Step 6: Build an Audience
It is great to create awesome contents but all of your efforts will go down the drain if no one will see it. Well, no worries, I will tell you some of the things you can do to build your audience.
Ways to Build an Audience
1. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the go-to method in building traffic. In a nutshell, you need to pepper your blog/website with keywords so it will show up on the search engine result page (SERP) when a relevant search is made.
In reality, it is a bit more complicated. Search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo have many requirements that must be met consistently for a website to rank high on their SERP. Meeting these requirements every time you publish a blog will result in your blog showing up on the first page of a SERP or better yet becoming the #1 result. When you accomplish this feat consistently, rest assured that you will receive hundreds to hundreds of thousands of website visitors daily.
2. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is just a paid version of search engine optimization.
You will buy ad space on SERP for a specific set of keywords. Doing so will result to search engines showing your website on the first page of SERP when the keyword you paid for is searched.
This is great if you know what keywords convert, and have money to spend since you will not have to worry about meeting SEO requirements and waiting for a long time for your site to show up on the first page. However, if you don’t know how to use this, then please avoid for now for you might unnecessarily lose a lot of money!
3. Social Media Marketing
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) uses social media such as Facebook. Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter to build your audience.
There are two ways to use SEM to drive traffic to your website: organic and paid.
Organic SEM is when you share your content with your social media account for your followers to see. Organic reach is free but the number of people who can see your content is limited only to your followers (unless your post goes viral). Since your followers are the only ones who can see your post, organic SEM requires a very large number of followers to be effective.
Paid SEM is when you buy advertisement space from social media companies. There are a lot of things you can do with paid SEM. For example, you can use this to show your content beyond your followers. You can also use it to grow your followers, and so on.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the last audience building method I know. It is done by collecting email (primarily through ethical bribing) then sending your email list a helpful and value-adding content.
A lot of people say eMail marketing is one of the best ways to build an audience. I guess it is that way because your leads permit you to receive your content when they provided their email address to you.