So you have started a WordPress blog. You spent months preparing a content calendar and now have begun publishing on it on a near-daily basis. It is evident that if you are spending ample time and energy on your blog, you want to maximize its reach.

But guess what? There are 60 million WordPress blogs in the ecosystem. Competition is rife, but it is not impossible to get your blog the traction it deserves. In this article, we won’t share run-of-the-mill marketing tactics such as social media promotions or SEO tactics.

Instead, we will tell you about six strategies you can implement without overthinking only to maximize your audience engagement. Let us dive in:

1. Build a landing page for blog subscribers

One of the most obvious yet effective ways to expand the audience for your WordPress blog is through subscriptions. But to persuade website visitors to subscribe, you must use a dedicated landing page, which explains three benefits of signing up for your email list:

• Type of content that they can expect from you
• Subscriber bonuses such as webinar invite and lead magnets
• Email frequency [decide this sensibly]

Besides, your landing page does not have to be detailed or complicated. A single page with a clear and persuasive copy, along with an opt-in form, will suffice. Seriously - you don’t want to trouble your readers with a long web page.

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So, once you have published your landing page, promote it aggressively via blogs, social media posts, website banners, and so on. In fact, use a stick banner on top of your site’s main navigation menu so that this is the first thing that visitors see when they land on your website.

By creating a landing page for blog subscribers, you give yourself an opportunity to:

• Sell the value of your content, which will ultimately attract more readers
• Convince your target audience that your blog content is worth subscribing to by including statistics or testimonials on your landing page
• Create a new indexed page ready to be found in search engines
• Establish a dedicated place to direct visitors from social media or blog posts

2. Use your email signature

Despite the growth and prominence of communication platforms, research states that 361.6 billion emails are sent and received every day. That means email signatures could also work effectively as a promotional tool. 

So, if you have been overlooking your email signature, now is the time to update it with a link to your blog subscribe landing page or a top-performing blog post, which contains an inline opt-in form.

This is one marketing tactic that is not in-your-face.

3. Optimize your content for search engines

This is a rather traditional method to capture new audiences, but it never gets old. Optimize your blog content for search engines to get easily discovered by potential subscribers for terms relevant to you and your industry. Here are a few ways how you can do so:

1. Use keywords in your post title and subheadings. Generally, blog titles comprising words such as “how-to,” “X ways,” “review” tend to do well as that is how users conduct their online search.
2. Interlink your posts with other relevant content, especially the top-performing blogs, to keep your audience engaged on the website. You can take the help of Google Analytics to see which blogs have been performing the best.
3. Add essential keywords to the meta title and meta description of each blog post but don’t overdo it. The Yoast plugin works beautifully.
4. Write proper ALT tags for the images used in your blog posts or use an OCR accessibility solution that can generate alt titles and text. This helps search engines rank better and ensures web accessibility to those audiences with visual or specific cognitive disabilities using a screen reader.
5. Link to other credible sites that will send trackable traffic to the reader who might visit and even share your blog post. Search engines are also likely to reward such behaviors.

4. Make your emails shareable

It is tough bringing new visitors to your website but don’t be surprised when we tell you that more than 70% of them won’t return to your website, let alone your blog dashboard. That is why you need to start building an email list.

Once you start sending valuable blog content via email, you must make sure you include some aspects within the email design, which would further nudge the readers to share that email amongst their network. These elements include:

1. A Call-To-Action [CTA], which enables readers to forward the email to their peers.

Ann Handley’s Total Annarchy is a fantastic example that gives its subscribers the option to forward the newsletter to a friend:

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Many email marketing services, such as MailChimp, offer a simple Forward to a Friend link. You can even customize the feature as per your liking.

1. Social media buttons to share the newsletter on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where it can interest a larger pool of audience.

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You can ask your email service provider to help you insert these buttons in the email, or you can check out the documentation to implement them yourself.

The best thing about having email lists is that no one can limit your reach, as long as you follow protocol, and you can get direct access to your audience’s inboxes.

5. Identify and engage influencers on social media

In the past few years, influencer marketing has grown to be an effective platform for growing a business. Companies, on average, generate $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencers. Moreover, as of today, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations.

Undoubtedly, influencers can also help you capture new audiences for your WordPress blog and significantly boost site traffic. But first, you must find a handful of influencers whose audiences are potential target audiences for your business too.

Tools such as Twiends, Lumanu, and BuzzSumo are useful for identifying influencers based on popular industry hashtags, gender, industry, or location. Once that is sorted, start a conversation with them on social media.

Next, engage with their content via comments, likes, and shares and let yourself get noticed by them. This process can take time, so be patient. Once you have established a relationship with them, please bring it to the next level.

Ask them to share your blog post or your entire blog library on their website or social media channels. Of course, this would involve some incentives. But if you have the budget for it, try getting help from your influencers. It is an excellent way to get your blog noticed.

6. Create high-converting opt-in forms

Even if you are writing helpful content that provides answers to all the questions your readers look for, chances are they will read that blog post once and leave unless you do something about it. That is why it is essential to grab their attention with opt-in forms.

Here are a few examples of opt-in forms that could work for you:

1. Exit intent popup, which shows up on the web page as soon as the user’s cursor moves outside the upper page boundary or is about to click the close tab.

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1. Floating bar, which is more like a sticky banner that stays stuck to the top of the website or wherever you place irrespective of where the visitor navigates through the site. It is forever in the purview of the visitors.

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1. Inline form, which enables the user to share their contact details without heading to a different page containing the contact form. You can also have an inline way right in the middle of the blog post. This not only breaks monotony while reading but also increases subscriptions.

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1. Sidebars offer a common way to build an email list, especially when many visitors look to subscribe to a newsletter on the sidebar.

Get as many readers as possible to sign up and maximize your conversions. Optin forms are hard to ignore. Moreover, excluding exit-intent popups (which could also frustrate visitors), the rest are compliant with web accessibility norms, which enable everyone, including people with disabilities, to share their details without hampering their readability.

Wrapping it up

It is exciting to set up a WordPress blog and publish content on it. But what is even more exciting is identifying and experimenting with different ways to promote it. We hope the article has given you enough clarity on how you can capture new audiences for your WordPress blog. How are you going to get started?