Why Your Blog Isn't Being Read

Why Your Blog Isn’t Being Read

Firstly, what’s the difference between a blog and an article? Blogs are informal, more personal, casual and conversational pieces. Articles are more formal and professional, often written by a company and tend to be longer, going into more detail.

When you first start your blog it can seem like a futile task. Getting people to read your content is tough.

You may have been blogging for months or even years and every time you check your website analytics you see that you are getting very few views on your blog content. You get frustrated, wonder why, and often contemplate throwing in the towel. If this sounds like where you are, or even if you have a small sized audience that you want to grow, then this post is for you.

Here Annabel Jamieson covers three key mistakes that bloggers make, that are stopping your content from reaching your audience.

Your Content Is Unoriginal

The first and most common reason that no one is reading your blog is that your content is unoriginal. If you are simply copying what other brands are doing or rehashing content that has already been created (without improving upon it) then no one will be interested.

If you have several competitors with blogs similar to yours, yours will not stand out. You can’t expect to get more attention than your competition unless you differentiate yourself from them.

You don’t want to be seen as a carbon copy of these other blogs – especially if these blogs have a long history or a more dedicated readership. So you need to get creative. You need to post original content and add unique angles and information.

Some top tips for creating original blog content include:

Unique topics: Try to cover a topic that no one else has blogged about yet. This is harder to do in some industries than others but an easy way to find unique topics is to keep on top of the news and cover breaking news and industry changes first

Give a unique take: If you cant find any new topics, consider providing a fresh take on something thats already been done. What unique perspective can you provide about the topic?

You’re Not Being Useful

The #1 rule of blogging is that you have to be so useful that your audience can‘t ignore you.

To be useful, you will often have to think about writing long-form posts. This way you can go deep into a topic that could help your audience and cover it from all angles.

Free cheatsheets, pdf downloads or e-books are other great options to show your audience just how useful your blog is.

Think about the way your format your blog as well. Write in a clear, organised way. Include a table of contents and internally link to other posts so that your blogs leave little room for questions.

Whenever you write a post and you are thinking about whether it will be useful to your audience, you can ask yourself two questions:

What is the main takeaway?
Who is this post for?

Are you trying to inspire your audience? Teach them how to do something? Share information about your product? Be clear about what you’re doing and who you are doing it for.

You Don’t Use Social Media

You cannot leave your blog floating out in space and expect people to find it – this could be another reason why your blog isn’t being read.

Think of your blogging strategy like a tree. The blog is the tree trunk. It’s the centre and everything else connects to it. But a tree is not made of a trunk alone.

To get audiences to read your blog, you need branches. In reference to blogging, your branches are your ways to direct traffic to your blog and a lot of these branches will be your different social media channels.

Social media is essential for growing your blog’s readership. You cant create a blog and expect audiences to find it on their own. Promoting it on social media is a way for you to show your audience the content you are creating and give them a quick way to find and interact with your blog.

In Summary

With blogging, success isn’t as simple as flipping a switch and you immediately start seeing more web traffic and better results.

You have to be strategic and it can take months, or even years to see the results you want. You need to remain patient and consistent. You have to focus on creating unique and useful content that will take your blog to the next level and have a distribution strategy that will get your content in front of new readers.

Annabel Jamieson is a digital marketing and tech strategist with over 25 years’ experience working in the digital environment driving business transformation and growth. She is currently a Co-founder and Director of two global businesses which specialise in content services.