Blogging Archives | Page 3 of 3

How to Promote Your Blog Posts Effectively on Social Media (Checklist)

Do you ever wonder how to promote your blog posts once you hit publish, so that all your hard work writing them pays off – and instead of seeing crickets when you dig in to analytics, you see hundreds and thousands of page visits each day?

Today, I’m sharing a social media promotion plan that will help you:

Give new posts an initial spike of social traffic
Turn your posts into other types of content
Recycle older posts so they’re always out there

What this means is that right after you publish a post, you have a plan for how, when, and where you will share it.

One thing I should mention…you don’t have to tackle every social channel listed here.

If Facebook and Instagram are making a difference in your business (or if your audience hangs out here), get into a system for sharing your posts consistently on those channels first. You can always add the others later.

BONUS: I created this Blog Promotion Plan + Checklist to help put hte plan into action.

Blog Promotion Plan for Social Media Traffic

Facebook

Day 1 – Share the link post
Day 3 – Create a video summarizing post
Day 7 – Turn a quick tip into an infographic
Day 14 – Pose a question with a link to the post
Day 31 – Repeat Day 1

Twitter

Day 1 – Tweet a link to your post
Day 1 – Change the text and share another tweet
Day 3 – Share a clip of FB video
Day 7 – Share a quote from your post
Day 14 – Change the image and share another tweet
Day 31 – Repeat Day 1 (use the best tweet)

Pinterest

Day 1 – Pin to boards
Day 3 – Share a second pin to boards
Day 14 – Share a video pin from the short clip
Day 31 – Repeat Day 1 (use the best pin)

Instagram

Day 1 – post image with text overlay
Day 3 – Instagram story in video format, introduce blog post content with call to action
Day 7 – Post the video clip from Facebook
Day 14 – Share the same quick tip from Facebook

LinkedIn

Day 1 – Share the link post as an update
Day 1 (four hours later) – share to LinkedIn Groups
Day 7 – Share the same quick tip from Facebook
Day 31 – Repeat Day 1

Youtube

Day 1 – Upload your video, include a link back to your blog post
Add YouTube cards to the video with pertinent links to your blog and website

———————

Whew! That’s a lot.

You’re probably thinking, I created a blog post, not a video or infographic. Where are these coming from?

You need to create them to make this blog promotion strategy work effectively. Trust me though, they won’t take long to create, not after you’ve already written your post!

Right after you finish writing, create different types of visual content for it. This will keep your content fresh and interesting, and make scheduling apps happy because they tend to flag duplicate text.

Here’s what I create for each post:

The post with a title image
2 pin images
2 Instagram images
An Instagram story
A video – only for posts that make sense
A question
Quick tip infographic

Of course, you can work up to this. When I started sharing my posts regularly, I only created the blog image. Then I added a pin image, then two, then multiple tweets, and so on.

So you don’t have to create all of this at once! Start where you are and work up to it. u

If you’re looking for other types of social media content you can share, click the image below to download my Social Media Cheat Sheet + Content Calendar.

What about scheduling tools?

There are so many scheduling tools to choose from. Here are a few that I like:

For Days 1-14

Buffer
Tailwind (Pinterest)
Later (Instagram)

For Day 31 – and once a month after that

SmarterQueue
Tailwind SmartLoop
Recurpost
Edgar
SocialOomph
Later

A few random thoughts about the tools

Still wondering how to promote your blog effectively with the scheduling tools? Here are some pointers.

I love Buffer and use it a lot because of its integration with IFTTT for Buffer. But I wish it was easier to schedule content on specific days. With Buffer, you create a daily schedule and content gets added to the bottom of the queue. So for new posts that you want to share more frequently, there’s a lot of shuffling around to schedule them when you want.

For Pinterest, Tailwind is great. You can shuffle pins easily and schedule them any day you want (same for Later and Instagram). I even figured out a way to semi-loop pins using Tailwind.

Recurpost is free for up to 3 channels, so this is definitely worth looking into. Tailwind’s SmartLoop is a great way to recycle your posts so they’re always being shared. And SmarterQueue is my fave for automating Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. And then there’s this IFTTT/Google Calendar method that’s also free and works like a charm for Twitter and Facebook.

Anything that’s made a huge difference in your traffic? Let me know and I’ll add it to the list!

by Sandra Clayton

32 Insanely Easy Ways to Increase Website Traffic For Free (2019 Update)

Blogging, Social Media

Updated June 6, 2019. Today, I want to talk about ways to increase website traffic and get visible so that your blog gets found by thousands and all your hard work pays off.

Traffic is a biggie for any online business. If you want people to get to know and love your brand (and ultimately, become customers), they first have to know your business exists.

You need a signpost to draw their attention to your business, and in the blogosphere, traffic = signpost.

Truth is, blogging is a lot of work. When you see the rewards from it, you want to roll up your sleeves and keep the momentum going, no?

On the flip side, when your blog traffic plateaus or even goes down, it can kill your enthusiasm for blogging altogether. We don’t want that to happen.

