How to Get Blog Followers to Grow Your Audience, Influence, & Income

As a blogger, growing your readership is of course your top priority. It’s absolutely essential in order to grow your blogging business. Your blog is the home base for your blog as a brand. It’s where you can dive deep, build a loyal audience, develop relationships with readers, and create a community that will grow and evolve with you and your brand. So learning how to get blog followers should be a top priority on your mind throughout your blogging journey. 

The more blog followers you have, the more money you can make on affiliate sales, the more money you’ll make off advertising revenue, and of course you’ll be able to charge high rates for sponsored content. Long term, you’ll have more leverage to launch your own products, spin-off ventures, and anything else you want to do.

Your growth will also become compounding when you build a blog following. These readers will share content, engage in the comment sections, and buy more of your product or service. Developing a large following can be challenging. It takes time, patience, consistency, and strategy. And once you’ve gained momentum, the struggle doesn’t stop! Your blog should always strive for more readers. So today we are diving deep and getting super specific on how to grow your community of followers for your blog. Consider these tips the secret to success for building massive followings.

How To Get Blog Followers:

Have a Unique Voice

One of the most important aspects of blogging is having a voice that stands out from the crowd. Your voice not only attracts people to you and your blog, but it keeps them coming back, converting them into followers vs just one time readers. 

Most importantly, voice helps readers feel personally connected to you. It’s honestly one of the biggest factors we see when it comes to bloggers that have a truly dedicated readership that CONVERTS. Your readers feel like they get you, feel like they know you, and feel like they can trust you. They want to keep coming back for regular updates, just as a friend would check in with you regularly. 

Think of your blogging voice just like you think of meeting someone in person that is uniquely charismatic. You’re energetically drawn to them, remember them, and would want to be friends. Your blogging voice can have the same impact. More on how to find your blogging voice HERE.

Focus on Adding Value

You need to give people a reason to read your blog in order to gain blog followers. So creating content that adds value is a no brainer. Value can come in many forms. It can be inspirational, educational, entertaining, instructive, beautiful, thought-provoking, resourceful, or skill enhancing. 

You can teach readers how to do or use things, inspire their next outfit, introduce them to an incredible product, get them to think about something in a new way, or share a hilarious story that makes them laugh at the end of a long day. All of these things add value in one way or another. 

Just make sure that your posts are in depth so that your post is the last place the reader needs to go in order to gain the value you intend to add. So if you’re sharing a tutorial, explain each tip properly. If you’re reviewing a product, cover how to use it, costs, upsides, downsides, and alternatives. PROVIDE VALUE.

Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines 

Search engine optimization is by far the fastest, most efficient way to grow your blog following. This is for three simple reasons. 

First, the volume of potential traffic you can gain from search engines is much greater than other traffic sources.

This is simply due to the sheer volume of searches taking place on a daily basis on search engines. For example, Google handles more than an estimated 5.8 billion searches every single day. In comparison, Facebook has an estimated 1.73 billion daily active users ( source ). And Instagram has about 1 billion active monthly users ( source ).

Second, you reach NEW people through SEO.

The people finding you through search engines most likely don’t follow you regularly yet. They are simply searching online and get served your content as a search result. So you’re reaching NEW, FIRST TIME visitors that haven’t visited your blog before. Reaching new people is essential to grow your blog following. We like to say that you should think of using search engines to grow your audience, while you use social media to connect and promote to your current audience. 

Third, SEO traffic is higher quality & more likely to convert.

The quality of the traffic is easier to convert because you’re reaching people SEARCHING for the kind of content you’re creating. You’re not reaching people simply scrolling mindlessly when you have good SEO. Instead, you’re reaching people that are searching for the outfit inspiration post you wrote. They’re searching for the product review you wrote. Or they’re searching for information on how to live a better life that you wrote. They search and find what they’re looking for in your post.

