It’s no secret that blogging is good for business.

Adding a blog to your website gives you the chance to implement new and evolving SEO tactics to boost your search engine ranking and increase traffic to your site. It gives you as space to explain your latest products or feature your services. It’s also great for creating and maintaining your brand.

In fact, websites with a blog have an average of 434 percent more indexed pages than websites without one (1).

But building up your readership is about more than just SEO. If you want to attract customers, c!ients, and passionate readers instead of just casual visitors, you need to learn different tactics for growing your blog.

Keep reading to learn what you need to know to quickly scale up your blog for more readers.

Content Marketing Tactics to Scale Your Blog

While interesting topics and great writing are important, they aren’t enough to drive readers to your blog on their own. Even SEO tactics aren’t enough. SEO seeks only to boost your search engine ranking to allow you to reach a much wider audience. But while this wide audience might read a post or two, they won’t necessarily become avid readers.

If you want to start growing your blog and attracting more avid readers, you need content marketing aimed to help you do just that.

Perfect Your Headlines

One of the simplest ways to make your current content perform better is by rethinking the way you write headlines.

Your headlines are your first and often your only chance to grab a reader’s attention and convince them to check out the rest of your blog post.

The attention span of your readers is down to just 8 seconds, or just enough time to read your headline and perhaps skim the first sentence of your post (2). If neither offers something of value or interest to the readers, they’ll move on without reading any further.

There are 3 main strategies for crafting attention-grabbing headlines.

The first strategy is to write headlines that inspire curiosity without giving away too much information. Pose a question that you think readers will want answers to. Make a bold statement that sounds unrelated to your topic, without explaining how it connects. These headlines draw in readers because they’ll want an explanation or answer.

Another headline strategy is to write listicle-style articles and give them a headline that includes a number indicating how many topics or answers are on that list. Readers like quick answers to their questions and listicles are notoriously easy to digest.

The final option for crafting the perfect headline is to feature a promise to the reader. This promise lets readers know what they can expect to learn or gain by reading your blog post. If your blog aims to teach your readers something, this is a great way to draw them in to your latest post.

Write Longer Content

The key to turning casual readers into loyal followers is to write content that provides something of value to your readers. It’s tough to do that in 500 words or less.

While it may be easy to crank out several short articles in an attempt to boost your SEO and cater to your readers with a variety of topics, a single long-form piece would be the better choice.

Longer content gives you a chance to connect on a deeper level with your audience while providing them with more value. In terms of SEO, long-form content is also easier to add backlinks and keywords to. With more room to add them, it’s easier to include them in a way that is natural, rather than forced. This helps your writing to come across as more relaxed and less like spam.

Boosting your monthly content calendar with several well-researched, value-packed   content pieces can help you establish yourself as an expert and leader in your field. Along with a strong brand and SEO, this is great for growing your traffic and readership.

Add Blog Links to Your Instagram Stories

Instagram has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years, earning it a spot near the top of the list of most popular social media platforms. Today, the platform boasts more than 1 billion users (3).

Instagram is particularly popular among bloggers. It gives them a chance to capture their viewers’ attention with beautiful images, and to include a link back to their blog where they can see more and learn about the backstory of the photos.

But a new trend has been helping blog owners maximize their Insta-success.

You can now add a link to your Instagram Stories. These links can be added over a video or photo, and they stay available for 24 hours before disappearing.

Before, the only way to add a link on Instagram was to place it in the bio. Followers would have to navigate away from a post to go to your profile and follow the link. With only that space available, you couldn’t add multiple links without risking confusing your followers. This usually meant simply linking to your blog’s homepage and hoping that readers would find their way to your newest posts.

This new link feature lets you focus your approach and direct your followers straight to your latest post. If you already have an Instagram following, this is a quick and easy way to boost your blog traffic.

Scaling Your Blog

By improving your headline strategy, writing longer content, and utilizing the new Instagram Stories link option, you can scale your blog and increase traffic faster than ever before.

If you’re sick of spending hours researching, writing, and perfecting blog posts that no one ever reads, it’s time to put these content marketing strategies to work!