In this post, I’m sharing strategies that have helped me increase my blog traffic so that you can increase the traffic to your website too.

Before I continue, I should tell you the one thing I did that made my traffic plummet.

Nothing.

Yep, I said it. I did nothing. Didn’t promote my posts after I published them. Just let them sit there. And my blog traffic dropped fast. I know this because my traffic was on the rise and I thought Good, I’m able to drive traffic to my website on autopilot now and I can ease up on content promotion. #LessonLearned

Ease up on content promotion = take down my signpost = no traffic. Which is pretty much the gist of it.

There’s a whole lot you can do to get blog traffic without spending thousands of dollars on advertising. You just need to understand the traffic sources available, coupled with these techniques to double and triple your page views every month.

Let’s dig in.

32 Insanely Easy Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic (For Free)

1) Build your following

Decide which social media sites you want to lean on and work to build a following on those platforms. Social media will be a huge source of blog traffic if you approach it right. Spend some time actively engaging on those sites and sharing other people’s content as well as your own.

I cover more on creating an effective social media strategy in this post.

2) Social media profiles

Give your website a boost in traffic by making sure you include your URL on all your social media profiles. You’ll be amazed at how much traffic this can drive to your website.

3) Post on social media regularly

I know you’re busy.

Still, posting regularly and frequently on social media is going to make a huge difference in your ability to build a following. Of course, we can’t be on social media 24/7, and scheduling tools will automate your posts.

You can look active without being active. Make sense?

My favorites are SmarterQueue, Tailwind, and Later.

4) Share content frequently

The more fresh content you share, the more blog traffic you can get from social media and search engines. Updating your blog regularly also helps readers get to know you and keeps them coming back for more.

Fresh content doesn’t always mean new blog posts. You can boost your blog traffic by updating older posts, especially those that are ranking on pages 2 or 3.

5) Focus on one audience

Still wondering how to get traffic to your blog?

Pick a lane and stay in it.

On the superhighway of blogging, it can be tempting to switch gears and write about many different topics. The more you can focus on one topic for one specific person, the easier it will be to build your audience and attract your ideal customers.

Focusing on one topic will also help Google understand what your business is about, which means your posts will appear in search results. This one’s a biggie. You want that when people look for important terms related to your business, you’re up there on page #1.

I find that by focusing on just one topic, I spend more time doing what I should be doing to build my business, and less time getting distracted and checking my junk email.

6) Add social share buttons to your blog

Share buttons are what you see at the end of this post. Image share buttons are what you see when you hover over my blog post image. If you’re using WordPress, Social Warfare (that’s an affiliate link, but I only recommend products I love and use every day) is the plugin you want to use.

While you’re at it, add a “click to tweet” to your post to encourage people to share it with their followers. Comes with Social Warfare. Woo!

Add a 'click to tweet' to your posts to encourage people to share it with their followers. Click To Tweet

7) Use basic SEO

When people enter important terms into Google, you want them to see your blog post. Learning basic SEO will help you optimize your posts for search engines and improve your chances of ranking on page #1.

If you’re ready to up your SEO game, my SEO guide for bloggers is a great read.

8) Set aside time to promote your posts

I know it takes what seems like forever to write posts, and if you’re like me, you’re tempted to call it a day once you hit publish.

Please, friend, don’t be like me! As I mentioned above, promoting your posts consistently is what’s going to help you get more eyes on them.

After pouring your heart into your content, you owe it to yourself to put it in front of your audience.

I cover content promotion strategies in the next steps, but for now just know that in the same way you set aside time to write your posts, you need to set aside time to let the universe know about them. If you write your posts on Mondays and Thursdays, set aside time to promote them on Wednesdays.

Get Traffic to Your Website After You Hit Publish

Ok, now for the good stuff. The steps I’m listing here are a checklist of things to do after you publish your posts to drive traffic to them.

Here are the steps I’m covering here:

First, share them on social media
Next, schedule additional shares, tweets, and posts
Then, add them to bookmarking sites
Then, add to content curation sites
And finally, try paid promotions (they work)

Let’s walk through each of these.

I. FIRST, SHARE THEM ON SOCIAL MEDIA

The first thing to do once you publish your post is to share it to all your social media accounts.

As a rule of thumb, I have accounts on most platforms, but I am not active on all of them. That would be humanly impossible! Still, more social media accounts means more eyes are on your content, so it makes sense to create profiles on as many as possible.

9) Pinterest

Pinterest is my #1 traffic source of blog traffic. What many people don’t realize is that Pinterest is more than a social media platform, it’s also a search engine.

If you want more people to find your content, make sure you pin it to Pinterest first.

Because Pinterest can be a powerful source of traffic, let’s take a look at some things you can do to give your posts an extra boost:

Make sure you create a pinnable image, which is a fancy way of saying create a vertical blog post image that includes your brand elements (logo, icon, URL) and the title of your post. This pinnable image is what people will see in their feed and the image that will be pinned when people share your post from your website.

