How to Improve Your Blog Without Spending a Dollar

If you have your own blog then you know there are a thousand and one things to worry about. Are you marketing it correctly? Are you using the right channels to advertise? Are your posts interesting and relevant? Is your design the best it can be? After a while a blog can seem like a pretty long checklist of items that are difficult to keep track of. And things can get pretty expensive, pretty quickly. Blog and web design does not come cheap, nor do new logos, paid marketing campaigns or the like. But the good news is, there are lots of simple things you can do that won’t cost you a penny and will help you radically improve your blog.

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Publish more and better content

According to the New York Times, 95% of blogs fail. To avoid becoming part of this statistic, focus on what really matters – growing your readership. There is sadly no tried and tested formula to magically grow from 0 to 1 million but there are some straightforward (and free) things you can do. Publishing more content is one proven way to grow your readership. Keeping your writing unique and high quality is essential (so you can’t simply increase the frequency but reduce the quality). Starting to sound expensive? Not necessarily. One tip for generating more content is to keep track of what inspires you. Get a notebook or an app you like and write down every inspiring article, quote or thought you have. Keeping these ideas organized and within reach at all times is a great way to convert a higher proportion of your good ideas to awesome content. Another way to increase the frequency of content (for free) is to feature guest bloggers. And this is something that works both ways – you can feature other bloggers on your site, and send your own articles to other blogging sites for even greater exposure.

Have a clear call to action

Blogs aren’t all about the content. One of the best ways to grow a readership is to actively engage with your readers and work to build an online community. One great way to do this is to create clear calls to action so people don’t just read and leave. Decide how you want to engage with your users; for example through a comments section, through an online poll or by inviting guest submission, and make it crystal clear to readers that this is how they can take an active part in your blog. If your call to action is simply requesting social media shares, make sure it is easy and obvious for readers to do so.

Make your comments amazing

We all know comments are important. They generate a constant stream of user content. Every comment is unique and free. Best of all, it is much easier to gain user generated content then actively manage a new advertising campaign or double your blog output. Simply put, high-quality user-generated content is low hanging fruit and you should focus on how to leverage it. So, how can you significantly improve your comments? For starters, if you are currently using the native comments platform on your blog – there is a better way. Today there are a whole host of unique commenting platforms that can radically transform the way you interact with users. One of the best ways to do this is to go beyond text. For a long time comments have been almost exclusively text-based (apart from the occasional emoji or meme) but there is a better way. Voice, image and video commenting can help increase user engagement and make your blog stand out. Voice in particular is a great way to create a much more personal interaction, and best of all you can do it without spending a single dollar.

Heyoya is a game-changing comments and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization through native advertising. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

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