You’ve set up a blog recently, haven’t you? 
Congratulations on joining a community that is 1.6 million people strong and growing every second … literally!
This month, you can make a significant progress with your new blog.
If your blog is less than 1 year old, then it’s a new one. But does it really matter when you started blogging?
At this stage, it is not uncommon to feel some amount of trepidation since your future as a writer is uncertain.
Even though you keep your fingers crossed for literary greatness, part of you dreads the oblivion that has enveloped so many fellow wordsmiths.
After all, for every blogger that rises to fame there are roughly a dozen others that sink without a trace. Hey, that sounded so profound and poetic!
Jokes aside, what are some reasons that a blog fails to take off?
Poor content, lack of fresh perspective, flawed marketing strategy, failure to understand your target audience … any of these factors could be systematically sabotaging your blog.
However, the one thing that can truly sign the death warrant for an upcoming blogger is unreasonable expectation.
What do I mean? Let me explain. When most people set up a blog, they believe it comes with an automatic guarantee of success. It’s almost as if having a blog is their ticket to literary stardom.
Barely a few months into the endeavour and they expect a fan following that runs into several thousands or sales figures that add up to merry millions.
I am not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but that is an extremely unrealistic picture we’ve got here. No matter how good your intentions, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment if you start building such grand castles in the air.
In fact, carry on like this and chances are that you will quit in 3-4 months, disillusioned, bitter, and sworn off blogging for good.
Ambition is a positive trait; however, it’s also important to keep yourself firmly grounded and in touch with reality.
Nothing happens overnight, nothing happens in a few weeks, and nothing much is going to happen in a couple of months either. Blogging is an ongoing effort and it requires patience, a concrete strategy, and, of course, the right kind of SEO techniques.
On that note, let’s look at some practices that our experts at Addictive Media highly recommend. They will endear you to search engines and make you come across as a kindred spirit. To do so, we will start at the very beginning which, I have on good authority, is always a very good place to start!
The Content Still The Lord & Master
“Of course… the content! What a brilliant idea. Who would have thought that someone talking about optimizing a blog would touch upon the topic of content? A stroke of genius.”
All your snide comments aside, if you knew just how many people took content for granted, you’d be SHOCKED.
Bloggers focus on keyword, on page and off page optimization, linking, and a host of other technicalities, but forget the guiding principle that has made blogging such a well-loved pastime: ‘To offer read-worthy content to their audience’. Surprising how this simple idea can escape so many people!
Here’s the thing – SEO makes you discoverable; but your content makes you memorable. Offering anything less than original content to your readers is tantamount to cheating. And readers don’t like being taken for a ride.
Therefore, when you are creating content, ask yourself these questions:
- Is it unique and original?
- Am I updating my blog frequently?
- Have I supplemented text with relevant visual content (images, videos, slideshows, podcasts, etc.)?
- Have I proofread the article to ensure there are no typos or grammatical errors?
- Will my readers define the 15 minutes they spent reading my post as ‘time well spent’?
- Will they be prompted to share it on their social forums?
- Have I made the article engaging and interactive enough?
If your answer to most of these questions is in the positive, you are on the right track. Good for you!
Don’t Spend All Your Time on the Content
“What?? Where did that come from? Didn’t you just say content is all important?”
Calm down, restless masses. Yes, content is very, very important, but a new blogger has very little to gain from dedicating 90% of his time to creating content. Let me explain why.
You have just set up a blog and have a following of – let’s take an optimistic estimate – 100 readers.
Even if you are adding fabulous content night and day, how many people do you think will share the post with their friends? Not all of them; in fact, not even half of them. The real figures will be closer to 3-5%, if that.
So, you go from having 100 followers to 105 followers in a month. Not a spectacular leap. At this rate, how long do you think it will take for you to hit a double century? A year? Probably more?
What most bloggers do not understand is that the number of followers DOES NOT increase in direct proportion to the posts they are writing in a month. By itself great content won’t bring in readers; but great promotion and networking will. How do you do that? Read on to find out.
