Readership is essential to the success of a blog. Fortunately, if you are writing your blog for your organization you have an established audience in your current supporters, funders, and advocates. However, even if you have a few dedicated readers from the beginning, you want to get the word out about what you are contributing to the conversation and this is why increasing readership is crucial. There are four important components to increasing readership: readability, searchability, targeting an audience, and networking.

1. Readability. Blog readers aren’t looking to read a dissertation. Readers want to quickly absorb information and therefore are less likely to actually read a post and more likely to skim it. Utilize bullet points, headers, numbers, and pictures as page breaks in order to allow your readers to quickly get to the information in the post that they want to read. A reader is less likely to keep returning to your blog if they have a difficult time sorting out the information that they are looking for. Use a clean and simple format, don’t clutter your page. Also, avoid jargon. Blogs are meant to be quick and informative and jargon can push readers away and deter new readers from reading your blog.

2. Searchability. Making your blog easy to search will be extremely helpful in pulling in new readers. Be sure to include important keywords in your title and throughout your post. This will help crawlers to more easily scan your post and therefore allow more people to find your blog when searching for the topics you posted on. Next week’s post will focus on how to make your blog search-engine friendly.

3. Targeted Audience. As all previous posts in this series have mentioned you need to know who your audience is and target them when blogging.  If you focus on environmental policy issues it wouldn’t make sense if your blog started featuring new beauty products once a week, it wouldn’t be relevant to the people you want to be reading your blog. Harping on this point may seem redundant but it really is crucial to building your blog. You need to know and understand your audience and attract people who share similar interests.

4. Network in the Blogosphere. The virtues of networking in a professional setting have been highly extolled and it is no different when it comes to promoting your blog. One of the simplest ways to get the word out about your blog is to share it on your organization’s other social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. It also is valuable to share them on your own personal networks as well but only if this complies with your organization’s social media policy. Also, keep up with the other blogs in your field and create a presence there. Comments are important and encouraged in blogging and if you start commenting on more blogs more bloggers and readers are likely to find you and see what you have to say on your blog.

Remember that blog readers like to read simple, clean, and targeted posts. These three components will make your blog more attractive to readers. If you are interested in our other posts regarding blogging essentials follow these links to read more about getting started with a blog, overcoming roadblocks, and common blogging mistakes.

Check back next week to see our post discussing how to make your blog more searchable.