Looking to take your blog traffic and audience growth to the next level in 2024? Tired of the same old tips like "post on social media" and "build an email list" that every other article recommends?
In this guide, I‘m sharing 10 novel strategies – with specific tactics and examples – that you can implement right now to accelerate your blog‘s growth. Most people aren‘t using these techniques, which means you can get ahead of the curve.
Leverage a few of these and watch your followers, subscribers, traffic, and revenue climb to new heights. Let‘s dive in:
1. Partner with brands on co-branded giveaways
Running a contest or giveaway is one of the fastest ways to grow your audience. People love free stuff, especially when it‘s a prize they really want. Giveaways incentivize people to follow you, join your email list, and spread the word.
But what if you can‘t afford fancy prizes? Partner with relevant brands for a co-branded giveaway. They provide the prize, you both promote it, and you both benefit from the exposure and new followers/subscribers.
How does this work? Set up the giveaway so entrants have to take actions that benefit you and the brand partner. For example, following both of you on social media, subscribing to both email lists, sharing the giveaway, etc.
This creates a win-win and most brands will jump at the opportunity for free. Start with brands you already have a relationship with like affiliates or sponsors.
Use a giveaway tool like SweepWidget or Gleam to run the contest and randomly select winners. Promote heavily to your audience.
2. Clean your email list to improve deliverability
Building an email list is crucial, but your emails need to actually reach people‘s inboxes to make an impact. Many factors affect email deliverability, and one is the quality of your subscriber list.
Too many bounced, invalid, or inactive email addresses can hurt deliverability and even get you flagged as spam. Email providers like Gmail may turn abandoned email addresses into "spam traps".
Use an email verification tool like Mailfloss, ZeroBounce or NeverBounce to periodically scrub your list. They‘ll ping each address to check if it‘s valid and active. Remove any that aren‘t.
Some email marketing platforms do this automatically but many don‘t. Proactively cleaning your list every so often keeps it fresh and can meaningfully boost your open and click rates.
3. Create category-targeted lead magnets
Every blog post should have a compelling "content upgrade" or lead magnet to entice readers to sign up for your email list. But creating a unique one for every post is time consuming.
A shortcut is to create one really good lead magnet for each of your main blog categories. Then use a tool like Thrive Leads to show targeted opt-in forms for the most relevant lead magnet depending on which category or post the reader is viewing.
For example, say you blog about digital marketing. You could have separate guides to SEO, PPC, email marketing, etc. and automatically promote the corresponding one in your opt-in forms using WordPress categories.
This is nearly as effective as post-specific content upgrades but far easier to implement. I‘ve seen it boost sitewide conversion rates by 300%+ with minimal effort.
4. Build dedicated landing pages for each freebie
Most people just slap an opt-in form in their blog sidebar or below a post to capture email signups. But the conversion rates are typically less than 1-2%.
A better approach is building dedicated, conversion-optimized landing pages for each of your lead magnets. Strip out all distractions like navigation links and sidebars. Focus 100% on selling the value of the freebie and capturing the opt-in.
With compelling copy and design, landing pages can convert 20-40% of visitors into subscribers, blowing generic forms out of the water. Even a basic page will usually outperform an in-content form.
Use a landing page builder like Thrive Architect, Leadpages, or Instapage to quickly spin these up. Then drive targeted visitors to them from your blog, social media profiles, guest author bios, PPC ads, etc. The more focused the traffic, the higher the conversion rate.
5. Create viral quizzes to drive social traffic
Quizzes are some of the most engaging and shareable content formats. People love taking them and sharing results with friends on social media. They‘re fun, personalized, and highly viral.
Whip up a few quizzes relevant to your niche like "What type of [blank] are you?" or "How much do you actually know about [topic]?" Use a quiz maker tool like Interact or a WordPress quiz plugin.
Make the title enticing and the questions fun. At the end, ask people to share their results on Facebook or Twitter. Optionally, ask for an email opt-in to see their results.
Quizzes can drive explosive traffic with a small audience because they‘re so shareable. I‘ve seen quizzes go from a few hundred visits to 10,000+ just through organic sharing.
6. Speed up content creation with copywriting frameworks
Writing is hard. Staring at a blank page, not knowing where to start or what to say, struggling to find the right words. It‘s mentally draining and eats up hours of time.
