to do something? Share it! You literally don’t gain anything by hoarding information. Instead, you’ll not only be helpful to your readers, but I’m sure you’ll find these helpful, informative posts will be shared more as well!
Collaborate with other bloggers
It can be intimidating to reach out to another blogger with interest in collaborating with them, but it can be so good for your blog. You could ask them to guest post on your site, or you could pitch a guest post for theirs. You could collaborate on a project together like how Christie and I launched Postmark Society together or how Emily and Kathleen launched the Being Boss podcast together! Not only will this cultivate relationships with others in your community, but it’s a great way to get your name and thus your blog in front of people who might not have heard of it otherwise.
Related: How to Collaborate to Grow Your Brand
Be Yourself
It may seem like you have to blog a certain way, create a certain type of graphic, share specific looking things on Instagram or Pinterest to grow your following, but that’s just not true. Nothing can be gained by copying or trying to recreate someone else’s success in the blogosphere. Instead, really be true to yourself. Write the way you’re comfortable, create graphics that you like, and share what you’re genuinely want to. People can see right through it when you’re just imitating someone else, but people are drawn to those who are as authentic online as they are in person.
Of course there are other ways you can grow your audience and community, like sharing others’ posts on social media, participating in Instagram challenges or Twitter chats, or even starting an email list. However you go about growing your audience, the bottom line is that it’s important to be yourself and do what you’re comfortable with!
Have you found a specific way you’ve grown your audience? Feel free to share in the comments below or let’s chat about it on Twitter!
Liz Carroll says
Great tips here Kory! I’ve been trying to grow my blog, but it’s been a real struggle since I work full-time and my blog is just a fun side project. Still, maybe if I could get more involved in an actual community, I’d have more readers.
Thanks!
Kory says
I’ve been there, Liz! Up until last May I was a full time student balancing school, freelance work, and blogging. For me, it was all about setting aside time to do blog related stuff like read others’ blogs and work on my own!
Michelle says
This is exactly the kind of valuable content I need to be reading on the heels of my blog launch last week! I really want to focus on building a community of like-minded, supportive young women, and I think that starts not just growing your following, but intentionally building a following of the right people who love what you do and can genuinely benefit from what you’re putting out there. Your tips seem to do double duty :) Thanks for sharing!
Kory says
Yes, yes, yes! It’s all about building relationships with people who connect with you and what you’re writing about! Congrats on your launch, and I hope these tips prove helpful for you!
Kercia says
These are great tips, Kory! I love that you included ‘be yourself’ there are so many bloggers out that being yourself is one of the biggest things that is going to make you stand out and it also makes you approachable :)
Kory says
Yes! I think it all goes with people trying to imitate what others are doing to recreate that success for themselves. However, it really just hinders the work. It’s so important in life and online to just be yourself!
Nadeena says
loved this. i know i need to work on finding and approaching other bloggers that i want to collaborate with. gotta add that to my to do list. also hi. post mark society?! I’m so signing up. How did I not know this existed?!
Kory says
You go, girl! I think collaborations can be really fun and super beneficial for everyone! Also – yay! We don’t promote it as much because we both have our own businesses, but we’re so happy to have you! :)
Allyssa says
So many great tips! I love this little bit of wisdom: “You literally don’t gain anything by hoarding information.” It’s so true!
Allyssa says
Oh and thanks for including a link to my post!
Kory says
Isn’t it?! I really feel like some people hold in stuff they know or tools they use (can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen someone ask “what pen did you use for this?!” on Instagram and the original poster ignore the comment), but it’s not helpful. Like, at all.
Chasity says
Thank you so much for sharing this awesome information! Collaboration is key to success – there’s so much we can learn from each other in working together. :-)
Kory says
Of course! I absolutely agree – there’s no limit to what we could learn from each other through collaboration :)
Akane says
Hi, Kory, thanks for sharing these useful tips for growing audience… now there are too many similar blogs and bloggers out there without personality and “be yourself”…
Love the be yourself tip, I really need to find a place and way to make more blogger friends in the future…
Akane
http://www.humancat.co