We have a few hundred bloggers here at SAS, and people are always asking me about how to increase page views to their posts. I'm going to give you my top ten answers to that question below, but first I have to give you "the page view caveat," which goes something like this ...

Page views can be a good measure if you want to compare the relative popularity of your blog, but they're not always the best measure of success. If your goal is to become known on a particular topic, use keyword and search measurements instead. If your goal is to increase traffic to your product site, measure how many visitors are taking that next step. If your goal is lead generation, measure the performance of your calls to action. You get the picture.  Always find a measurement that meets your business goals.

With that said, if your first goal is just to get more visitors to your posts, here are my top ten suggestions on how to do that:

1. Optimize your content for search. Find out what your audience is searching for and what kinds of questions they're asking. Narrow in on a single topic and write about it from every possible angle.
2. Write a compelling headline. If search feeds the posts to readers but your headline is boring, they still won't click through. Make the head catchy and informative.
3. Tweet it. And then schedule it to tweet again. And again.
4. Share it in relevant LinkedIn communities. Don't just share it on your LinkedIn page. Find groups there that would be interested in the topic, and share it with them. Answer a few questions in the group while you're there so they know you have good insights to offer.
5. Share it on Facebook. Are you getting the picture? Promote it everywhere you can, on all of your social networks.
6. Post it to your intranet, and encourage colleagues to share it outside of the company. Don't forget people inside your company. They'll want to share it with their contacts too.
7. Comment on other relevant blogs & leave a link back to your post. This part is essential, and I've continued to maintain it's the only way to build up solid, consistent, repeat traffic. If you want loyal readers on your blog, you have to be a loyal reader and commenter on other blogs.
8. Email it to industry contacts and ask them to leave a comment. Pick and choose which posts to do this with. You'll burn people out if you do it all the time, but you'll miss a huge opportunity if you don't ever ask your closest colleagues to read and comment.
9. Email it to your sales contacts and ask them to send it to their customers if it’s relevant. If customers should be reading the post, your sales executives are often the best people to send it their way.
10. Write about a topic that is useful & interesting for your audience. Content is still king. If you write posts that readers find useful, funny or interesting, they'll keep coming back. If you don't, they won't.

To summarize: Share, participate and be useful. Then share again. I guarantee your page views will go up, and most likely, some of those other measurements we talked about will too.