If your blog is properly optimized like we talk about here, then search engines will acknowledge your post as a trusted and valuable source and place it high on the SERPs. This is an organic way of gaining followers as readers naturally come looking for your content! If you’re unsure how to do SEO yourself, you can use our SEO services to get you there. 

Build Following on Social Media

A large social media presence allows you to engage with your audience in the most streamlined and approachable way possible. Like we said above, SEO is how you reach new people, and social media is how you engage with your community. But social media does of course also have opportunities to grow your blog following. While it’s harder, you can also grow your social media audience and social media community. And since your most loyal blog followers also follow you on social media, they can be a great asset in promoting your blog and social media content as well.

Repurposing blogs for social media like Instagram, Twitter, within Facebook groups, and so on, is easy. You can take a snippet from an article and add it to a graphic as a post, or you can post a link to the whole article with an interesting caption. Once on the platform, you can fill your posts with relevant hashtags or a call to action that will drive more readers to you. As you share your content, social media followers will travel to the blog, and you’ll gain a larger audience! To start, simply add a link to your landing page. Then, work out from there by tagging your other content and blogs.

Remember to spend your time wisely on social media and stay focused on data.

We have to throw this little disclaimer in here because as you know, the Instagram hamster wheel IS REAL. Too many bloggers are locked in on Instagram with very little traffic to show for it converting to their blog. So invest your time wisely. Look at your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is really coming from and how much time you’re investing in each platform. Is the time investment really worth the traffic you’re gaining? 

We always recommend putting more time into platforms that have more ability to convert into blog followers. Pinterest is a major player when it comes to driving traffic to blogs. So put your energy there. Then focus on other Instagram and other platforms as well. See this epic list of Pinterest tips for bloggers if you want to up your Pinterest game.

Develop a Network of Bloggers

If you’re looking to grow your blog, you can’t go at it alone. The blogging community must work together to help one another succeed, so teamwork is another key to build your following. There are a few ways you can interact with other blogs in your niche to gain followers together and mutually reap the benefits of your partnership! 

Link to Other Blogs

Linking is important for SEO and for building a larger following. When you link to other blogs in your niche, it ignites a relationship between you and that blogger. They’re more likely to link to you after you’ve done them the same favor. And yes – this goes beyond just friends and family in the business. From an SEO standpoint, you pass on link juice, AKA SEO street cred, to that blogger. And if they link to you, they pass on link juice to you.

Each time someone links to your blog, it widens your audience by hundreds or even thousands depending on the popularity of their blog. Users will travel to your blog through that link, engage with your content, and hopefully stick around! For more on link building, take a look at our post on standard vs nofollow links. 

Guest Post and Create Collections

Another great way to engage other bloggers and share their audience base is to post guest blogs and guest blog yourself! This simply means you write a post for their blog or they write a post for yours! Either way, followers from one blog travel to the other to see more of their content. 

You could also create what’s called an “expert roundup,” where you craft a blog post that collects opinions of many blogs in your niche. This is a great opportunity for link building and generating blog traffic from lots of other sites. Plus, this is blog content your readers care about, so it’s a win all around! 

Share Their Content

We already talked about how important social media is for blog growth. Sharing posts and content from other blogs will build a good relationship with that blogger. Since you share the same target audience, that blogger will probably promote your blog on their social media channels as well. We believe you gotta give in order to get. So share the love first and we guarantee it will come back to you tenfold

You can also leave a comment on their work, whether on social media or on their blog, to continue to mature that relationship! As long as they have high quality content on your topic, you can feel confident sharing the space and mutually benefiting from a partnership! 

For more ideas on how to increase your blog following with the help of other bloggers, see this post on How To Collaborate With Other Bloggers HERE.

Use Lead Magnets

Readers are bombarded with requests every day to buy more products, follow more people, and read more stuff. You’ve got to stick out from the crowd, and to do that, we recommend offering your potential readers a freebie for joining your email list. This incentive for joining is called a “lead magnet.”

