Day Twenty-Three: Tips for Growing your Blog Readership #BYBin30

Blogging your book is a great way to keep yourself writing regularly on your blog, but one of the benefits of blogging your book, or blogging about your book, is that your blog has the potential to bring you readers you would not have otherwise found. Here are some tips to growing the amount of readers for your blog.

1. Post to your blog frequently. The more frequently you post to your blog, the more content you create for the search engines to index. This, in turn, will make it easier for your readers to find you. That's one of the great things about the Blog Your Book in 30 Days challenge; you are already posting daily to your blog, and after 30 days of posting daily, you will, hopefully, have created a habit of posting frequently.

2. Comment often. Reply to the comments others leave on your blog. This will show your readers that you care because you listen. Also comment on other blogs which cover topics similar to yours. Some bloggers will allow you to leave a link to your own blog in your comment, but others will see this as spam behavior, so be careful about where you leave links. Don't leave generic comments that could be left on any post about any topic; this is a common tactic used by spammers. Instead, read the post and leave a comment that shows you have read it. Over time, you might even build a relationship with these bloggers, which will in turn, make them more likely to mention you to their own readers.

3. Use links in your posts. Not only can you link to previous posts of your own, but you can also link to posts on other blogs. These links should be in line with the topic you are discussing on your blog, not just random. The blogs that you link to will sometimes link back to you. And the blogger might come visit your blog and like what they see, becoming a new reader for you. Remember, if you are blogging your actual book, those links will not translate in a print version of your book.

4. Use a blogroll and update it frequently. The owners of those blogs will then be able to find your blog, and many will reciprocate by adding your blog to their blogroll. This is a shortcut to getting a link to your blog seen by the readers of several different blogs.

5. Use tags in your posts, relevant to your post topics. Most blogs have a way to add tags or labels to your posts. These tags will help search engines index your blog posts. And once search engines have indexed your blog posts, people will be able to find your blog through searches on topics relating to your posts.

6. Take the time to submit your blog to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. This is a fast and easy way to get your blog noticed.

7. Use SEO. Search Engine Optimization is the method of making sure that phrases and words in your blog are easily picked up by the search engines. This means having a header for each post that says what the post is about and isn't vague. This also means having phrases in your blog's text that people are likely to search for.

8. Use images in your posts. Images draw readers to you. People tend to be very visual. And sometimes a picture can say more than words.

9. Create pages or accounts for your blog on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. You might already have a Twitter account or a Pinterest account and it is okay to continue using them, but make sure your profile links to your blog. You can also share some of your posts through the images, by pulling the images into Pinterest. Even if you have a personal Facebook account, you can add a Facebook page. This way, if people want to more easily follow your blog through their Facebook feed, they can do so. Also add your blog to Facebook's Networked blogs.

10. Use captions with your images, bold important text and break down the information you are imparting in an eye-pleasing way. People automatically read captions under pictures, so it's a good idea to use that fact to your advantage and tell them something that will make them want to read more. Putting important text into a bold font, people can more easily skim the information they want. Likewise, breaking down important ideas into a way that is pleasing on the eyes, such as bullet points or numbered lists, helps readers who don't have time to read everything on your page still find information they need. And this is why they will be more likely to come back.

You should also make your blog attractive to your readers, which we covered in an earlier post.