PB029: Develop a Plan to Grow Your Readership [Day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog]

How to Develop a Plan to Grow Your Readership Today's episode is about developing a plan to drive new readers to your blog to grow your readership. Many bloggers I talk to think that if they write great content, readers will just show up. This simply isn’t the case. Almost every successful blogger I’ve met has spent significant time on proactive activities that will grow their readership. Coffee cups and drawings on napkins by Gable Denims on 500px In this Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). Today we talk about: How trying to grow your readership without a plan is hurting your blog How to work out who your ideal readers are How to find where your ideal readers are spending their time How to connect with your ideal readers What I learned from meeting Tim Ferris The secret magic of the 'servant heart' Further resources Further Reading: Finding Readers: Strategies for Building Your Audience in 2015 How to Find Readers for Your Blog 5 Ways to Attract More Readers to Your Blog: Social Media Examiner No Blog Traffic? Here's a Simple Strategy to Seduce Readers: Copyblogger How to Get the People to Your Blog: Fat Mum Slim Tim Ferris' podcast where he talks about growing an audience (the podcast is a Q&A but the part I refer to starts at about the 5 minute mark) Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog and the 29th episode of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I'm issuing you the challenge of developing a plan to grow your readership. We've done a lot of writing challenges in this series of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Writing is really important, but today, we're going to get off your blog and start to think about how we're going to drive some readers to it. I've included some tips on that in the episode. I've also got six really important questions to ask yourself as a blogger, to help you to tap into where your readers are gathering and how you can build a presence in those places, that will hopefully help you to build today's plane. There's a lot in today's episode so I've included some show notes with some further reading at problogger.com/podcast/29. Let's get into today's episode. Hi. This is Darren from ProBlogger and welcome to day 29 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. As we're approaching the end of our 31-day challenge, I want us to switch our focus a little from creating content and the day-to-day of building community on our blogs, to do something a little bit more forward-thinking and strategic  On day 12, you created an editorial calendar for your blog to help you plan content creation. Today, I want you to create a plan in another really important area of blogging, that of growing your readership. Many bloggers I talk to have the expectation that if they build it, readers will come, i.e., build, write, and create great content, and people will just show up. This magical expectation certainly hasn't been my experience. Almost every successful blogger that I've met has focused at least some of their time on proactive activities that help to grow their readership. In fact, most successful bloggers that I know spend a fairly significant time on promoting themselves rather than just writing content. Today is really about developing a plan to be a little bit proactive about building your readership rather than just focusing on content. I want you to build a plan today to get off your blog and promote your blog in some way.  Many bloggers don't do this and that's one of the problems that I see in this area that bloggers have. Another problem that many bloggers have is that they just sort of drift along in this area.