Lead magnets could be a lot of things depending on your niche. It could be a handy workbook, exclusive toolkit, helpful webinar, member discount, or a free trial of your product or service! If you’re looking for more ideas, Digital Marketers World has a long list here. 

This lead magnet will get the readers somewhat interested, and then after you send them more valuable content they’ll soon become loyal followers! They came for the freebie, but they’ll be back every week to read your blog. Make sure in your email signature you provide links to all your channels, so they know how to see more of you.

Run an Online Giveaway

Similar to lead magnets, giveaways will draw your future readers in with something valuable you can offer them. This chance at receiving something big in exchange for something as simple as their email, a comment, like, share, or follow will entice many that are on the fence. Think of something you could give away that would excite both current followers and future ones! You can even do co sponsored giveaways where you and a brand or you and another blogger collaborate together on a giveaway. This is a fun way to pool resources and benefit from the platforms & following of multiple sites or accounts.

Post Regularly

If you’re drawing potential followers in with giveaways and lead magnets, you’ve got to keep them engaged by regularly creating content that they care about. With a world so full of content, if your followers aren’t being fed by you, they’ll find another place to get what they want, and they probably won’t be back!

Studies find that blogs that post more often see better results. Make sure you’re posting 2-4 times per week to keep readers engaged and coming back for more. 

Confirm Your Content is Shareable

Think about all the times you’ve read a blog post and wanted to share it with a friend, co-worker, spouse, or family member! Your content should be easily shareable on all platforms to ensure anyone who wants get more eyes on your posts can do so! 

Not only will there be people sharing your blog, but there may be other blogs and companies in your niche that are willing and wanting to share it as well. Confirm that on all channels your content is shareable in a user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing way. 

Create Engaging Titles

Attracting readers from your post has a lot to do with the image initially, but once you’ve snatched their attention with a good graphic, the title must speak to something that interests them. 

The titles should be short and clear. They can also illustrate a solution to a problem, peak interest with an engaging list, or make appealing promises. If you’re just starting a blog, consider the name of your blog too and its importance to your future success! We have a great resource here on how to name your blog. 

Engage with Your Audience 

Your audience wants to feel not only connected to your content, but connected to you. Engage with your audience through social media by replying to comments, asking questions in stories, and responding to direct messages! 

Always encourage your followers’ input and really take their feedback! The more they feel like they’re involved in your blog, the more loyal they will be and the more likely they will be to share the content elsewhere. 

Hop on a Podcast

Podcasts are BOOMING right now, especially in the Influencer space. Reach out to some of your favorite podcast hosts and pitch yourself for an interview. The best way to do this is offer a unique topic to the host, so they know you’ll have something fun to talk about on their show. Just like bloggers, podcasters are always looking for interesting content to create. An interview with YOU, especially as a blogger that has your own following, can add a lot of value to their show. You’ll give them the interview ( content ), and promote their show to your audience which helps them grow their show as well. Here is a list of the best podcasts for Influencers.

Consider Affiliate Marketing 

When you join an affiliate marketing network, you select products from the platform to promote on your blog. You promote this product through the great content you’re already creating as a review, how-to, or even just a picture. When you create and share content from brands regularly, they often reshare your content to their own following. This is a great way to reach new people in your target audience. The consumers of your favorite brands are most likely ideal readers for you as well!

You will include a link in your post that will send followers to the website to purchase the product. When the website gets a sale from your blog, you get a commission! Many affiliate marketing platforms have their own hub of loyal followers that you’ll draw from as you create shops and collections through their network! Here are the best affiliate platforms for bloggers!

Gaining followers to your blog can be a challenge, but by using these tips to engage your audience and build a network of fellow bloggers, you’ll grow your readership in no time!  

Blogging is important to the growth of your brand. Driving traffic to your site and generating new followers will help you build your company and expand your reach. If you have hit a plateau in new readers, try these tips to get those new leads rolling in! As always, if you would like a free evaluation of your site you can request one HERE. And you can always find more blogging tips HERE.