How do you do that? Read on to find out.
Make the Most of being a Guest
We’ve already established that in the infant stages of your blog, good content will only take you so far.
You have to promote your blog and to do that you must get out there and create a presence for it. No, sharing blog posts on Twitter or your Facebook timeline does not count as promotion and yes, there is another way to do that. Guest blogging.
If you want to see an exponential increase in the number of followers you have, convince another blog (with a size-able fan base) to send its readers your way. How? By finding out if they accept guest contributions from writers such as yourself. Simple, isn’t it?
Before you shake your head and dismiss guest blogging as a futile exercise, take a look at some of the ways in which it will add value to your experience.
1. Increased traffic: Guest blogging is a great way to brings readers from the host blog to yours. Search engines, too, place a high premium on these backlinks, which will eventually help you get higher ranks.
2. Credibility: When you are associated with a blog that holds authority, readers find it within them to trust you easily. Furthermore, you come across as an expert on the topic you are writing on.
3. Exposure: Even if all the people reading your post don’t land up at your blog, each blog post will bring you greater visibility. In addition to helping you reach out to a wider audience it will also increase brand awareness among your audience.
4. Networking: Guest blogging is an excellent way to meet fellow-bloggers, join new communities, and interact with like-minded people which can be an enriching experience in itself.
As you can see, you stand to gain a lot by giving guest blogging a shot. Whoa! That actually rhymed.
However, even as you are bubbling over with enthusiasm, I have to add one bit of advice here – choose your host blog very, very carefully. Factors like reputation, domain name, and search engine ranking are important, but relevance cannot be ignored.
For instance, a post on “How to Grow Petunias from Seedlings” will stand out (for all the wrong reasons) on a blog dealing with women’s cosmetics and make up. So, pick your allies wisely.
There are plenty of blogs that encourage content exchange purely for SEO purposes. Steer clear of such blogs. They might boost your rankings, but can harm your credibility as a writer.
Link Your Way to Success
We’ve discussed how guest blogging helps get valuable back links. 
There is yet another way to use links to boost your blog’s ranking. It’s known as internal linking.
Don’t let this term scare you off. It’s pretty simple, really. What you do is link new posts on your blog to the older ones using anchor text.
For instance, let’s say you are writing a post on ‘5 Fun Exercises to Spice Up Your Workout Routine’ and one of the points being covered in it is Dancing.
If you have an existing post that talks in great detail about dancing as a form of exercise, the amount of calories it burns, etc. you could link it to your current article.
Why is this important?
The reasons are many:
- It will send more traffic to your older posts giving them a new lease on life.
- It engages your reader and guides them to other relevant articles.
- Since link juice flows from one page to another within your blog, it improves page ranks.
- Internal linking facilitates better indexing and crawling of your blog, which is good for SEO.
Again, relevance of the internal links matters a lot, especially for the reader. Being directed from ‘Fall-Winter Fashion Trends for 2013’ to ‘Top 5 Home Remedies for Hemorrhoids’ is not pleasant and nobody will appreciate being lead on this ridiculous dance.
Be Social. Be Interactive. Be Approachable
Like we said at the beginning of this article, blogging is an extremely social activity. And while social media is hardly the right tool to help expand your readership base, it can be used to engage your existing followers and foster close ties with your community.
There are different ways to do that, some of which have been mentioned below:
- – Participate in discussion forums and respond to queries posted by users. Choose the forums carefully. While the better ones can do wonders for your reputation, the bad ones can have an adverse impact on your image.
- – Encourage your readers to leave comments on your articles and make it a point to reply to them on a regular basis.
- – When tweeting about your blog post or leaving a link on your FB page, try to create separate value for your readers. Instead of using a snippet from the post itself, mention facts or information that doesn’t appear in it. It livens things up a bit.
