An awesome title of your blog post can attract people to visit your blog. But before proceeding further, let me share some tips: Have attractive social media share button on your blog. I am doing this with plugin Ultimate Social Deux. Make attractive image for your blog posts to get people click on them. If your blog posts constantly ask readers to hire you, attend your event, or buy your product, your audience won’t keep reading. Think of your blog like a magazine. It has editorial content — your blog posts — and promotional content — an ad or call to action in your footer, sidebar, or a callout box.
- Why Your Blog Isn&rsquo T Getting More Attention Money
- Why Your Blog Isn&rsquo T Getting More Attention At Work
- Why Your Blog Isn&rsquo T Getting More Attention Likely
I wrote my very first blog post on July 24, 2005. That blog post is no longer live because it was terrible.
The post was called, “Winning the Search Engine Marketing War.”
It was 412 words long, contained no images, no external links, and it didn’t provide much value because it didn’t teach you anything.
But you know what, back in 2005, the blog post was pretty darn good.
See, I wasn’t competing with a lot of blogs back then. Currently, there are well over 440 million blogs, and back in 2011, that number was 173 million. And in 2005, the web was still so small that there were only 64 million websites (with only a small portion of them being blogs).
In other words, my first blog post was pretty darn good because something is better than nothing. People were just happy to get some information, even though it wasn’t great.
But over the years, blogging has changed. What it used to be in 2005 isn’t what it is today.
What blogging used to be
A blog used to just be a blog.
It was a place where you would share your personal experiences with the world. From photos of the places you traveled to and blogging about the food you ate to even sharing personal information about your family life.
In 2005, social networks weren’t popular. Facebook launched in 2004, but it wasn’t what it is now. And sites like MySpace focused heavily on music.
As social networks evolved, people realized it was easier to share personal stories on Facebook and Instagram than to write a whole blog post.
Over 250 million people share what they are doing in their personal life each day just on Instagram. All you have to do is talk (or look) into your phone for just a few seconds. It’s really that simple.
And that’s why more of you use social networks on a daily basis than a blog.
Just think of it this way — if you wanted to update your friends on your life, is it easier for you to just upload some pictures to Facebook, or is it easier for you to write a blog post?
Of course, it’s easier to just upload some photos to Facebook. It’s why Facebook is so popular.
For that reason, people started to focus their attention on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat over blogging.
So why do people continually create more blogs?
There are many reasons why blogs have grown in popularity. As I mentioned above, there are well over 400 million blogs today.
The biggest reason why blogs have grown in popularity is that you are an end user and continue consuming the content that blogs put out.
Just in the United States alone, 42.23% of people from the ages of 18 to 49 read blogs.
And because people want to read blogs, Google has no choice but to rank them. The average page that is listed on page one of Google has 1,890 words:
There are many reasons you may want to create a blog, but from someone who blogs on a weekly basis and has been for 13 years, here are the main reasons to have a blog:
- You control your own destiny – social networks have restricted how many of your friends actually see your content. With a blog, you have more control over your destiny. You can collect emails to get people back to your site, you can build a push notification subscriber list, you can rank your content on Google… overall, it’s just easier to get a consistent stream of traffic from a blog than it is from a social profile because you aren’t relying on 1 traffic source. This is more important than ever because the top referring sites on the web are starting to send less traffic out to other sites.
- Paid ads are expensive – Google generate 6 billion dollars in ad revenue in 2005 and that number shot up to 95 billion in 2017. With ad costs continually rising, you have no choice as a business but to find other traffic channels. A blog is an obvious question as Google loves ranking text-based content. Just look at Wikipedia, they rank for everything and generate 5.4 billion visits a month.
- Marketing has moved to an omnichannel approach – there are currently 1,766,926,408 websites on the web. In 2005 that number was only 64,780,617. That’s a 2,627% increase. That means you as a business have more competition online, which gives consumers more choices. Why should someone choose you over the competition? Well, branding plays a huge part, if you can get a consumer to see or hear about your brand 7 times they are much more likely to be a customer. A blog creates another additional touchpoint.
Why Your Blog Isn&rsquo T Getting More Attention Money
A blog isn’t a blog; it’s a business
As more sites have come online, SEO has become more competitive. Yes, more people are using Google, but they are searching for the same popular terms.
With Ubersuggest, we have a database of 646,777,704 keywords.
And out of those keywords, only 15,301,405 keywords generate a search volume of an excess of 10,000 searches per month.
As more people come online, it doesn’t mean that they search for brand new keywords. It just means that the popular terms get even more popular.
That’s why it is harder to get people to come to your site over the competition because you are competing with more companies to get those eyeballs.
See, as SEO has become more competitive, you have no choice but to treat it as a business. It takes time and money to produce content. It takes time and money to promote your content. And then once you have those visitors, it takes more time and money to convert those visitors into paying customers.
