Hack Your Way to 62,980 Blog Readers with these 9 Tips

Source: Neil Patel

Back in 2014, CrazyEgg’s blog traffic jumped to 62,980 visitors in a matter of a few months.

That’s represented a 206% increase in the blog’s readership.

This might sound like the result of black magic.

But it’s not. It’s more like strategy.

I believe that every brand with a blog can achieve numbers like this if they put their efforts in the right place.

Everyone can blog.

Everyone can succeed as a blogger.

Everyone can hack their way to thousands of new website visitors and a regular readership.

The trick is simply knowing what to do and where to do it.

To help you achieve your brand’s blogging goals, I’ve put together a list of my top nine hacks that can build your reader base.

But before we get started, I want to make sure you’re on board with content marketing and show you just how vital it is to success on the Internet today.

Should your brand be blogging?

Yes! Your brand absolutely should be blogging.

Every brand should blog whether they’re B2B or B2C.

There are benefits for everyone.

Content marketing is one of the most profitable long-term strategies you can be doing in your business right now.

Why am I so adamant about content?

Because studies have shown that adopters of content marketing see conversion rates that are six times higher than non-adopters.

With improvements like that up for grabs, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to start creating content.

And many companies have started. 86% of B2C marketers are now using content marketing for their brand.

This all sounds great, but the truth is that despite the potential success of content marketing, generating traffic is the biggest issue marketers face.

It even outstrips the notorious headache of trying to calculate ROI.

But you see the dilemma here for someone trying to attract readers to their blog.

It’s a problem we all have – even experienced marketers like me.

And when you’re just starting out, it can be that much more difficult to know what the actual best practices are to build a loyal readership for your blog.

It can feel like an insurmountable mountain.

Ultimately, the discouragement could lead to you drop your content efforts altogether.

But that’s the last thing that you should do.

That means finding ways to create a brand-building content strategy should be at the top of your list.

To keep your blog active and help you stay motivated, I’ve compiled my nine best hacks for building a blog audience.

The first one goes back to your old high school English class.

Hack #1: Write for the Internet, not your English teacher

Whether you liked English class or not, there’s always a bit of it that stays with you.

Most likely, you still feel like any writing endeavor should be at least five paragraphs long with an intro, body, and conclusion.

And each of those paragraphs should be at least three sentences long, double-spaced, and sourced in Chicago style.

You’ve probably noticed already that I’m not writing that way.

That’s because writing has changed.

You no longer write predominately for print.

Unless you’re a journalist for a publication, you need to adapt your style to match your audience.

An online audience doesn’t want book-style writing.

That’s why you need to learn the two rules of online writing:

1. Use short paragraphs.
2. Rhythm determines what’s next.

Everything else in online writing falls under these two rules.

The emphasis is on flow, topicality, and creating skimmable and shareable content.

Browse the clip below from a blog post and look for the elements that stand out:

There are plenty of things to note here.

Various font sizes draw the eye from the headline to the introduction.

Then, the blue link in the middle piques your curiosity. What is six times higher?

Then, you’re eyes move toward the bolded words.

From start to finish, your skimming took about ten seconds.

In that short amount of time, you were able to determine what the article was about, find supporting evidence, and see an assertion.

It’s a great example of how writing for the Internet can draw your audience in quickly and effectively.

The big takeaway here is to make your content skimmable.

Whether you like it or not, 79% of your audience is only going to skim your content.

That’s not likely to change, either.

Not everyone will read your content.

Don’t be hurt by that.

Instead, create content that is easily skimmable and still provides value.

To help you achieve this, I recommend consulting style guides, top blogs, and comprehensive posts to help sharpen your writing skills.

Or, use a tool like the Hemingway App to help you edit your content.

As you can see, it helps you visualize the difficulty of reading your content online.

You can use this tool to help you fine-tune your structure and grammar to boost readability.

Achieving just this hack alone can help boost the rate at which your audience reads and shares your blog post on social media.

It will also lay the foundation for future growth.

Those are pretty great results from one simple hack, right?

Hack #2: Dangle the carrot

How do you get your audience to read your content?

You have expertise in your industry that you need to share.

You hopefully know the pain points surrounding your product or service. Of course, your audience also knows those pain points, and they want a solution.

The solution is the carrot you get to dangle.

Dangling a carrot can entice your readers to browse less and read more.

And there are a few methods you can use to achieve this.

One of them is the Problem, Agitate, Solution method (or PAS).

Personally, I love this method.

It’s a great way to engage with your readers and display empathy.

While it can be pretty formulaic, I find that there’s something irresistible about a blog writer conveying an understanding the issue, showing you why it’s so important, and then offering a balm.

Go back and look at this hack again up to this point.

Can you spot where I introduced the problem, agitated it a little, and then offered you a solution?

That’s pretty powerful, right?

But PAS isn’t the only way to draw in your readers.

Another method you could use is called the AIDA Model.

This is another popular formula that helps you dangle the carrot of your expertise in front of an attentive and willing audience.

Here’s how it works.

Start by grabbing the reader’s attention with headlines, imagery, and relevant topics.

Then, pique your reader’s interest with an engaging introduction and engaging copy.

Use your authority and the flow of your arguments to build a strong desire for your solution.

Finally, call your reader to action immediately.

If you do all that, you’ll convert a visitor into a lead and take them one step closer to becoming an advocate for your brand.

Hack #3: Put in more time

How much time does it take to create a blog post worthy of close reading?

Do you write your posts within an hour or two?

This has been a hot topic for years, and my opinion is that the longer you spend on an article, the better it will be.

And it seems that people agree because more marketers are spending more time creating blog posts with each passing year.

Have you ever spent more than six hours on a blog post?

I know I have.

Actually, I spend more time than that quite often.

But why are marketers just now starting to spend more time on their content?

I believe it’s because people have begun to realize that there’s a vital element of content creation that requires the blogger to put extra time in:

Word count.

The truth is that blogging should take you longer because you should create a higher word count.

That means that those blogs you’ve been reading that say that 400-600 words is the ideal length of a blog post are wrong.

Why is a high word count important?

Studies show that higher word count…

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