- – Google+ may not be half as popular as Facebook, but the fact that it is closely linked to Google, which is only the most popular search engine in the world today, makes it your new best friend. Google indexes your page the instant you leave your blog’s link on Google+, allowing people to find it more easily.
- – Pinterest is fast becoming an important source of referral traffic. To tap into this social platform, you must have images in your blog post. If you do, you can pin the post to your personal board or on individual boards. The second option – pinning the post to a contributor board – brings increased exposure.
Get creative when interacting with your readers on social platforms. Just because something hasn’t been tried before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a go.
Why tread the beaten path when there’s a world of possibilities in front you? Explore, experiment, and see how your audience reacts to it.
If it goes down well, good for you! If it doesn’t, switch tactics and move to something else. At any rate, you would have learned from your mistakes!
Before we say goodbye, I have a small observation that I’d like to share with you.
When finalizing a marketing/promotion strategy, it helps to remember that blogs are very different from static websites. Therefore, your approach towards optimizing them has to be different too.
By its very nature, blogging is a very social activity.
As a result, SEO for it goes beyond pandering to the whims of search engine spiders or finding a foolproof method to conform to complicated algorithms.
New Blog Growth Takeaway
The success of a blog depends on not just how well it is able to grab people’s attention but also how long it is able to hold on to it.
A good blog will speak to people whereas a great blog will engage them. A good blog will give its readers content they enjoy; a great one will excite their imagination and make people share the blog with their friends.
And, the only way you can get from good to GREAT is if you never lose sight of what really matters – your readers.
As always, leave a comment and tell me how you started to grow your new blog. I’ll reply and could even visit your blog to see how you’re doing.
About Author – My Name is Sharon Michaels and I am a design professional with over 6 years of experience in my pocket. A graduate from the National Institute of Design, India, my approach towards designing is unique and unconventional. The results are often stunning, even if I do say so myself! In my spare time, whenever I have any, I like to turn my attention to two of my other interests – writing and photography.
Hi, Michael Chibuzor. I like your article. It is very informative so it is very useful for my job. Thanks for sharing this post. Hope to read more helpful information from you. Have a nice day!
you’ve already established that in the infant stages of your blog, good content will only take you so far.
you have given very important and precise information which help to promote our blog so thank you for the same.
Social media really can work and give us great leverage to help us grow on our blog. The great thing about social media is that we’re instantly opening our blog up to many more potential readers and we never know who’ll end up coming to your site as a result. Just remember that blog promotion is much more than simply pushing our own blog, but a way to highlight other bloggers work who can, as a result, become allies with us to help us grow our blog.
i also have new blog, and i join amazon affiliation, and you post is useful, thank you
Awesome. I agree with all of this. Especially the bit about focusing on the content, and not overly focusing on SEO. It’s all about getting the balance right. There’s no point getting loads of people to your site if they’re going to do a runner straight up because your content is crap!
In fact your content NEEDS to be enticing and gripping these days for SEO – after all the Panda and Penguin update malarky. Sticky content is the way forward.
And I must add, this is really well written Michael (from a fellow copywriter).
Do you accept guest posts? Would love to add something valuable for your readers.
Let me know!
Cheers!
Konrad
Thank you Sanders. Yes, I accept guest posts that are practicable and interesting.
Content has always been the king and will still remain the king in the coming years as well.
That was a really great post and really points out everything that fails the new bloggers in their early years.
Thanks for sharing this post 🙂
Wow! very clear an precise information here. It really points out the reason why most new bloggers wind-up in the gutters soon after setting out. Great post.
It’s good to have you here Deroy.
I’ve had my blog for four months. I tried guest blogging but none of my articles got accepted. The only places where I actually managed to post a couple of articles are EzineArticles and Infobarrel. And yes, I know that those don’t count as guest posts. I got to say you make it sound simple but this job is frustrating especially for someone like me, for whom English isn’t the first language.
