When you first launch your company website or company blog, you are probably starting off with minimal visitors. It takes time to build awareness for your brand and create a steady volume of engaged readers, but you have to start somewhere.

Here are 5 basic tips to help you start building your blog traffic.

1. Email signature

Email signatures are often an overlooked piece of digital real estate. People spend an average of 19% of their time online reading and writing emails. Unlike social media updates, emails have a longer lifespan and are often re-opened. It’s natural for people to want to know more about the person emailing them, which makes email signatures a great place to put links to your blog or social media profiles.

2. Link in social media profiles

New users of social media often forget to customize their social media accounts with profile photos, header images, bios and a URL to their website. Remembering to include your website in your bio is an easy way to link back to your site and allow new followers or people you interact with to learn more about you. On Twitter, you can even @ your company account from your personal one to drive visits to other social media accounts.

3. Comment on other people’s blogs

If you eventually want readers to engage and interact with your blog content, you also need to practice commenting on other people’s blogs so that you understand the process. When you leave comments on other blog posts, you can usually include a link back to your website if someone clicks on your name in the comment.

4. Share updates on social media

When you publish new content, remember to share it multiple times on your personal and company social media profiles. At minimum, you should share an update on social media on the day you publish your post, then again in a week, and again in another month. Not everyone will see your initial update, so it makes sense to share it again after a period of time has passed.

5. Guest post on blogs bigger than yours

Initially, your website or blog probably has minimal audience compared to what other, older and more established websites have. Offering to write a guest blog post for those sites is a strategic way to get access to a larger audience and more visits via a link in your bio to your own site. To find blogs to approach about guest blogging, try contacting industry blogs you regularly read, as well as blogs in other industries but who could benefit from your area of expertise.

For more tips on content marketing and blogging, follow us on Twitter at @vapartners.