7 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Growing

When you first started blogging, there was all that excitement over starting something new. You put hours into it… Tweaking the design. Uploading new content. Promoting your content. Till finally it seemed like you were making some headway…

Then all of a sudden, you hit a plateau. Your blog stopped growing.

What happened? What am I doing wrong? Why aren’t more people visiting my website? Why isn’t my traffic converting? Here’s…

7 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Growing

#1 You’re Focusing Too Much On the Hard Sell

Remember, people don’t care about how awesome your product or service is, they only care about how you’re helping solve they’re problems right then and there. If you want to keep your readers around, stop talking “at” them and start connecting “with” them. Tone down the hard sell and focus on delivering high value content instead.

#2 You’re Not Consistent

I’ve seen some people knock out 3-4 posts in a week and then they go a whole month or two having written only 1 post. The problem with this is it’s inconsistent. And by the time you get around to publishing something new, your readers have already unsubscribed and found something else to subscribe to in your place. If you want your blog to be successful and grow, you need to keep the content fresh and consistent so readers have something new to look forward to tomorrow.

#3 You’re Not Engaging People

Engaging means making yourself accessible and being responsive to your readers. That means having your contact information readily displayed. It means responding to emails and answering the phone when it rings. It means responding to every single comment when you get one. But also, it means writing things intended to engage (not sell to) your audience. Like this post from Dale Chumbley. The post isn’t meant to sell anything. Rather it’s a holiday post that invoked enough reactions and engaged with his audience well enough to garner 1,200 new site visitors on just that one post alone.

#4 Your Content Is Messy

People who surf and read stuff on the web tend to skim through content (I know I do). That’s why things like photos, lists and paragraph breaks are recommended. They help break-up your text to make it easier to read. There’s nothing more painful than trying to read 1,000 words of text with no breaks, headings or photos. If your content looks like a big block of text, you’re losing lots of potential readers right then and there.

#5 You’re Not Making It Easy for People To Share

Google loves great content and people share great content. But that said, let me ask you this… How easy are you making it for people to share your content? Is there a subscription link or opt-in form your website? Are you using today’s most commonly used sharing icons to allow readers to easily distribute your content? These are the ones I’m referring to: Twitter RT Button, Facebook “Like,” Facebook Share, LinkedIn Share, Email.

#6 You’re Not Giving People a Compelling Reason To Come Back or Stay

People visit your Real Estate site primarily for one or two reasons:

  1. Look for homes,
  2. Find out more information about a community

If you do a great job of providing information on both of those fronts, you’re site is more likely to become the “Go To” site for local real estate information. Here’s how Real Estate Agent Irina Netchaev works on providing a compelling reason for people to re-visit  her site. She created a “Listings Page” and sets the expectation that people can see updated listings every couple of hours.

**Note: That page is powered by dsIDXpress – our WordPress IDX plugin. You can test-drive it for free here.

#7 You’re Not Promoting Your Content

Blogging isn’t quite one of those “If you build it, they will come” sort of things. Writing good, quality content is half the battle. Promoting your content is the other half. You do this by:

  • Commenting on other blogs (you grow your own community by playing in other people’s communities),
  • Tweeting about it,
  • Sharing it on Facebook,
  • Sharing the link to your new site with your database,
  • Building your email list to share your posts and/or other announcements,
  • Linking to it in your email signature,
  • Publish a link to your site in all your print materials,
  • Engaging off-line at local community events,

But remember, there is such a thing as being overly self-promotional. So share other people’s content more than you share your own. People will recognize that and reward you for doing so.

What about you?

What areas are you struggling in? What are some of your best tips for building a growing a successful real estate blog?