How do you get Readers?

There can be many reasons why you start blogging, but we all want to get readers.

• Dumping down your thoughts to get peace of mind.
• Creativity, writing is an art form that can be very satisfying.
• Mastering a skill, there is no better way to really learn something than trying to explain it to someone else. And when you do it in written form, it needs to be spot on.
• Sharing your thoughts and knowledge with the rest of the world.
• Or maybe you want to try writing to earn some extra money or even try it out as a career.

I think most is true for everyone but it can be very discouraging when you keep writing and you don’t get anyone to read your story.

So what are your best tips on how to get more readers and feedback?

Here are some of my findings and thoughts so far.

Quality content

I’m still very new to writing, but I try to read a lot of advice and tips from other writers and follow the trends. A few years back you could get away with just SEO optimizing and keyword bombing. But since the rise and public availability of AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and so on, Human written content with real thoughts and touch is what counts. The latest updates to Google ranking algorithms have dropped the ranking of quite a few websites that previously ranked high. The Verge has written a brief article on how Google is fighting back on AI-written content.

Is it OK to use AI?

In my opinion, AI is here to stay and almost everyone benefits from it in some way. I think that if you don’t keep trying to utilize the different tools that are out there and keep a curious mind, then you will fall behind. But don’t just enter a brief description of the topic you want a blog post for and then copy the result, instead use the AI as a colleague who sometimes is a real genius, but can lie and take the easy way out. Have a dialogue with your AI companion to get inspiration, ideas, and knowledge. But don’t forget to check the truthfulness and write the text by your self with your own words.

I have tried posting almost completely AI-generated stories, stories where I have written the outline and then asked the AI to fill out with more content. So far none of them have been any real success stories.

So in short, yes use AI, but in the correct way.

Promoting your post

So far I haven’t gotten any real experience on how effective it is to try to promote your post when you don’t have a large follower base from the start.
Here are some examples of what I mean by promoting:

• Creating social media accounts and cross-post content.
• Post on one platform and import it to other platforms (Don’t forget to use canonical URL to avoid duplication penalty).
• If you are on Medium, comment on other persons articles, and follow other writers.
• Building links and references from other sites.

What are your experience with this?

Paying for traffic

I don’t think this is a realistic alternative if you just want readers. It feels like a short-term solution to use Ads, you most likely will spend some of your hard-earned dollars in vain. And more shady methods like buying followers, and links to your post will most likely just backfire in the long run.

All advice and suggestions that can help me and other writers out there are really appreciated. So please think for a minute and drop a comment or direct message.