The Secret to Building a Popular Blog (and Getting Tons of Readers)

Breaking into a niche and accumulating critical mass quickly for your blog is not an easy task. While popular blogs in your niche have established brands, it is possible to ’steal’ their mindshare and build a strong readership of your own.

The success of a blog often depends on its audience size. When many people read your blog regularly, your content will potentially be circulated widely, which grows your site faster.

So what’s the secret to building a large blog readership? Content dissemination and the development of a supportive core audience. And that’s really the key. It’s not just about the quality of your content. It’s about having broad distribution channels.

Once again, readership growth doesn’t only depend on the merit of your blog posts, but rather their circulation reach. It’s about how much attention your content receives.

The value of content is subjective and much of its eventual impact actually depends on distribution more than anything. Top quality link bait will be impotent if only three people get to see it. On the other hand, a mediocre article can become massively popular if 100 bloggers see and write about it.

The same scenario occurs even when you hold content quality to be equal. Here’s an example: An Associated Press news story on Yahoo News hits the Digg frontpage and receives many citation links from many bloggers.

The exact same AP story can be found on sites like Google News or the Huffington Post, but they didn’t get any exposure on Digg and hence, didn’t receive as much attention from the blogosphere.

Having people who see and distribute your content is vital for readership growth.

If you can expand your distribution channels, you can even develop perceived authority and brand strength, just purely from your ubiquitous presence. People will naturally talk about what they see regularly or the brands they are familiar with, instead of something unknown to them. This is known as mindshare.

With that in mind, let’s examine the benefits of a core audience and how you develop such a network to increase your distributive power.

The Importance of Having a Supportive Core Audience

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If you want to build a large readership or be regarded as an authority on any topic, you need to develop a core group of supporters. This is important because these people allow your content to spiral outwards beyond your existing readership.

The core group of supporters should have some or all of the following characteristics:

1. They are bloggers, each with their own audience.
2. They are influential thought leaders in their niche.
3. They have the ability to send you links and traffic.
4. They are loyal readers who value your content and opinions.
5. They will follow your blog regularly and read most of what you write.
6. They may also be the target audience for your content

Whenever you publish an important article, these are the people who will talk about it and disseminate it by sharing it with others. This brings more targeted visitors into your site, some of whom may subscribe and follow your blog, before eventually becoming a member of your supportive audience as well.

The only way for a blog to grow fast is to put out valuable content (something worth talking about) and have it spread through a core audience with the ability to link or influence links (people who talk about it). This is an unparalleled strategy that will easily help you to establish a consistently growing blog readership.

The Value of Core Supporters: An Example of Content Dissemination

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News coverage on popular sites often reveal the power of having a supportive audience with the ability to link. Most of the breaking news on Techcrunch receives a great amount of trackbacks referencing their post and each of these smaller blogs are funneling traffic towards the source when they write about the same news story.

Andy Beard was the first blogger to break the news on the recent Google PageRank drop. His discovery was soon followed by an avalanche of links, some of them just hours after his post was published. He subsequently obtained 187+ links in total, with some of them coming from large blogs.

Andy had over 1500+ subscribers when he published the post and a loyal audience which respects his integrity and knowledge. I subscribe to his feed and I do believe there are at least a few influential bloggers who read his site on a regular basis.

Would the news spread as rapidly (or even at all) if a new blogger broke the news? While it might be a hot topic, large blogs can’t link to a story they don’t know about. And even if they knew, would they actually link to a source they are unfamiliar with?

Trust in the credibility of the info source is important to distributors of content.

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Certainly, a new blog could use social media channels like Digg to leapfrog over the obstacles of obscurity and a weak blog brand. Something on the Digg frontpage would make people sit up and pay attention. And it usually does.

But a larger blog with an established blog can easily monopolize link attribution by jumping on the news and writing up their opinion or version of it. Because such a site has a large number of readers with blogs, most of the citation links (and traffic) may bypass the original source and go directly to the larger blog.

When the news spreads even further, this dominance snowballs and deepens as social media users may choose to promote the content of the large blog instead.

This situation does occur frequently in news reportage but not so often when it comes to the production of unique/original content that isn’t time-sensitive. I’m using this as an example to show that your audience can become distribution channels which will influence the popularity of any published content.

They can determine if a content succeeds or fails to capture attention.

Three Strategies to Build a Supportive Core Audience

Let’s assume that you are already producing content of excellent quality. The next step is to focus on developing multiple distribution channels and a core audience.

The following strategies can be condensed to just one action: to build relationships for content distribution. Most of what is outlined below focuses on developing beneficial affiliations in order to establish a supportive circle of readers/peers.


1. Power Networking and Emotional Engagement

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I’ve written many times about ways to network with other bloggers and I’ll just like to emphasize that the networking really starts with that first act of unconditional giving. That first sign of genuine interest in the other person or his/her work.