But did you know expert copywriters rely on handy "templates" or "swipe files" of proven copywriting formulas to speed things up? Instead of reinventing the wheel, they pull from a set of go-to outlines and simply fill in the blanks.
For example, the PAS formula for a blog post intro:
- Problem – Identify a relatable problem the reader faces
- Agitate – Stir up the pain caused by that problem
- Solve – Introduce the post as the solution to that problem
Or the AIDA formula for email subject lines:
- Attention – Grab attention with a benefit or curiosity hook
- Interest – Pique interest with an interesting angle
- Desire – Stoke desire for what you‘re offering
- Action – Ask for a click or open
Anytime you‘re struggling with writer‘s block, bust out a copywriting formula for that content type. Plug in your messaging and voilà – you‘ve got a high-converting piece of content without hours of head scratching.
7. Find untapped guest post opportunities with social listening
Guest posting is a popular way to build backlinks, get exposure to new audiences, and drive referral traffic. But most people use the same tactics to find opportunities, like Googling "[topic] guest post" or "[topic] write for us". As a result, those sites get flooded with pitches.
To find opportunities your competitors don‘t know about, use social listening. Tools like Mention, Awario, and Brand24 monitor the web for keywords and brand names.
Set up alerts for terms like "[your topic]" and "guest post" or "guest article". You‘ll get notified of real-time conversations happening around the web of people seeking guest contributors in your niche.
These opportunities are often less picked over since they‘re not publicly advertised on the site. You can swoop in with a great guest post pitch and land placements on authoritative sites to grow your blog.
8. Mine Quora for long-tail keyword ideas
Keyword research is the linchpin of SEO and content planning. You need to know what topics people are searching for that you can rank for. While tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush are great, they don‘t catch everything, especially long-tail keywords.
For additional keyword ideas, head to Quora and punch in a broad keyword. Browse through the questions people are asking and look for gem topic ideas you may have missed.
Quora questions are often phrased similarly to how people type queries into Google. And they reflect real pain points or desires people have. Identify common themes and turn those into blog post topics. Incorporate the exact language used for on-page optimization.
For bonus points, write a thoughtful answer to relevant Quora questions with a link back to your full blog post on the topic. This drives referral traffic and builds links (use a rel=nofollow tag to be safe).
9. Repurpose content into multiple formats
Creating a piece of content takes a lot of work. Research, outlining, drafting, editing, polishing, publishing, promoting. So you want to squeeze as much mileage out of every post as possible.
Repurposing content is a way to do that. By recreating a piece of content in a new format, you can reach new audiences and get more value from your efforts.
For example:
- Turn a how-to blog post into a video tutorial
- Turn a listicle into an infographic
- Turn a case study into a podcast interview
- Turn a webinar into an email course
Now you have two or more assets for the price of one. You can share them on different platforms, embed them in other posts, and link between them to drive traffic back and forth.
This saves you from creating content from scratch and allows you to meet your audience where they prefer to consume content. Some people love reading blog posts, others prefer watching videos or flipping through slide decks.
10. Add infographics to existing content to build links
Every blogger covets those "power posts" that consistently drive traffic month after month and rank on page one of Google for competitive keywords. Once you have posts performing well, you want to solidify those results.
One way to do that is by building more high-quality backlinks to that post to show Google it‘s authoritative and deserves to rank highly. And one of the most effective formats for attracting links is infographics.
Take one of your best performing posts and order a professional infographic that summarizes the main points. Shop around on a freelancer marketplace like Upwork or a design service like Design Pickle. Expect to pay $300-1,000 for a nice one.
Add that infographic to your blog post with a snippet of HTML code underneath that lets other bloggers easily embed it on their own site with a link back to yours. Infographics are highly shareable on social media and popular blogs love featuring them, crediting the original source.
Now when that post gets visits, some of those bloggers will see the infographic, embed it in their own posts, and link back to you. Slowly but surely you‘ll pick up extra links to help cement your rankings and traffic. I‘ve earned links from massive sites this way.
Wrapping Up
There you have it – 10 unfair advantages you can start implementing today to grow your blog faster.
While the fundamentals are important, it‘s often creative, lesser-known tactics like these that move the needle. Zig when others zag. Look for opportunities your competitors are too lazy or set in their ways to pursue.
Pick one or two of these strategies to start. Track your results. Double down on what works and expand from there. Every small win will compound into meaningful growth over time.
Now go forth and dominate!
