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Bloggers are constantly trying to increase their reach online, whether it be through social media, guest blogging, SEO, etc.

Let’s just say, it sucks not to get a lot of traffic to your blog. Here are a few ways that I’ve found increased my blog traffic:

Extend your blogging network

There are plenty of niche blogs out there that are dying to have their content shared on the web. Joining a blogging network can help that content get delivered.

  • Join Triberr. It’s a social networking site for bloggers. You can start a ‘tribe’ and invite other similar bloggers to join your group. When you write a new post, your tribemates get notified, and then have the option to share and comment on your post. I’ve noticed significant increase in my blog traffic ever since I joined Triberr (which was only a few weeks ago).
  • Join a Facebook or LinkedIn group. There are plenty of groups on both social networks that are dedicated to the blogging community. They work a lot like Triberr, and people in these groups tend to be very active.

Build relationships with influential people

I blog mostly about social media marketing, so I made an effort to introduce myself to people that are influential about social media.

  • Follow your industry’s influential people and share their content. The more you share their content, the more likely they’ll be to share yours in return.
  • Introduce yourself to people that have a lot of followers. Try to have conversations with them, both online and offline.
  • Strengthen your offline relationship. If they know you personally, they’ll be more likely to help you out.

Get your message on other blogs

I recently wrote a post for Leaders West (@leaderswest) that received over 150 retweets. Not only that, but it got picked up by Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day), which received over 600 social shares.

  • Take every opportunity to guest post on other blogs. They usually have a different audience than your own blog following, so you might be able to pick up a few new followers.
  • Try to become a regular author on a blog that gets a lot of exposure. Remember, your author bio links back to your own website, so the more you post on someone else’s blog, the more links you create to your own blog.
  • Have people guest post on your blog. This can also attract new followers to your site.

Post on social networks at optimal time

Timing of your content can be as important as the actual content sometimes. If none of your followers are online to digest your content, how do you expect them to share it as well?

  • Optimize your twitter schedule. I use a combination of Tweriod (@tweriod) and Social Bro (@socialbro) to get an analysis of when my followers are most active on twitter.
  • Schedule your content to go out at optimal times. You can sync your Tweriod and Social Bro reports with BufferApp (@bufferapp). This makes sure that your content is always scheduled to go out at optimal times.
  • Post on Facebook between 1PM and 4PM EST. bit.ly conducted a study, and they concluded that these were the optimal times to post on Facebook.

Focus on content, not SEO

Google is not the one that’s reading your content, people are. There’s nothing more frustrating and boring than reading a blog post that was designed to be consumed by a robot.

  • Focus on writing style. Write what you have to say, in your own words. This makes it a lot more enjoyable for people to read. Enjoyable content = “share-able” content.
  • There’s nothing wrong with having a couple keywords spread out throughout your post, but make sure your content is still readable after you conduct your SEO.

Keep “call-to-action” in mind

What do you want people to do with your post? Do you want them to share it on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+? Do you want people to comment on the post, write a rebuttal, a video response? Make sure you tell people exactly what you expect from them after they read your post!

  • At the end of your post, write down some discussion questions, and then ask people to leave their answers in the comments.
  • At the end of your post, ask people to share!
  • When you tweet out your post, or share it on Facebook, ask people to retweet, share, like, comment, etc.

Which best practices have you used to extend your online reach? Which ones worked the best? Please leave your comments bellow, and don’t hesitate to share with your friends on Twitter and Facebook! 🙂