2016 October 25 Archive - EXEIdeas – Let's Your Mind Rock

How do you increase the number of people reading your blog? The answer is simple. Create content that engages your audience, and motivates them to share your posts with other people. That’s it. Unfortunately, executing the solution isn’t quite as easy. Creating amazing content is challenging, but it’s certainly not impossible. If you are ready to boost your content’s power, check out these 11 content tips.1.) Stay On Top Of Trending Topics To Increase Relevance:Your audience wants content that gives them what they need right now. This could be information and opinions on trending news or entertainment topics, new technology, or the latest updates in your niche. Whatever your blog is focused on, be sure that you keep up with the most recent news in your niche. This way you can focus on information that is relevant to your audience right now. Of course, it also helps to know what your competitors are talking about, and what news headlines are getting the most play. This is where keyword research tools and headline aggregators can help. Two tools that you can use for these purposes are BuzzSumo and Alltop.2.) Encourage Your Audience To Share Content With You:One way to develop relationships with your current audience, and to get new readers engaged is to encourage people to share content with you. Even better, there are so many options for doing this. Here are just a few ideas:Encourage readers to upload pictures and videos of themselves using your productsCreate a giveaway around a holiday photo contestPost a funny picture, and ask your audience to submit captionsAsk audience members to submit questions or topic ideasEncourage readers to share their thoughts on a recent movie or bookWhatever you choose, remember that people enjoy sharing their stories, their thoughts, and their ideas. Even better, once they’ve seen that you’ve shared their content on your blog, they’ll be likely to share your posts with their contacts. For a great example of a crowdsourcing effort, consider Starbuck’s white cup campaign.3.) Take A Page From Reddit And Host An AMA Session:If you are active on reddit, you know that some of the most popular threads on that platform are Ask me Anything (AMA) chats. This is where somebody who is notable for some reason starts an AMA session where they field questions from the audience. Why not generate some buzz by hosting an AMA on your blog. You can accomplish this by asking folks to submit questions ahead of time, or you could do a live streaming session. If you select the livestreaming option, you can broadcast live on social media, and then share the content on your blog later.4.) Only Bring Your Audience The Best You’ve Got:Everyone knows it’s extraordinarily important to share lots of content to keep your audience interested. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to be both prolific and maintain high standards of quality. Rather than posting content that isn’t at the level it should be, consider using a content writing service. These writers are experts at both researching and writing, and will gladly help you to meet your content production needs. You can be sure you are hiring only the best by reading some reviews of essay writing services. And only after making sure that the best writers and experts create the content for you, you don’t have to worry about your audience’s engagement.5.) Use A Content Calendar:Consistency and variety are key when it comes to keeping your audience engaged and growing. Posting consistently ensures your audience that you are always going to have new content for them. Covering a wide variety of topics and posting different types of content keeps your readers interested. By using a content calendar, you can get a big picture of what you have been posting and when. You can also use the tool to plan out the publication of posts in the future. For example, the news site, Mashable consistently posts viral content and credits Trello for helping them stay on top of their ‘editorial workflow’.6.) Ask An Influencer To Write A Guest Blog:What’s so great about guest blogging? Oh, where to begin… The first answer is fairly obvious. If someone who has influence writes a post for you, not only will your audience read it, so will theirs. The second answer is a bit more complex. When someone agrees to guest blog, they are also giving your blog their endorsement. That builds trust, and when it comes to increasing traffic and engagement, that counts for a lot. Jon Cooper wrote a guest post on link building strategies for Moz. That post has earned so many hits that it now sits above the fold in organic Google search results.7.) Always Write Down New Content Ideas:There are few things that are worse than sitting in front of your computer without being able to come up with a single idea. Even worse, is the fact that you know you’ve probably thought up, and then forgotten at least a dozen topic ideas in the past few days. The only problem is that you never write them down, so they exit your mind as quickly as they come. Then there are the topic ideas that you find while you surf the internet. If you don’t save them, you forget them.This is why it is so important to have a means, no matter where you are, of saving content ideas. Fortunately, there are a few solutions for this. The Evernote app is a great tool for recording ideas no matter where you are. Many bloggers use Pinterest to pin influential content that they can use for future posts.8.) Keep It Real:Be genuine, be opinionated, and let your readers know who you are. Find your voice. Don’t be afraid to say controversial things, as long as you believe them. Nobody wants to subscribe to a blog that seeks to please everyone, nor do they want to form a relationship with a blogger who is afraid to speak their mind. So, make predictions. Share your thoughts. Show some passion. Most of all, be genuine.9.) Lead Off With A Great Intro:Do you remember you English composition instructor putting a lot of emphasis on writing strong introductory paragraphs? If you do, you were given good advice. Your intro is your chance to get your reader’s attention. If you succeed at doing that, you increase your chance of getting them to read to the end. This, in turn, makes it more likely that they will click the share button. This blog post gets attention by opening with a multiple choice question.10.) Make It Shareable:Speaking of shares, one of the primary goals for every post that you write should be to earn social media shares. Obviously, including social share buttons is the first step. The next step is to post content that people want to share. This means writing posts that are relevant, that solve problems, and that are accurate. It means building trust with your posts. It also means writing posts that are visually interesting. This infographic post from Amerifirst on routine home maintenance earned many likes and shares.11.) Promote Your Other Content:Don’t let your older posts die off just because you’ve published something new. Interlinking is the practice of linking to your older blog posts in your new posts. This practice boosts SEO, because it encourages search engine spiders to reindex your site. It also drives new readers to your older content, so that you won’t be losing your social media followers and, as a result, your blog’s followers too. Just be sure the posts that you link are relevant.Try to incorporate these neat content tricks into your blogging efforts. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at the increase in traffic and engagement that you receive.About the Author:Steven Mehler is an experienced writer, SEO expert and social psychologist that works as an editor at a local newspaper and a freelance writer at All Top Reviews. Steven also runs his own content agency and is writing a book. He has a long-term experience in writing articles based on blogging, marketing, SEO and social psychology.Find Me On GooglePlus