How to Get Blog Followers Sustainably

Last Updated on May 11, 2021 by Anita Hendrieka

Want to know how to get blog followers and learn how to keep them? If you want to grow your blog in a sustainable way you need to get those readers that come back again. Not the one-hit wonders. 

They are the best kind of readers because they’re the ones that come back to every single blog post that you publish, and if you put out something new like a freebie, paid product, or service because they already read your blog and they come back again and again, they are more likely to buy from you. They have that trust because they know your work and what value you provide.

We want our blog to grow enough that we have these people that come back to our blog month after month.

Firstly, let’s get into some common blogging misconceptions when it comes to growing your blog and getting these blog followers in the first place.

 

How to get blog followers – the sustainable way!

 

Blogging misconception #1 

The first misconception that I see coming up again, and again, is that you must be on every single social media platform there is, and you must be constantly putting out content on all of the platforms. Let me tell you something, you don’t just need social media to grow your blog. I recommend that social media is the last thing that you work on when it comes to your blog.

Social media gets our content out there quick. It gives it that quick push it needs and allows for more people to see our content in the first place. If we want these blog followers that keep coming back, you can do that by using other strategies too. Just putting your content out on social media is not necessarily going to grow these blog fans in the first place.

Let’s not forget that social media also takes a lot of time and it’s getting harder and harder to be seen these days. We need to be able to grow our blogs and think about the long-term growth and what that’s going to look like.

You should be working on your business more than you work IN your business. What I mean by that is you should be planning and developing your business and income more than working on the tasks that are going to give you the short term spikes. The consistent tasks you do daily should predominately be automated.

How can you develop your blog content further you might ask? What kind of articles is going to get people to your blog and pushed into various funnels that you have?

 

Blogging misconception #2

The second misconception that I see is that to get all these blog readers and to grow your blog to a place where you’re getting thousands of people is that you need to have hundreds of blog posts. That is also not true. 

You must have a blog with blog content, right? Of course, you do. But you could have a blog with 20 blog posts, and they could all be ranking on Google. They could be on page 1 of Google or some on page 2 that are working their way up to page 1. The amount of traffic that you could generate just by having 20 blog posts that are ranking is unlimited!

The misconception that you need to have hundreds or even thousands of blog posts, to begin with, to even think about getting thousands of people to a blog is simply not true. If none of those posts is SEO optimized and not of good quality, they aren’t going to rank and you’re going to be relying on social media to give you the quick traffic wins.

For example, on my second website called Travelling Balkans, I have around 30 posts and I haven’t added to it in the last year because I’ve just been so busy with my other businesses.

That one website alone brings me a decent amount of people per month. Simply because I have focused on quality over quantity. 

I don’t even need to think about social media on that blog in the first place which is awesome for me! So, you don’t have to have hundreds of blog posts to see these lifelong blog followers. 

 

How to get blog followers with these 3 key components

 

To see actual results from your blog and see those lifelong blog followers, you need these 3 core components.

 

 

1. Blog Niche

The very first thing that you should be thinking of is your niche. Now I know that when you think of a niche, you might think it’s kind of like a word that’s been thrown out so many times that you’re like, what does this even mean anymore? And I know that it can get a little bit boring. Right? We hear niche, niche, niche all the time, but that’s because it’s important.

In some industries, having a niche is not so important.

For example, I’m also in the coaching world, as well as being a blogger. I know many business coaches who do not have niches and they simply help people to build their businesses, which is very general.

They don’t have to have a really specific niche, but for blogging, you need to have a niche. A niche is not just fashion, food, travel, lifestyle – you NEED to be more specific with it.

There needs to be a very unique spin to your blog. To help you, ask yourself these questions:

• What are you passionate about?
• What are you good at?
• Who do you want to help?
• What do they need help with?

Those are the kind of questions you need to be asking yourself when you are trying to find your niche.

So, let’s say you know what you’re passionate about, you know what you’re good at but who do you help? If you don’t know your audience and what they need help with you’re going to struggle. You need to know what you specialize in and how you’re going to stand out from the crowd.

We all know that there are millions of blogs out there but how can you stand out from that sea of bloggers? You need to have something specific and unique about you, right? Therefore, having a niche is so important. When you have this, you can gain quick authority because we do not want to be spending years growing a blog, do we?

 

 

2. Blog Content

The second core component to a blog and getting these kinds of lifelong blog followers is your content. If you do not have a content plan, you’re going to struggle, but you cannot create a content plan before you finalize your niche.

You need to sort out your niche first and then you delve into your content plan. When it comes to content, I don’t want you to throw out some ideas, publish them and cross your fingers and hope for the best. That’s not how you should be putting out your content.

You should be putting out content that you know, it’s going to do well, not that you hope it’s going to do well. You want to make sure that you’re not wasting your time by writing these long, beautiful blog posts and hearing crickets.

Your content is important and the way that you plan that and the way that you publish it is particularly important. You also need to have a good structure for your blog posts too. If your blog posts are set up in a way that’s confusing for your readers, then your reader leaves and probably never comes back. We want to make sure our blog posts are very beautifully optimized and is structured in a way that’s very easy for people to read. 