Michael like your own contents you also never compromise over the quality of guest post and this one is proof of that; while reading this post I never got it is not written by you; at the end finding the name of guest writer I came to know you are speaking with someone’s else tongue. The post is actually a source of solace for all those who recently started blogging or quite new in this field. This shows how careful you are in selection of guest post to never disappoint your readers either you write your post or someone else. Great man you are a gem of blogging
Such kind words you’ve for me Muhammad. I feel on top of the world and I must say a BIG thank you. Yes, I’ll not disappoint you with my posts, even if it’s a guest post. Thanks for supporting friend.
What a great blog, i am searching in Google from couple of days.Two Simple Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog” but did not find any great way,but my search came to an end after visiting your blog.
Hello; This was an excellent post for beginning bloggers. And even though I don’t consider myself a beginner any more, I still learned from the post. I thought it could have easily been several posts. The only thing I thought was missing was a section on blog commenting. By following other blogs and leaving regular quality comments on them you build relationships with other bloggers that can lead to opportunities to promote your site and its posts. I have noticed a marked increase in my site’s traffic and alexa rankings since becoming more faithful about commenting on other blogs especially those with comment love enabled. It has also lead to more comments on my own posts as the friends I have made through reaching out to other bloggers have visited my site to leave their thoughts even though my site’s niche has very little in common with theirs. And I was recently featured in a friend’s post about the five bloggers she admires because of commenting. Her decision was partly because of my unique niche the amusement industry and partly because of me being a blind blogger; but mostly because we had become friends and she wanted to give me a push. Don’t underestimate the value of friendship on the web. I have found other bloggers very friendly and willing to go out of their way to help the sincere hard working beginner. Hope you will visit my site and perhaps you will subscribe. thanks for the great post. As someone whose posts are on the long side its nice to find someone else who writes thorough posts. Take care, max
Thanks for your comment – I really appreciate the value you’ve for me and fellow content marketers. Sure, I’ll visit your blog right away to see how strong you’ve going.
Excellent post. Very useful tips. I agree with you guest blogging and social media are very important in making a blog successful and to increase your blog network.:)
It’s a nice post on growing a new blog. I appreciate it Michael.
You’ve a great blog Michael – and the way you explained how to grow a new blog is spectacular. Thanks for writing this.
That is true: Those are the simplest and fastest ways to start sending in the traffic and building an audience. Thank you Michael.
Those are the simplest and fastest ways to start sending in the traffic and building an audience. Thank you Michael.
Intelligent bloggers use guest blogging, social media and more importantly networking to grow their new blog.
Thanks for the share
I strongly agree to your blog ….
i think is very cool ..Awesome!!!
Keep Posting
making a new blog become successful requires diligence, and dedication, but it is not rocket science.
i should start to invite guest posting at my blog to improve my blog
Its really tough now for newbies to score big in Google’s ranking. Google’s new Humming Bird update is being very harsh to the spammer/low authority blogs, they are considering high authority blogs for better rankings. So its better to build your website’s authority first by writing quality content & work with white hat SEO techniques only for promotion of the blog. Google doesn’t penalize or ban those website whom it trusts or whom it find pretty useful for its user. So, for me, only way to grow your blog right now is by avoiding every spam strategy to go ahead and work with the basics to build your website authority. Anyways you have suggested nice ways Michael. thanks for sharing.
Really tough Drakes, but it’s not impossible if you work hard.
Great points Michael. Yup content is the king and you can’t deny it. As far as a new blog is concerned it is important to have enough pillar content so that new visitors have quite some content to spend time on and to get converted.
At the same time, as you say, for a new blog, most of the work has to be done outside of the blog in terms of promotion, link building etc.
Thanks for sharing.
Good to finally have you here Jane. I’ve always admired your personal blog. I even visited it and it’s cute as usual. God bless you for your comment.
Growing a new blog requires a consistent work; writing, guest blogging, SEO and social media marketing. Thank you.
You’re right Precious. Thanks for stopping by to read my post.
