So you’ve got your blog, and you’ve written some posts, now you just need the people to come and read it, right? Here’s six steps you need to take to grow your blog. Jump to it!
Step one: Get thee on Pinterest
Pinterest is a great referring of traffic to your blog. It’s quickly taking over Facebook and any other social media platform for getting traffic to your blog. How, you ask? You want to make your photos and images Pinterest friendly. This post has some handy tips on making your photos shareable and ready for social media. Not every post will be pinnable, but rethink what you’re doing and figure out how you can be useful, or shareable and therefore workable on Pinterest.
If you’re doing a recipe, try and make your photos as beautiful as possible, add some text on the images to describe the recipe. If you’re doing a post on an art and craft project, do the same. You can pin your own posts (as long as you’re pinning other people’s stuff as well as yours). Do this regularly and you’ll see your traffic grow.
Step two: Get SEO savvy
If you’re on WordPress use a plugin like Yoast to make your blog SEO-friendly. It’s super-easy to use. You just pick a few key words for your post (i.e. words that someone is likely to Google to find that particular post) and adapt your post to make the SEO work for you. Yoast will give you a rating for how well you’ve done on your SEO, and you can change it to make it better. Once you’ve nailed a few posts, you’ll know how to make each one the best it can be, and it will only take a minute extra for each post you write. Totally worth the time! Spend some time going back through your old posts and doing the same.
Step three: Be consistent. Be, be consistent
If you don’t have content, then you’ve got nothing for your readers to read… simple, right? So be consistent and write regularly. Set yourself a challenge to write everyday for a month, and share each post to your social media platforms. You can even try working your way through this list of ideas to blog about. Your readers will be excited that you’ve got content for them to enjoy.
Step four: Hang out with your readers
Depending on what you blog about, where you audience hangs out will differ. If you’re a parenting blogger, your readers might be in a forum, like Kidspot Social. Now, don’t go being a self-promoting buffoon! Hang out, chat and be interesting. Maybe create a profile with your blog name as your profile name. Get to know your audience and maybe, just maybe they’ll head to your blog to read.
Step five: Share the stuff that matters
When you see blog posts go viral, what’s one thing that they have in common? They’re either crazy useful or deeply connecting. You know the sort of posts that people see themselves in, the posts that move you to tears, the sort of posts that share a universal truth. Dig deep and share something that really truly matters and connects with other people. The post might get shared, and you might just bag yourself a bunch of new readers.
Step six: Make it clickable
One of the best bits of advise I heard was from Sarah Wilson from when she worked in magazines. She said that people liked list posts, and preferably odd numbers. Things like 7 ways to save money, or 9 cheap & easy dinner ideas, or 3 ways to wear the same jeans and not wash them. People like to click on list posts. They also like to click on clever teasers. Look at pages on Facebook like Pedestrian.TV and BuzzFeed and learn how they make people click on their posts.
Thanks for the tips, Chantelle! Definitely going to take these on board for my blog.
Totally welcome! x
Great advice. Thank you!
Great tips! As always x
Love all of these fantastic tips!
Great tips and very helpful!
Great advice! x
Pinterest is one platform I keep forgetting about when promoting my posts. I’m trying to create more pinable images when I do up my posts now so hopefully it will increase traffic.
You’re on your way! x
Thanks for posting more great tips – an even number of them, which I love! Yoast here I come.
Ha, you like even numbers eh?
great tips!
Thanks for the kick in the butt… albeit the polite and painless kick in the butt. I’ve been so consumed by the new puppy that I haven’t blogged since he arrived. I have, however, taken lots of photos of him. I guess I’ll do a photo spam post today. After all, who doesn’t like puppy spam?
If there are people who don’t like puppy spam, then they’re not my kinda people. 😛
Then they should stay right away from my blog… it’s definitely puppy spammed now 🙂
Thanks for the awesome tips! I really need to work on my pinnable images. I just love Pinterest. It’s my form of relaxation each evening (along with a herbal tea and some chocolate – hey, life’s all about balance!). x
Such great tips. Need to work on a lot of these especially using Pinterest to drive traffic and SEO which I have no idea bout! Thank you for taking the time to help us small blogs 🙂
These are such great tips!
It’s an ongoing process to get a blog to grow but I’m not giving up!
http://mademoiselleaventure.blogspot.ca
Thank you for the tips Chantelle. I have actually installed the hover over image Pinterest Button right after reading this post <3
Great tips, I agree Pinterest is a great way to drive traffic to a blog, I’ve been working hard at that side of things and it’s starting to pay off. Totally love Pinterest, let’s hope it doesn’t change.
Very helpfull! Thank you very much for these great tips! 🙂
THanks for the tips. Helps to have a little nudge in the right direction when you are a newbie.
Cheers
Thank you so much for these amazing tips!! My blogging journey is just beginning, but i’m really excited about it, it’s so nice to be writing again
I’m just starting out with my blog and would really love to feel like it’s being ‘put out there’. Have just found your series of blogging tips and will be following! Thanks : )
Simple yet noteworthy tips. Being new to WP, its quite a challenge to consistently move forward. Good article to start with the basics !
Thank you for this post Chantelle! Some great tips. I pretty much depend solely on facebook for my audience and promotion so I will defintely be getting onto Pinterest now too!! Thanks, from your newest reader! Xx
I am just getting back into blogging after a year of nothing much.
I’m loving all your advice to make my blog better 🙂
This helped me so much! Thank you!! 🙂