Plan Your Audience Acquisition Strategy

September 11, 2008 · Comments

people Great post by Mark Cahill about how to build more blog readership. He’s got quite a healthy action list that he intends to follow, including adding more calls to discussion to his content, where to build his social traffic, and how to better engage with social platforms. There’s lots more so read the article.

On top of what Mark has written about, I’ll add a few more ways to build relationships and grow your audience:

  • Write useful posts that are worthy of social bookmarks (such that people will want to come back to them and refer to them). Bookmarks grow your connectivity.
  • Make the call to subscribe VERY prominent on your blog, with simple mechanisms to subscribe.
  • Add a “Subscribe to my blog” link in your email signature.
  • Instead of posting blog post links on social platforms, ask a question that you mirror in the blog post, and THEN the link.
  • Vary the length of your posts.
  • Stay on topic for your audience, and then write posts from the perspective of your audience. Meaning, if you have the owner of an Argentinian steakhouse reading your blog, maybe you can write about how restauranteurs would use social media. (Heck, reach out to that person and recommend a guest post on your blog).

Those are just a few ideas. Tell me: what would YOU tell Mark are your best ways to grow your audience?

Photo credit, Joe Slabotnik

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  • Both your post and Mark Cahill's are so helpful. When I post to my blogs, I always mention it on Twitter and describe the topic.
  • I love the WordPress plug-in to show related posts at the end of each entry. I haven't had it long enough for metrics but anticipate it will lengthen visits and increase page views.

    I've also found new readers through my Twitter posts. Pretty basic, still much to learn.
  • Both your post are so great... thanks... i got it..
  • Although we haven't done this, I would add holding blog carnivals to this list. In addition, I believe that a lot of work is being put into acquiring readers, but more needs to be done in retaining them. To really get the full value out of the information or advice provided to the user by the blogger, the blogger needs to make it easier for the users to take their advice with them.
  • How's a novice to catch up to your fastballs Chris. I know, just keep swinging away. Listening to your stream keeps me developing on a curve way beyond my expectations. Sincere thanks.
  • I like how the both articles focus on readership, not traffic. Two different things, but often confused by the Digg crazy crowd. I prefer to focus on converting the traffic into readership.

    Having featured articles, most popular posts, and the related posts easily visible for folks who have stumbled to my blog have been the most successful design tactics for me.
  • Thank you for another helpful post. I enjoyed meeting you at the Inbound Marketing Summit.
  • I love both sets of tips. I've learned a lot from both you already, so I don't know that I can add much. The only thing I would emphasize is "participate with your audience." I think that when we participate in social networking, we need to do it as a resource and a friend, not so much to self-promote. Yes, Twittering our posts is a must, but they'll be a lot better accepted if we've already established ourselves as the "go to guy" in that network by really trying to help, and even promote, others.

    Kind of like what you did with Mark in this post. :)
  • Hi, and thanks for these interesting tips. I'm a bit of a social platform ignoramus, which is probably why I don't understand this one, "Instead of posting blog post links on social platforms, ask a question that you mirror in the blog post, and THEN the link."

    Can you throw any extra light on it?
  • Think the smartest idea to quickly engage readers is to polarise them to stimulate a response.

    On the flipside you need to ensure barriers to engagement are low, if people have to register to place a comment...why bother? Keep it simple.
  • @Gary - to answer your question, check out my Twitter stream on any given day @chrisbrogan asks a LOT of questions. The reason is, I think they engage conversations best. So, if you're using that as part of your audience/relationship building strategy, I'd ask a question, and then throw a link. Make sense?
  • Street marketing brings more traffic to my blog than any other tool. For example, I teach classes to the community in which I live. During the class, I talk about my blog. After the class, I send a link to my blog to the students so they can subscribe and stay abreast of information discussed in the class.
  • Mark knows what he is doing...hey he got you to link to him Chris =)

    I think the best way is NOT to focus on building your audience. I am at ~300 subscribers and I have been blogging since January. Im not interested in getting to 10,000. If people subscribe, cool, I added options in the right places - but I'd rather focus on writing and not think about amassing people.

    I may be different though, in that I'm not blogging for a living, I'm just trying to create things people will dig.

    That's all you need to focus on =)
  • I always tell people that it took me several years to get 100 subscribers. After that, it picked up a bit.
  • Thanks for the tips, our company is new to the blog scene and slowly trying to develop content and increase our readership. We will be utilizing the tips you have sent.

    Craig
    www.budgetpulse.com
  • Hey Chris,

    I write my PR company's blog, and love it. But -- I always argue with myself about whether I should write for my audience (and therefore lose my identity) or write for me (be true to myself) and trust that the posts are interesting enough for people to link to or comment on.

    I have seen a steady (not meteoric) climb in unique visitors since re-launching it a few months ago, which is a good thing.

    Anyway, not sure what I'm trying to say here(!) but other opinions on how to position a company blog are very useful.

    Thanks!
    JC.
  • Thanks Chris!

    Excellent suggestions which I'm going to add to my strategy plan.

    The subscribe links at top of your page are really clear and make it much easier to convert casual visitors to subscribers. I'll be implementing something similar over th weekend.

    Audience acquisition is an awfully interesting topic - and I think the one are we haven't covered yet is paid traffic services. I'll try to post about that next week. While not a strategy the casual blogger might use, it's an extremely viable strategy for the business blogger.
  • I think another way to get subscribers is to be visible and active on other readers blogs. Like leaving comments & contributing to the conversation with additional viewpoints. I've seen this have an effect on the my traffic numbers. Thanks for the tips b/c it all helps.


    B.Croom
    http://thesocialmediaconsumer.blogspot.com
  • Adding the mybloglog.com widget showing other visitors on your blog might also enhance your readership. Thanks for the great tips!

    Jeroen de miranda
    http://jeroendemiranda.wordpress.com
  • Thanks. I think audience acquisition strategies is one aspect where I am not the best. I really like how you have your 'subscribe to rss' link nice and prominent at the top, yet it doesn't distract from your site! I'll try to implement that on one of my niche blogs. Thanks again :)
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