Readers don’t want too many complications when it comes to a website. They want it quite simple and easy to navigate.

 

 

 

3. Blog Strategy 

We have your niche; we have your content and then we have a strategy. Now, what I mean by strategy is SEO, social media, Pinterest and email. You use strategy to bring people into your blog.

 

SEO for bloggers (search engine optimization). 

We have a couple of places that we can do this on Google, and we can do this on Pinterest. Search engine traffic makes up for around 70% of my traffic.

70% of my traffic every month with minimal work and big rewards. The great thing about SEO is that it’s free. It’s free marketing and a strategy that you should be using. SEO can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be.

It’s really important when it comes down to SEO that you keep it simple If you want to learn how to do that, you have to join one of my programs because I feel like I do SEO very well. I had multiple clients who made page one of Google within a couple of weeks of implementing SEO. 

The thing is, is that a lot of people are doing it wrong. A lot of people when they think of SEO, they think just pick a keyword and put it on your blog a few times along with the Yoast plugin.

Nope. It doesn’t work. There are other factors when it comes to SEO that you should be worrying about. 

We want to be using SEO to bring in people from Google and Pinterest as well. 

If you’re looking for a good keyword research tool I recommend Keysearch, I’ve used this tool for years and it has helped me reach page 1 of Google again and again!

 

Social media for bloggers

The next piece to the strategy puzzle is social media. You could use social media to bring people into a blog too if you wanted to. As I said earlier, you don’t want to make this your sole focus though. 

When it comes to social media it’s important to not be on every platform. If you do this, what happens is that you’re spreading yourself too thin and your content is not of high quality that it just won’t convert people. I always say pick one or two social media platforms to focus on, so you’ll be able to do one then 3 average.

You want to kind of master one or two before adding on another platform in the future. You want to be focusing on a simple and the most effective platform for your business first.

Tik Tok is a great platform to start experimenting with content and see quick results.

Instagram is also good, although it is a lot harder to grow these days and get a good reach like 3 years ago. It’s a great platform to gain visibility and it’s also how I have found a bunch of my clients. Instagram is not dead. There’s just a different way to use it. 

 

Email marketing for bloggers

Then we have email marketing. Email is the last piece to the strategy puzzle, and it is especially important to have an email list with a blog. The reason why email is so important is that we simply cannot just rely on social media these days. I don’t know about you, but I keep getting blocked on Facebook lately and I feel like I’ve been having more trouble than usual with uploading Instagram stories. I have been kicked off Facebook for weeks at a time which means I’ve lost access to all of those blog followers, which sucks. 

An email list is a kind of safety net in case we lose access to our social media. To grow that email list, a sign-up form saying ‘Join my free newsletter and gain tips every month’ just won’t do anymore. It’s just not enough for people these days. Within the Blog Machine, I show my students how to create an email funnel for their blog.

 

What’s an email funnel?

An email funnel is an automation sequence you will take your audience through so they can build know, like, trust with you.

The first step is to have an opt-in freebie. This will be something free to give to people to get people, to put their email address. It is so hard to do that these days. Everyone is sick of getting so many newsletters and there’s so many emails popping up in our inbox every single day that we need to give something to people, an incentive to sign up. 

With your freebie, you need to be helping the audience with a specific problem. You shouldn’t just make a freebie you think is cool, you need to think of what problems your ideal audience has and give them a quick solution to their problem.

Then from there, we go through an email sequence, which allows people to get to know you and your brand better and leads people to different parts of your blog and eventually to any paid products or services you offer. You can also include affiliate links within these emails.

You will either lead your audience to a paid product or a service that you might have. This could be a digital product, a physical product, a service you provide. 

Email is one of the best ways to grow your blogfollowers on your blog because they are loyal and dedicated readers and potential customers. They wouldn’t have put their email if they’re not fans of you and the freebie in the first place. 

 

Those are the three comport components of a blog. Firstly, we have a niche, then content and finally strategy. 

 

You need your niche firstly otherwise you cannot plan out your content. You cannot grow your social media and grow your email list and rank on SEO before you have your niche and content plan. You can try, but it’s going to take years to grow, trust me from experience. 

Things have changed. Blogging has changed over the years and I’ve seen it as I’ve been in the industry for over 10 years. I started my blog as very general, dipping into multiple niches. Which you just simply cannot do anymore.

You need to have something specific and unique to you and your blog, and you need to be clear on who exactly you are helping at the end of the day. 

When I felt like I finally found my niche things changed drastically for me. my growth was stagnant, going up a little bit, and then down again but when I found out my niche, it went sky high.

Within the Blog Machine, we go over finding your niche in the second module because it’s one of the most important things to do. I have a worksheet that pulls you and your story out on paper, and then we break it apart and find exactly what your niche is. We also learn all about a content framework, blog framework and I teach you my SEO strategy that has got my clients to page one of Google for the very first time, which I’m so proud of. You can find more information about it here.

I hope this blog post was helpful for you and gave you a good idea of how you can grow your blog followers in a sustainable way. having those three core components are really, important. Too often I see bloggers maybe doing two pieces of the puzzle when they are not thinking about the third and final piece.

 

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