When you first launch your blog, you primarily focus on building a streamlined website with a foundation of engaging and informative content. Before long, however, you find yourself obsessing over visitor stats and trying to find ways to increase your site’s discoverability.
To broaden your reach and make sure your target audience knows your blog exists, you must create a proactive outreach plan. The following methods have increased visitors to my blogs, and I’m sure they will work for you, too.
Participate in Roundups
A roundup is a type of blog post featuring contributions by multiple experts. It is organized and edited by a host blogger. Roundup posts can list websites, articles, products, books, and basically any content that makes a useful list.
Here’s how I’d search for travel writing blog roundups:
- Conduct a search for “travel writing”+blog+roundup. Just replace “travel writing” with your area of interest to find roundup hosts with posts to which you can contribute.
- Adjust the timeframe for your search to within the past year or a custom timeframe. (On Google, this option is available in the Tools drop-down menu.)
Although there are some annual or one-off roundups, most host bloggers create weekly or monthly roundups to consolidate their content. Hosts are always looking for useful content to share with their audience, so don’t hesitate to contact them with a link to your relevant articles
I contribute to roundups in my niche. Indie author influencer, Joel Friedlander from The Book Designer website, hosts a monthly Carnival of the Indies, which shares writing and self-publishing articles. Each month I submit blog posts I’ve published or written, to be considered for his roundup. Since I started contributing blog posts to his roundups, the blog stats for those articles have become evergreen. There’s a steady stream of visitors from his site months after my link is published in his roundup.
Some roundups are manual compilations, others are automated, and you need to contact the admin to get your website crawled and curated into the roundup. Hiveworld runs a writer’s knowledge database, and they crawl websites for articles about writing and distribute article roundups to their mailing list. They also create a weekly summary of tweets to share their content.
Curate your own Roundup
If you can’t find a roundup aimed at an audience within your niche, host your own. This niche-specific content is incredibly sharable on social media. And the more you share other people’s content, the more you raise your profile within your niche.
I host a monthly writing roundup of articles, podcasts, and books focused on helping my audience improve their travel writing. I set up a Google Alert for key search terms to get curated content delivered to my inbox once a month and pick out the best content to feature.
Three key benefits of running your own roundup are:
- It’s a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of trends and influential bloggers and broadcasters in your niche.
- It provides your audience with an eminently shareable list of useful resources.
- It’s an opportunity to showcase other people’s content and raise your profile within their social media landscape.
I leave a comment on the source article so the author of the post knows I’ve included their content in my roundup. It’s also visible to anyone who reads those comments and entices them to click on my link to visit my blog.
In my roundup articles, I use the Click to Tweet WordPress plugin. It creates tweets for each roundup entry, which includes the twitter handle for the source content creator.
After publishing the blog post, I click on each of these links and schedule them in Buffer. The Twitter posts become another way the content creator gets notification of their inclusion in the roundup and provides a simple way to get them to retweet the mention to their audience.
If the idea of hosting your own roundup seems like too much work, you could explore Triberr.
Join Triberr to Share and Be Shared
Triberr is a social site where you connect with other bloggers and influencers in your niche to reciprocate content sharing.
Begin by following a tribe as an observer to view the tribe’s blog posts. Next, schedule shares across your social networks. Tribe members can’t see or share your blog posts until the tribe chief promotes you to a fully-fledged tribe member. But at that point, your blog posts become eligible for sharing by the other members.
Triberr has paid plan options, but it also has a free plan which gives you enough features to see whether you like using this tool before you make a financial commitment.
Audience Growth takes Marathon effort
Growing your audience takes effort. It’s not unusual for hobby bloggers to take a passive approach to audience growth. Still, if your blog is part of your business platform or you’re blogging a book, you have to take an active role in growing your audience. Remember, this isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon and takes methodical and continued action to encourage a steady stream of visitors to your blog.
What audience growth techniques have contributed to the growth of your blog visitors? Tell me in the comments below. And if you found this article useful, please share it with your followers.
About the Author
Jay Artale abandoned her corporate career to become a digital nomad and full-time writer. She’s an avid blogger and a nonfiction author helping travel writers and travel bloggers achieve their self-publishing goals. Join her at Birds of a Feather Press where she shares tips, advice, and inspiration to writers with an independent spirit.
Photo courtesy of aurielaki.
It was refreshing to read some new ideas in this space. I have never heard of triberr before, it is a great concept.