Grow an Audience with Our Best Blogging Practices

Writing a blog is a great way to attract news customers to your business or to share your experiences with the world. While setting up a blog is very easy these days, it’s a challenge to grow an audience.
Building on over a dozen years of blogging, here are some tips to make your blog a success.

Be Consistent Rather than Prolific

There are lots of gurus out there that will tell you how often you should post to your blog. But the volume of posts isn’t nearly as important as consistency.
People often get excited when they start blogging and post to their blog every day. After a month they start blogging every week, then every month as they burn out.
Your audience doesn’t care as much about how frequently you post to your blog as much as whether or not you do it consistently. Writing five posts in a week and then waiting a month to post another article will cause you to lose your audience.
Instead of the haphazard schedule, consider writing weekly and publishing your posts on the same day each week. Your audience will know to check back to your blog every week to see the latest post.
WordPress lets you schedule posts in advance, so if you prefer to write a month’s worth of blog posts at once you can still schedule them to post each week.

Interact with Commenters (Even the Negative Ones!)

The nature of the web gives people anonymity, and they can sometimes say mean things. Even when a person leaves a comment that disagrees with your post, it’s a good idea to keep the comment on your site rather than deleting it.
A key goal to blogging is to create a discussion, and having comments only from people that agree with you won’t start much of a discussion.
It’s OK to delete comments that are vile or spammy, but don’t delete comments just because they suggest an alternative viewpoint.
Also, commenters will keep coming back and interacting with your posts if you interact with them. Take the time to respond to each comment to show your community that you appreciate them taking the time to leave a comment.

Post on Other Blogs and in Social Media

New blogs don’t have an audience, so you need to go to established blogs and sites to build awareness.
Look for blogs that have similar content to yours and leave insightful comments that include your web address on the comment form. People who like your comments will click your link to visit your site. If they like the content they’ll keep coming back.
You can also engage with people on social media who are talking about the same topics you blog about. Include your blog’s domain name in your social media profile so people can find it.
It’s important not to spam, however. Leave good comments and don’t ever just pitch your blog.

Leverage Social Media

Thanks to WordPress plugins like Jetpack, it’s easy to automatically publish your new posts to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media sites. This is an important part of reaching new people.
It’s also a good idea to make it easy for people who like your content to be able to share it with their followers. Use these social media plugins to make it easy for your readers to share. And the more shares you get, the faster your audience will grow!

Keep Pushing Forward

Blogging can be discouraging when your audience is small. The key is to be persistent. Many of the best blogs remained undiscovered for months or years before an influential person or website mentioned them, catapulting them to fame. Follow these tips and don’t get discouraged—keep writing!
And to set up your next blog, consider EasyWP, our managed WordPress solution. Get your first year of hosting for just $8.88.

Andrew Allemann is editor of Domain Name Wire, the longest-running blog covering the business of domain names. Domain Name Wire has covered the business of domain name investing for over ten years.