In other words, because it is so competitive, you won’t do that well unless you put in tons of time or money (or ideally both).
Just look at Quick Sprout, the marketing blog I don’t put much money into it. Even though it’s older than NeilPatel.com, it generates a lot less traffic.
NeilPatel.com blog generates 693% more traffic because I put over 6 figures into the blog each month (mainly in developing free tools and creating audio and video content), and I treat it like a business.
Conclusion
Look, I am not trying to persuade you into building a blog. But I believe most companies should have a blog. And if you don’t have one, follow this guide to get up and running.
A blog is the only way you are going to rank well on Google and generate traffic without directly paying for it by using Google AdWords or Facebook Ads.
But if you want to do well, you can’t treat your blog like a “blog”… you have to treat it like a business. If you don’t, then you won’t do well.
Here are the 3 important steps you need to take if you want to do well:
- Focus on writing amazing content consistently – it’s not about writing one or two amazing posts… you have to be consistently awesome. The market is so competitive, you can’t write 400-word blog posts as I did in 2005. Sure, if you are in a new niche with no competition, by all means, write 400-word posts, but the chances are you are going to have some competition eventually. And if you don’t have the time, you should hire a writer to help you out.
- Promote your content – after you have content, you’ll have to promote it. Promotion isn’t easy but I’ve broken it down into 4 steps for you. Just follow them and you’ll do well.
- Focus on monetization last – most bloggers who get this far face one big problem… as their traffic increases their revenue typically stays flat. Just because you have more visitors, it doesn’t guarantee an increase in revenue. Towards the end of this blog post, I teach you how to convert those visitors into leads and customers. Follow them.
- Don’t forget about voice – I know I said you only have to follow 3 steps, but if you’ve followed all of them successfully, you’ll need to start thinking about voice. 40% of adults use voice search daily, so don’t take it for granted. Follow this guide to ensure that you capture the voice search market share before your competition.
What do you think about blogging? Are you going to start taking it seriously?
Today we are going to tackle three reasons why your blog isn’t growing. This is the first in a series of Why Your Audience Isn’t Growing.
I see people asking questions constantly in Facebook groups about growth. Specifically people want to know why their blogs aren’t growing. It’s a complex question, but the answer 90% of people give has to do with promoting more on social media.
- Join Facebook groups!
- Get on Pinterest group boards and pin 200 times a day!
- Use MeetEdgar to send your content out daily!
- Buy this course on Facebook pages!
Have you heard these? Today I’m going to talk about what I almost NEVER hear people saying when this question is asked. If you don’t work on these three things, NO amount of promotion will help your blog grow!
Keep reading or listen to the episode!
Listen to Episode 107- 3 Reasons Why Your Blog Isn’t Growing
Keep scrolling to read the post! You can also subscribe and listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, I Heart Radio, your favorite podcast app, or find the audio on YouTube.Three Reasons Why Your Blog Isn’t Growing
1. You’re Writing for Yourself, Not Your Audience.
Ouch. As a writer, this one really rubbed me the wrong way when I started considering my blog growth intentionally.
We all have different reasons for blogging. (And you really should know the why of your blog!) For many of you in my audience, those reasons have to do with loving to write. Yes, maybe you want to also sell books or sponsored posts or make money by having traffic an ads. BUT YOU LOVE THE CREATIVE WORK. I know you!
So it can feel like a personal insult to hear that you’re being too self-centered about your work. (Plus, who likes being self-centered??) I’m not really telling you that you are self-absorbed, only that your blog isn’t outward-focused ENOUGH.
Why do people read blogs?
Not sure? Think about why YOU read blogs. For me, I might click through to read a blog post if the title grabs me. It relates to me. It’s interesting or relevant or solves a problem I have.
People read blogs because those blogs offer something. They GIVE to the reader. There is a benefit. Maybe that’s a how-to or a series of tips. Maybe that’s entertainment or encouragement or inspiration. But there is some kind of exchange wherein the blogger (that’s you) gives something to the reader.
Readers will not read blogs that don’t give them something. And when we write blog posts that are just like online diaries, focused on telling just our life story, people are generally not going to want to read. (The exceptions are if you are already a celebrity, you have a really unique story, you have some kind of “it” factor, or you’re a really KILLER writer. Usually we are NOT as interesting as we think we are.)
We need to invite readers IN. That doesn’t mean we can’t write about ourselves and our stories. If we leave our own story out, our blog could be interchangeable with any other blog out there. Not good.
Our unique story and our voice NEEDS to be there, but readers need to know there is a place for them. It has to be relatable to them and give some kind of benefit. Even if that is a simple as a few minutes of enjoyment.
How to Fix This: If this is your problem (and MANY people struggle here), you need to consider how you can write what you want to write, but also think outward. Consider how you can use your blog to benefit other people and what you are giving them. What does your blog give? What does it offer that a complete stranger might want to stop and read?
