Blog posts are about a lot more than just writing the post, and hitting “publish”.

Especially if you started a blog with a really specific goal in mind.

And if you have anything besides a personal blog that’s super important!

Looking at the big picture of your blog posts

People are always amazed and frustrated when they put all that time and effort into writing blog posts, and then nothing happens.

However, your audience won’t find out about you unless you include clever strategies that make them want to learn more.

But what are these strategies, and what can you do to escape the frustration of nobody reading your blog posts?

Today we’re going to talk about some of the most common reasons why your content might fail, and what to do about it.

1) Relevance 

If you want your content to produce effective results you need to keep it relevant.

But what do mean by that?

What it really comes down to is your audience, and what you do to build relationships with them. 

Instead of saying “here’s why you should buy this.”

Focus on the following…

Why they should buy this now and why it will improve their lives in some shape or form.

And you won’t successfully do this unless you humanize your brand and speak to your audience on their level.

For instance, if your target audience is digital nomads, you won’t want to focus on the typical office job lifestyle.

Not Sure How to Humanize your Brand with your Blog Posts?

It’s all about the photos and stories that you tell.

Ditch the stock photos, take pictures of real people and real places that you work for/with, and tell real stories of what your average day is like.

Express opinions.

Interview all the awesome people you work with.

And publicaly celebrate the things that really matter to your brand.

2) How you promote your content

How you promote your content is just important as what you write about.

Because you could have the most beautifully written blog post, and if no reads it…

Well…let’s just say it might as well be a diary entry.

The more work, time, and detail you put into a post, the more effort you need to put into getting it out there.

And I think that this post, that I saw recently in a Facebook group, summarizes just how important the effort that you put into promoting your content really is:

The solution…

First things first, you need a marketing strategy, and you need to test out what platforms work best for your audience.

Because not every strategy will work for every type of audience.

You can do this through a combination of reader surveys and content analytics/ SEO data.

The reason why these are such valuable sources is the following:

You can quickly and easily find patterns in terms of how people prefer to consume content.

Then, what you need is consistency.

And I totally get it, you’re probably using the “but I’m too busy” excuse right now.

However, there are a lot of apps and software, many of them totally free, that do most of the heavy lifting for you.

And all it takes is a few minutes maximum for set-up!

For instance, I currently use:

• CoSchedule for promoting my content and offers
• Buffer for pre-scheduling a weekly social media-based digest of what I’m reading/ what I recommend reading
• IFTT and Zapier for automating pretty much everything else, from evergreen content social media posts to emails.

And all of these apps promote my content for me multiple times, across multiple platforms, at a “best time to post” time that’s been determined by the algorithm of the followers I already have.

And if you combine these apps with real-time engagement, on platforms such as:

• Facebook and LinkedIn groups
• weekly newsletters
• And the personalized act of telling someone to read your content

Then you’ll get actual readers!

3) A lack of Direction & Purpose

If you want to convince readers that your post is worth sharing with their friends, you need to provide actionable advice.

Because if they’re reading your post, and don’t feel like your post will help someone that they know with something that they’re experiencing in their lives, then you won’t get a like or share.

So…everytime you write a post always have a clear end goal in mind for the readers while providing a clear, detailed overview of the topic you’re focusing on.

Attaching stuff like screenshots, recommendations, and quotes from industry experts is a great way to do that.

And make that end goal super clear by saying at the end of each post exactly what you want the reader to do next, even if it’s something simple like leaving a comment or checking out a related post.

4) Structure of everything else

Structure often plays a huge role in how likely your post is to get your reader’s attention.

And when I talk about structure I mean everything from your paragraph and headline structure, to the links and keywords that you include.

But you don’t have to be an SEO expert to get it spot on.

Stuff like Google’s Keyword research tool, the Yoast SEO tool, and the CoSchedule headline analyzer tool will boost the readability of your content.

And if you: 

• Keep your paragraphs, sentences, and titles short
• Your language simple
• Use SEO basics such as long-tail keywords (keywords that turn something vague into something specific: such as “blue women’s running shoes” instead of “shoes”) and applicable ALT text
• And: headlines that invoke emotion and appeal to what people actually need

Then…

You’ll rank favorable on Google, and you’ll get people who aren’t your mom to read your content.

5) Quality

This one’s pretty self-explanatory but also important to mention.

Because if your quality sucks, you won’t get that “first three pages of Google” Ranking, and no one will read from beginning to end.

And this quality aspect of blogging ties into everything from grammar and spelling, to doing exactly what you said you’d do in your keywords, headline, and meta description.

And if you miss things when you write, or English isn’t your first language get a friend to look at what you wrote or invest in a good editing app, (or both).

It also is about how much you’re willing to go into detail and back up your facts with research, stats, and quotes.

Although there’s technically no real rule about blog content word count, the more detail the better.

Because that’s what both readers and Google tend to like.

This is exactly why I tell my clients that one post a week is often enough.

Because that’s exactly what makes the end goal of creating quality content consistently a lot more achievable.

And let’s face it, the average reader will be a lot more likely to read the one post a week that shows up in their inbox, rather than all seven of the posts you wrote over the course of a week.

On a related note…

If you’re still struggling to get your blog posts read, then click here to find out more about my blog content strategy sessions, or leave a comment below.