7 Top Blogging Trends for Building an Audience in 2020

Building an audience is a challenge when so many blogs are fighting for attention today. Content is still the pillar of inbound marketing and in most cases, the foundation of that pillar is a blog.

According to Databox, almost 50% of marketers say that if they were given the opportunity to start over with content marketing over, they would focus on blogging. As a blogger, you need to be aware of the channels, tactics and tools you can use to grow an audience.

Here are some of the top ways to make sure your blog has an audience in 2020.

1. Create value for consumers

If you’re blogging to drive sales, you have to look for ways to create value for your audience. Don’t sell to them before you’ve offered them value and built up trust. When you offer value, it comes back to you in the form of engagement and revenue.

People don’t read blog posts just to be entertained. They are often looking for a solution to a specific problem. When you write your next blog post, ask yourself how what you’re going to write will benefit your readers.

Including a how-to video, for example, will help to show people how to solve a problem, rather than you telling them how to do it. Ebooks, podcasts, infographics, etc. all offer ways to help them understand more about a topic.

You don’t just need to add value to your own platform. Take the time to comment on other blogs and doing guest posting provides a great way to introduce yourself to a new audience.

2. Your blog must be mobile-optimized

Mobile devices count for 48% of views of web pages worldwide. This means that if you run a blog, most of your readers are probably viewing your posts from a smartphone. If your blog isn’t optimized for mobile, potential readers can’t interact with it and it also makes them see you as out of touch.

Write blog posts with mobile viewers in mind. A blog post should be structured simply in an easy-to-read format. Big photos often don’t load well on small screens and trying to click on tiny buttons with big thumbs doesn’t work.

People should be able to read blogs anywhere – on a lunch break, waiting for an important or sitting on a train after work. Make sure your site is responsive and automatically shrinks down to fit a small screen.

3. Interactive content works best

A Demand Metric survey shows that interactive content marketing helps to distinguish businesses – especially amongst immediate competitors. Interactive content includes anything that gets readers involved, such as surveys, infographics, or quizzes.

It’s easier than ever to gather user-generated content from your email marketing today - pose a simple question that directs a user to a broader survey.

Call-to-action buttons with a piece of interactive content can persuade consumers to make quick decisions that benefit your business.

Engaging an audience means understanding them and staying one step ahead of them. The more you interact with them, the easier this becomes. Blog comments provide one way to interact, but there are many other ways. One tried and true technique is to hold a contest. It’s a good way to get old and new readers engaged.

4. Don’t neglect email marketing

Email marketing is still a powerful tool. When you build a list of email subscribers, you have a way of constantly maintaining contact. Encourage people to sign up by offering a free download and keep them engaged by consistently sending them relevant, informative emails. It is easy to integrate links to your latest blog posts or suggestions for new products into your emails.

«There are many attainable ways to make your emails more accessible to readers. One is to keep your copy to-the-point and concise. Others are to use shorter sentences, limit jargon and localize content for global audiences», says Alicia Menfield, the content writer from the best essay writing service - do my assignment.

There have been major advances in email automation and automated segmentation will grow smarter, leading to increased customization, accessibility and performance.

5. Long-form content is the way to go

The days of keyword stuffing in a 1,000-word post are long gone. The average word count of blog posts dominating the first page of search results are about 1,890 words and keywords are carefully used.

Long-form content shows the search engines you know your topic, but no-one is going to read your long-form content unless it is well written, organized and easy to read. You can build authority by creating long-form pillar posts and building off this foundation as time goes on.

Regularly publishing high-quality content will not only help you to rank higher, but you can establish yourself as a reliable source of information on the subject you specialize in. When writing long-form content, make sure it’s a quality piece that offers users informative, useful content. An evergreen, data-rich piece of writing may take a long time to write, but it’s worth the effort.

Here are some resources that might help you to reach the balance between good quality content, it's price, and terms:

6. A mix of content is most engaging

Utilizing a combination of written content, embedded video and images helps to keep people engaged. According to Hubspot, blog posts that feature an image every 75 to 100 words get twice as many shares as those that don’t.

Mobile consumption of video content is steadily rising and creating videos is essential if you don’t want to be left behind. It is not that difficult to create videos today – a smartphone with a good camera is all you need. The inclusion of a video with a blog post helps to engage people’s emotions.

Infographics, podcasts, charts, graphs, memes, motivational quotes and “tweetables” – you have plenty of types of content at your disposal to create the most engaging content and keep people coming back for more.

7. Analyze your blog performance

It is more important than ever to track and measure everything you do on your blog. You need to know at the very least how many people are reading your posts, which posts they like the most, and where they’re coming from.

Using blog tools for analyzing performance helps you to understand user behavior so that you can make decisions backed by data. As we move into 2020, you will need to stop writing what you think your audience wants and focus on writing content based on concrete data that shows you what they want.

Conclusion

When you properly utilize blogging, you can put it to work in the beginning, middle and end of your sales funnel. Use it to reinforce your credibility, answer critical questions and guide prospects all the way towards the point where they’re ready to make a purchase. What will gain you an audience and keep it growing is to produce an interesting and active blog that’s relevant and informative. Create a relationship that inspires their loyalty and keeps them coming back for more.