There are dozens of ways to build readership for your Business Blog – a quick fix can be to buy ads, the long term approach is more SEO focused, but here are 4 easy steps to build your readership that don’t require you to spend money since you’re already investing something much more valuable; your time.
#1 – Create Quality Content
The first is always the most obvious; write really good blog posts about your passion, write enthusiastically, consistently and let that passion shine through. Write business stories that will really engage the people you hope to attract (think: your target audience) and they will come, then they’ll bookmark and link to your blog which ultimately drives your search engine rankings organically so more people will find you.
#2 – Participate in the Community
Join some forums and in your niche and create value for those people – join the conversation, answer questions, share your knowledge and expertise. You will become known as someone who is trustworthy and knows what they’re talking about. At that point add a link to your blog to your signature and consider inviting some of your connections to the blog personally.
#3 – Guest Post for other Bloggers
Contact another popular blogger in your niche and offer a completely unique article to publish on their blog (naturally including a link to you) and offer them the same. This creates more quality content for each of you, and the search engines love strong links between related blogs – it makes them both more relevant.
#4 – Build Your List
Your Blog is your home online and the only thing that you both own and control (as opposed to your social network profiles) so you want to connect with people who visit your Blog – you want them to come back and you want to be able to stay in touch with them. The most effective way to do this is to get them to subscribe to your RSS feed or join your email list, offer a free eBook (chock full of value) for opting in to either.
(Bonus) #5 – Post Your Posts
Connect with your contacts on the social media platforms and bring them to your blog by posting your posts – set up your blog to automatically post to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, or do it manually – but do it!