2. Your Blog Design Detracts from the Content
Just when you thought the first reason was hard to hear…I give you this. But I just want to write! I don’t care about blog design, you say. Plus I have no money and don’t know blogspeak.
I know, friend. I know. I was there! I started on Blogger (which, unless you have a lot of money, will ALWAYS look like a blog on Blogger) and when I started paying more attention to design, I didn’t want the clean, white look. I had bright colors and busy backgrounds. It was a hot mess.
Here’s the thing about design: it impacts the way people read your words.
When Rob and I were looking for our first house, we looked at all kinds of places. Some were in pristine condition, some were foreclosures with no flooring and holes in the walls. We are good at vision, so we could see SOMETHING in most places.
Except one house. It was older and had original mustard-yellow countertops and shag rugs. It was clean, but it was just so much ugly. Most of all, though, we HATED the layout. We struggled with a vision for the house because we didn’t like the floor plan. Countertops you can change, but layout is layout.
We bought another house and a few months after moving in, I had this realization as I walked into my master bedroom: this house had the same layout as the house we hated.
I couldn’t believe it. Even with all our open-mindedness and visioning, we hated a house for (we thought) its layout, then bought a house with the same floor plan…but modern updates. Honestly, we were both floored.
THAT IS HOW MUCH DESIGN MATTERS.
Why Your Blog Isn&rsquo T Getting More Attention At Work
You cannot underestimate the impact of how you package your words. So if you are a writer and hate thinking about this stuff and don’t want to learn to code and don’t want to pay someone…you have to consider the cost.
You don’t have to have the most beautiful blog, but you DO need to have a blog that doesn’t detract from your content.
How to Fix This: If you don’t have a lot of money for design, you can use a simple free wordpress.org theme and just keep it SIMPLE. Simple looks so much more professional than busy. Or consider Squarespace, which is something like $7-10/monthly and is drag and drop. Very clean, very professional. If you’re using Blogger, it is REALLY HARD (ie- expensive) to make it not look like Blogger. I love working with Merri from WPTech Cafe and I also love the themes from Restored 316. I’m an affiliate for Restored 316 and am currently using their Refined theme, if you want to check that out. (Being an affiliate means if you purchase a theme, I get a commission at no extra cost to you!)
3. Your Writing Style Isn’t Unique
This is where it gets confusing sometimes. Because I told you in #1 that it’s not all about you, and now I’m telling you that it needs to be uniquely you. What gives?
Your blog DOES need to be about other people enough to draw them in. But your unique story and voice and perspective will keep them reading. If you don’t have something unique, your blog will be like every other of the million blogs out there. Why should they read or come back to yours?
This can be really difficult and takes practice. It will also shift over time and depending on content. But learning to find your unique voice and find how you can weave your story and perspective through the posts makes you stand out. And, even though you’re being uniquely YOU, it will draw in the readers and keep them.
What IS your story? What IS your writing voice?
Why Your Blog Isn&rsquo T Getting More Attention Likely
You need to consider these questions in order to help your blog grow. It’s not enough just to write helpful tips for people. Your helpful tips need to have YOUR spin. Otherwise they’ll get lost in the sea of other helpful tips.
How to fix this: If you haven’t been training in a lot of the writing spaces, these may not be questions you’ve thought about at length. But I’ve got just the resource for you! Check out my post How to Brand Your Writing Voice.
These three aren’t the ONLY reasons why your blog isn’t growing. The other big key to blog growth is promotion. We’ll hit on that a bit in the second part of the series when I talk about why your social media isn’t growing. But just so we’re clear…you can’t write a blog post and think people will find it. (Unless you are an SEO wizard.) Promotion totally impacts this.
But you can promote like a crazy person and if people don’t feel included, are turned off by your blog design, and don’t find something unique, your blog will not gain and retain new readers.
So…how are you feeling at the end of this?
I want you to know: these are not the only reasons your blog might not be growing. And they might be hard to hear. If they ARE, please take some time after you read this or listen to the episode. Be grumpy. Complain. Send me an email about why you disagree.
Then come back a few days later when it feels less personal and really LOOK at your blog. Could these actually be the reasons your blog isn’t growing? Ask a friend who is impartial if you need help looking with honest eyes. I do NOT mean to be discouraging or hurtful.
What you ultimately need to consider is this: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO GROW?
If so: HOW BIG?
Because if you want to really grow and really want to grow large, you need to seriously consider these three things. But if you want to write for writing’s sake or because of a particular passion, then you can worry about them less.
If you want to really grow a platform or build a giant blog, you need to take it seriously. You have to think about why your blog isn’t growing…and then what you’re going to do about it.
Want to share your tips for growing a blog? Leave a comment!