Most blogs out there don't get the kind of traffic or attention they desire, and this is mainly because there are a couple of vital things about blogging they are not aware of. Once this awareness is there, it will be easier to achieve sustained blog growth. Jumia Travel, the leading online travel agency, shares 4 reasons a blog doesn't grow as expected.

You Don't Promote Your Content Well
It's not just about promoting your content; it's about promoting your content well. You need to ensure you add sharing buttons to your blog articles and share content at peak times of your audience's social activity. Blogging is a very time sensitive work, don't just think you can write, publish and share content whenever you want. Other important things you can do include: sharing your article on social networking sites with images (to make them more attractive), sharing content multiple times on social sites, keeping up with your content by responding to comments etc., and encouraging your blog authors, contributors, team members, friends and family to use their social networks to help share your blog content.

You're Not Considering Your Audience
It's not just about writing great content, it's about writing great content that matters. You need to tailor your content to the desires and interest of your target audience. Consider what your audience really cares about, and how they want it expressed or delivered to them. If your audience likes visual delivery of content, then give it to them and work to make your content more visual. Basically, just ensure your content focuses on issues and challenges either faced by your readers or that will interest your readers.

You Know Little or Nothing about SEO
When starting out, a blogger is not just a blogger; a blogger needs to be a lot more if he/she wants the blog to grow, and one of them is an SEO specialist. A blogger needs to be acquainted with basic SEO knowledge if he/she desires growth. This is not to say that a blog cannot grow without some SEO work, it can, but without deliberate SEO effort, the process towards that growth might be a frustrating one. A blogger needs to be aware of certain keywords and title tags to help with keyword optimization, and should endeavor to have, at the very least, a vague idea of how it all works to help increase a blog's visibility and growth. Understanding the keywords that gain traffic can help guide your content writing and content marketing efforts to make them more efficient.

Your Blog is Boring
When there's no 'wow' factor about your blog, when there's nothing attractive about it in terms of colour, layout or even design, and it delivers a poor user experience to visitors, this is very likely to affect the chances of a first time visitor's return to your blog. Your blog's user experience should be interesting and satisfying enough to sustain the attention of first time visitors to your blog. It's not just about having great content and working so hard on SEO, you need to pay attention to user experience. Consider what a user experiences when he/she visits your blog. Consider if your blog is easy to read and if it satisfies your audience's needs.