The most effective way of networking is to offer something of real value for the intended party, without requesting something in return (at least not immediately). Let’s take comments as an example. Instead of just promoting yourself in your comment, write words which initiate a conversation between you and the blogger.

For instance, Caroline has developed an excellent blog commenting strategy which allows her to grab the attention of bloggers and gain new readers. To me, the traffic you get isn’t really a big issue. The most important thing to do, when it comes to networking, is to demonstrate your commitment to the other party.

Apart from giving, here are three important points for effective networking:

1. Your Visibility. The more conspicuous you are with your support of the other blogger, the better. Ideally, you want to make them think of you as often as possible. Stay on their radar by leaving relevant comments and engage in actual conversations away from the blog.

   Make them aware of you by linking, promoting, sharing and talking about them on your own blog or social websites.




2. Alternative Communication. It is important to move away from the commenter or email-pitcher role and get into a more casual relationship with the blogger. One way to do this is to talk via emails, phone or Internet messengers.

   The mode of communication is an important relationship catalyst. Frequent conference attendees can attest to the value of networking with industry peers whom you’ve only met online.

   Contact of this nature can generate affinity rapidly.

   Even talking on the phone or IM breaks the reader/blogger dialectic a little and forces it to adjust itself to a new friendship or peer dynamic. Staying on one communication channel is a poor networking strategy that should be avoided.




3. Community as Magnet. Encouraging interactions between readers and group discussions is an excellent way to draw people into your circle and turn them into hardcore supporters through emotional engagements.

   Liz Strauss and Darren are bloggers skilled in developing communities around their blogs. Liz does some really interesting things in this area; for instance she recently held a virtual party to celebrate her blog birthday.

   There are many other ways to build a community around your blog. Just an important point to note: It’s not about increasing the number of comments or the amount of visible activity. It’s about building relationships with a group of persuaders who will push your content because they favor you or your blog.

2. Content Syndication and Editorial Submissions

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Increasing your distribution channels will also require some active effort on your part. Allowing other websites to syndicate your content in full is an easy way to get some extra exposure and develop some additional defensible traffic sources

Translating your content into other languages also makes your content accessible to a larger market. For example, the Blog Herald recently hired a translation team and set up a Japanese and Chinese version of their blog on subdomains.

Another method of getting your content across to multiple audiences is to practice guest blogging. For me personally, the real value of guest blogging lies in the building of deeper relationships with the bloggers you write for.

I don’t really care so much about the traffic or exposure you’ll receive. To only focus on the subscribers, traffic or deep links you’ll get is short term thinking.

Guest blogging is a doorway towards future recommendations and links. It is far easier to pitch a blogger who has previously published an entire article of yours on his or her site. If you have an exceptional article that just begs to be shared with others, you’ll easily get a mention because you’ve already acquired that trust.

There are many other benefits to guest blogging and many bloggers like Skellie, Chris Garrett, Leo Babauta and Steven Snell have built part of their audiences by guest blogging actively on various relevant sites with the audience they want.

In the context of our discussion, guest blogging is a good way to build a supportive network of peers, i.e. bloggers who will disseminate your content when needed. Pursue guest blogging strategically and above all, focus on relationship building.


3. Leverage Social Media Channels for Attention

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I’ve already written about the importance of social media marketing and how I think social media websites are excellent distribution channels for you to disseminate your content. A well marketed article can bring a huge amount of visitors, who might stay on to track and support your blog.

In terms of building a core audience, social media is a match-maker. She puts up links to your blog in all the right places and shows you off to people who might not have come across your blog before. Social media makes introductions; you’ll have to convince the visitor that you are the right blog for him or her.

The marketing strategy here is simple; Choose a content topic that is relevant to your blog’s focus, while potentially popular with the social channel you are targeting. Unless you own a blog that is much loved and followed by the social media community, never assume that everything you write is perfect for it.

Angle your content for the masses to accumulate the greatest amount of attention. Those interested in what your blog offers will subscribe to you while the others will move on. This natural retention model weeds out the most casual of visitors.

On top of the usual submission of content to social news sites like Digg or Reddit, remember to network with social media influencers because these people have the ability to affect the popularity of your content both inside and outside of the community (links from secondary websites).

Apart from push marketing, you can also use social media to build your core audience by publishing on community news sites like Newsvine and networking within specific social communities like Bumpzee, Blog Catalog or MyBloglog. These communities largely contain webmasters and bloggers who might choose to follow your blog.

Traditional webmaster forums or niche forums/message boards can also send a good deal of relevant traffic, especially when you participate actively in a crowded space to build your personal brand.

Blog Readership = Word of Mouth Marketing

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When people talk about you, you’ll get traffic and new readers one way or another. The quality of your content is incredibly important but equally so, is the presence of a core audience that will help to push your content and brand.

Actively develop a group of peers or readers that’ll support you and your efforts will pay off handsomely; The next time you create a fantastic article or break news, you’ll notice the powerful advantages that come with broad distribution channels.

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