The success of a blog is highly dependent on loyal readership. You can buy traffic, advertise on places, or give away freebies to get traffic, but these will not help you unless the readers are loyal. A loyal reader is one who loves you, your writing, or something about your blog that keeps them coming back for more.  This is where reader retention comes in!

Bloggers are often so focused on acquiring new readers and more traffic, they completely forget about retaining their current readers. If you are trying to grow your blog for the long run, you need to maintain a loyal base of readers before you can try to acquire more traffic and readers.

Here are some tips to increase loyalty among your readers:

7 Ways To Increase Reader Retention

1. Focus Your Topics

Don’t try to write about many different topics in various niches. Your readers are probably reading your blog because they have some sort of interest in the topic at hand. Therefore, it is important to keep your topics focused around one central sphere. Make sure every blog post somehow connects to the main theme of your blog.

2. Follow Other Blogs

If you are blogging about a specific topic, chances are you too have some interest in that topic. Find blogs that talk about the similar topic and interact with the author. If you find his or her blog interesting, chances are they may feel the same way about your blog. Become a loyal reader on other blogs that spark your interest and feel free to interact with them through comments.

Check out our Top 50 blogs!

3. Care about Your Readers

To maintain a high level of loyalty among your readers, you need to care about them. Many blogs have a commenting system that allows readers to ask questions or provide insight about a specific article. Instead of ignoring the comments and moving to your next blog post, it is crucial to reply back to comments and answer questions as necessary. You need to make a habit of replying to every comment you receive so that your readers can develop a stronger connection to you.

Read our post on how to get more blog comments.

4. Stick to the Point

If you are writing an article about one specific topic, make sure you don’t stray away from the topic at hand. Many bloggers make the mistake of luring someone in with a blog post title that is not relevant to what he or she is writing about. Write about what your title indicates. Many readers will get frustrated when a blogger writes about something completely different than what the reader was expecting.

5. Quality over Quantity

The lengths of your blog posts do not determine the quality of your article. Readers are inclined to read blogs that give them resourceful information about a specific niche. Be sure to write good blog posts that get to the point. There is no point of beating around the bush as it will only tire out your readers.

6. Be Consistent

Consistency is key. If you have a specific writing and formatting style for your blog, don’t just randomly change it! Readers become attached to specific styles and fonts after reading multiple posts. Often times, you want to have a regular posting cycle. This way, your readers know when to expect new posts. Be sure to notify your readers if you plan to go on holiday for a few weeks so that they know.

7. Loyalty to Others

Chances are other bloggers are looking to find steady traffic themselves. If you find a blog that you’re interested in reading about consistently, be sure to subscribe and leave comments on their blog. If you follow their blog constantly and show them appreciation through the comments box, they may choose to the return the favour  The blogging community is all about give and take. If you share your loyalty and wisdom with others, they may also do the same.

Conclusion

One crucial mistake that limits our blogs from growing is when you only focus on the new. Instead of focusing on the new, it is very important to have a strategic plan of action to retain current readers before trying to increase traffic. Some of the techniques that I have mentioned above will definitely help you retain more readers.

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Thank you to my Guest Post Author: Jeet Banerjee of JeetBanerjee.com

Jeet is a 19 year old serial entrepreneur, consultant, blogger, and technology expert. He is also highly knowledgeable about marketing strategies and enjoys writing about entrepreneurship.  You can find him on Twitter @thejeetbanerjee

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