How to Attract an Audience to Your Blog

According to Technorati's 2011 State of the Blogosphere report, blogging is trending upwards and shows no signs of slowing down. Not only is blogging an effective way to share opinions, news and happenings on an online forum, it is also a powerful tool for driving traffic to websites and making money through strategically placed ads. In order to do any of these things effectively, however, you must first attract an audience to your blog through proper planning, content, marketing and measuring of the blog's reach.

Prepping for Growth

1: Select the appropriate scripts. Scripts such as Blog System integrate social media into your blog, and allow your blog to reach a wider audience. Other scripts, such as VlogSite and Vlog System, let you to host video blog content, allowing you to upload video blog content that will increase your exposure on search engines.

2: Select the appropriate plugins. InboundWriter and Seoppressor are plugins that provides you with SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, suggestions. Sociable and TweetThis add social media sharing icons to your blog, allowing your readers to share your blog with their social media networks.

3: Select an outbound RSS feed aggregator. Many readers monitor blogs through RSS readers, but you must use an aggregator in conjunction with your blog in order for them to be able to do so. Most blogging websites, including Tumblr, Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress, include this service as part of the platform. Others, such as SquareSpace, require an external feed-creation application like FeedYes or BottomFeeder.

Preparing Content

4: Pick a subject, demographic or type of reader that you wish to target. According to CBS News, one of the keys to creating a successful blog is "finding a niche" and blogging "about something you are passionate about and something that 10 million other bloggers aren't already feverishly penning."

5: Use search engines and SEO tools such as InboundWriter, SEO Tool and SEO Cockpit to research what readers are searching for and the keywords they are using to do so. If you selected an SEO plugin to help with your search engine optimization, use this tool to determine what words to use in the writing of your content. Doing so can make your blog appear as high as possible on the various search engines' search result pages.

6: Write blog posts that are both compelling and controversial. CBS News notes that successful blogging often involves being opinionated. Popular opinions will draw supporters to your blog, but unpopular opinions can be beneficial as well by drawing comments from detractors and increasing your blog's visibility.

Marketing

7: Create social media accounts for your blog and grow your following on your various social networks. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google+ all appeal to different demographics and allow you to share your blog with a wide variety of people. Engage with your followers, and many will return the favor, potentially giving the posts you share the ability to go viral.

8: Network with other bloggers. These bloggers may be blogging about the same or similar things you are blogging about, or may cater to the type of people you want to attract. Building relationships with other bloggers means that, when you share another blogger's post with your followers, the blogger is often compelled to do the same.

9: Write guest blog posts for other blogs. Guest blog posts expose your style of writing and choice of topics to other readers, who may then begin following your blog. Guest blog posts are also mutually beneficial: the blogger for whom you are writing the guest post also gets increased traffic from your readers. You can also host a guest blogger on your blog to gain the same type of increased traffic.