You’ve shared some great strategies for promoting a new blog Michael. I can’t wait to start putting the tips to action on my own newly launched blog.
Go for it friend!
Intelligent bloggers use guest blogging, social media and more importantly networking to grow their new blog. Those are the simplest and fastest ways to start sending in the traffic and building an audience. Thank you Michael.
Excellent comment as always.
Hi Michael, nice article. According to me blogging is a great way to build the solid long term relationship with the customers as well as with other bloggers too. “Leave your ego at the door” this matters a lot, many bloggers fail because of their ego. “EGO” is something that we should avoid it completely because then only success can be achieved. EGO less life is a successful life because it gives a positive results.
Your proposition is awesome and do you mind if I use it to create a blog post? Lol!
I learned so much from this single post and I’m going to grow my new blog – no questions asked!
Aha!
Nice article on lifting a new blog off the radar. I love this post.
Hello Michael!
I like your post frankly. I will harmonize about the vagueness of being a writer in the future. And blogs fail to take off for some reasons like poor quality content, lack of fresh perspective, flawed marketing strategy, failure to understand your target audience and yes one could sabotage your blog systematically!
Well, it could really help you as a blogger if you will make the most of your time being productive, like sharing your write-ups through different social media platforms, be keen and trendy. There are so many ways to make your new blog growing. And I’ve found so many things here and learned a lot.
Thanks!
I found this post shared on Kingged.com, the Internet marketing social networking site, and I “kingged” it and left this comment.
Low-quality content is one of the most devastating reasons why a new blog fail. I’m glad you discovered that earlier in your blogging business.
Having a blog is fun and also you can earn a lot of money through your blog.Blogging today is very common for tech and net savvy person and it’s really cool to be one of this geeks!
If you say so, I agree with you wholeheartedly!
Hey Sharon!
Great post you have shared with us.
Even a very commendable achievement & the article really does a great job in getting the artist’s message to the masses!
I would recommend for posting it on my article just so that more people can interact on this.
Thanks for the sharing & kindly keep posting ever such a knowledgeable article with us.
Thanks Alon.
Couldn’t agree more. Content is king. But when you’re new you have to balance content with promotion. I’m promoting my latest blog as heavily (with as white a hat) as I possibly can.
Thanks for another insightful post,
Josh
Content + promotion are the factors for growing a new blog. Thanks Josh for reading the post.
thanks for the post. Blogging is really not a gold mine. Your works only pay off if you do the work correctly.
I’m glad you have the clear insight of blogging.
Michael,
Thank you very much for sharing this very informative post. Yes, blogging is an ongoing effort and it requires patience, a concrete strategy, and, of course, the right kind of SEO techniques.
-Adideo
Hey Sharon,
I’ve just started a new blog recently, and I’m just about to start promoting through guest blogging.
You hit the nail right on the head. Good points
Have a nice day
Daniel
Information you provided for growing the blog is simply great. It’s a long blog but I enjoyed reading it. I have few blogs running and getting decent traffic. I will apply few strategies to grow them further. thanks for all the info.
I enjoyed this article. Thank you for sharing with us
Hey Sharon,
What a mind blowing sentence “SEO makes you discoverable; but your content makes you memorable” I was really caught up by this.
They say “like charges repel, unlike charges attracts”
You have written a well formed and long content just like my man, Michael Chibuzor!
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful piece.
Thank you for this valuable information, these so important for me and all new blog user, this post is very informative and helpful, this is a great idea and i really love this post, i wish you share some amazing tips soon
With recently launched new Google hummingbird update its really tough for new websites/blogs to score big in Google’s ranking as Google is now considering high authority blogs for high ranking. But one can set up the blog, build its authority & build a great foundation for future. I like the whole article & your tips to grow your new blog, I specially like one of your tagline ” SEO makes you discoverable but your content makes you memorable”. This line can make anyone understand how he/she should write his/her blog post and the way he/she should project it. Thanks for your valuable suggestions Michael.