We’d all like to have a high-traffic, widely-recognised blog that has legions of fans and showcases our creative sides. Anyone can use SEO to go after specific niches, but it takes a while for all those niche readers to add up to serious traffic. Attracting a more mainstream audience is hard work that requires a bit of ingenuity. You can increase your odds of success when it comes to creative blogging by following a few simple tips as outlined below:

Traditional SEO
While it may seem a little boring, search engine optimisation (SEO) is still an important method for generating traffic consistently. If your blog is having trouble “getting found”, try employing some of the tactics an seo company would use to attract visitors. In addition, you’ll want to narrow your focus to something that’s not too broad if you’re having trouble getting page views. You can’t be all things to all people, unfortunately, so choose a moderately specific target and focus on it.

Monitor Your Numbers
Analytics matter for every website, but it’s particularly crucial when you’re trying to build an audience. It’s something that Amazon doesn’t really have to worry about, other than using traffic source statistics to figure out how to best load-balance their servers and CDNs. Using analytics to look at bounce rates as well as where your traffic is coming from gives you a better idea of what’s resonating with readers.

Social Marketing
Love it or hate it, social media is still an important tool when it comes to growing your fan base organically. Employ hash tags and groups on Twitter to announce blog posts to readers who will be most likely to be interested in specific content. For business to business networking, Google+ is the new favourite when it comes to building relationships with other professionals in your field.

Keep it Simple
Too many bloggers focus on loading up their sites with too much visual information and gimmicky User Interface features. That takes focus away from your content, which should be the central feature of the blog. In the creative arts especially, it’s hard not to show off your considerable skills at every turn. But minimalism has its virtues, and it’s often a good idea to turn down the visual volume and let the content speak for itself.

Share Yourself with Your Audience
Here’s the thing: people like hearing about other people’s lives. For better or worse, we’re all hard-wired to care on some level about what’s going on in the lives of those around us. That’s why readers like it when the author they follow opens up once in awhile. You can share an opinion, a dream, a fear, or anything else you choose. Dry, informative blog posts have their place. But truly engaging blogs draw readers in and involve them on a personal level.

Create a Forum
You can choose to take this advice either literally or figuratively. Your blog should create a central hub of activity for like-minded individuals in your field to discuss ideas and share advice. When you create posts for your blog, they should be informative and value-rich. But even more importantly, they should ask a question of some sort. You don’t have to be controversial to start a conversation, but it certainly seems to help.

Final Words
The surest path to success in the field of creative blogging is to be, well, creative. It’s easier said than done, as you’ve no doubt discovered by now. Anyone that’s tried their hand at viral marketing can attest to how challenging it can be to create engaging marketing campaigns that catch fire. Blogs that manage to maintain consistent, dedicated repeat traffic all have one thing in common: they challenge their readers with unique, one-of-a-kind content that isn’t found elsewhere on the web.

Give your blog a head start with a bespoke web design.