Add a description to your pin image so that when people share it, the description is there with it. The description should include the title of your blog post plus any other descriptive keywords that people might use to search for your pin. And of course, a call-to-action.

10) Twitter

Twitter has helped me increase website traffic so I spend a lot of time on this platform. It’s my #2 source of traffic, right behind Pinterest.

With Twitter, you can load up on the tweets. Tweet a link to your post right after you publish it. Then use tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule more tweets throughout the day and coming week. Make sure you include hashtags and create multiple variations of tweet text. Twitter’s latest algorithm update will red flag duplicate tweets.

11) Facebook

You may be using your personal profile for updates, or you may have a branded business page.

Either way, make sure you share content on Facebook and work to build your following. Even though organic reach is down, Facebook is my #3 source of traffic and I have only a handful of fans. There must be something to it.

12) Facebook Groups

Groups are Facebook’s secret sauce, so join some and share, share, share!

Don’t be spammy and share only links to your blog. There’s an etiquette to Facebook groups. The best ones encourage sharing, Q&A, and genuine conversations.

Join a few that you can contribute to and learn from. Then, if you see an opportunity to share a post or answer a question, leave a comment and include a link to a relevant post.

Always check the group rules. The group admin will provide guidelines and let you know when and if it’s okay to share promotional links.

There's an etiquette to Facebook groups – the best ones encourage sharing and live interaction. Make sure you check the group rules before sharing links.Click To Tweet

Psst…Join my Facebook group and network with other bloggers, professionals, and entrepreneurs. You’ll have access to exclusive videos and training from me, plus multiple opportunities to promote your business.

13) Instagram

Instagram is the best platform to engage and interact with potential customers, but you can’t share the same content as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

You can, of course…

But to really get results, you’ll need to encourage conversations. Make sure you share a mix of engaging posts (quotes and funny memes work well), blog posts and promotional posts.

I recommend saving the bulk of your promotions for Stories, though. Grammers don’t respond well to overly promotional feeds.

Remember, you only have one link to work with (the one in your bio), so you want to make it count. Linktree will house all of the content you want to drive followers to and it a great way to optimize Instagram traffic. You can create buttons for recent blog posts, free offers, courses, events, webinars, and so on.

Note: If use Later to schedule Instagram content, you can do the same thing with Linkin.bio.

With Later, you can create and share posts and stories from your desktop instead of your phone. This means you can use Photoshop or Canva to create your content, which is helpful if you share custom content rather than photos from your camera.

The key to getting traffic from Instagram is to use hashtags strategically and post consistently. Start out with once a day and gradually move up to 2-3 times a day. Stories are getting more traction lately, so if you’re pressed for time, I’d share one post a day to your feed and one story.

Psst… If you’re not sure what to share and how to streamline your Instagram posting schedule, you may be interested in my new program, Instagram Content System. I show you how to create a super simple posting library that will save you dozens of hours each week. You’ll even have pre-made Instagram templates that you can customize and share in minutes. Click here to learn more about Instagram Content System.

14) LinkedIn

If your audience is on LinkedIn and you have a decent following, you’ll want to share your posts there too. It’s not a huge traffic-driver for me, but it all adds up!

I’ve toyed around with the idea of republishing content on LinkedIn but don’t recommend it. Due to higher site authority, there’s a good possibility that the LinkedIn post could outrank your original content in search results.

If you decide to repurpose your article on Linkedin, make sure you wait at least two weeks so that Google can index your post. Also, don’t share the entire article. Share an excerpt with a link back to your original article.

15) LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn has groups where you can share your posts, much like Facebook groups. If your people are on LinkedIn, make sure you leverage them.

It used to be easy to share to groups – all you had to do was post your update, select Share to Groups, and choose the groups. Now you have to manually navigate to each group’s page and share your post, which takes more work.

Who said promoting a blog was easy?!

II. NEXT, SCHEDULE YOUR POSTS

16) SmarterQueue

I’ve been using SmarterQueue for the past few months in a quest to find the perfect scheduling tool. I use it to share evergreen posts to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. My organic traffic has noticeably increased since I started using it. The price is perfect at $20 a month for up to 4 social accounts.

Want to know more about SmarterQueue? Check out this post.

17) Buffer

After I share my tweet in step #10, I’ll use Buffer to schedule fifteen additional tweets during the first week to give them an initial spike in traffic.

Note: I was hoping to replace Buffer with SmarterQueue, but alas, not yet! I’m hangin’ in with Buffer because I share other people’s content via Feedly and IFTTT, and Buffer integrates seamlessly with both of these.

18) Tailwind

No doubt about it, Tailwind is a must for Pinterest. It’s also the only scheduling tool on the block now that BoardBooster is no longer with us 🙁

Tailwind is Pinterest-approved, so you can schedule pins all day long and not worry about your account being suspended, which is HUGE.

I’m amazed at how Tailwind continues to offer time-saving features, such as:

The Scheduler – this is the core of Tailwind and works similar to other scheduling tools
Content Discovery – a biggie if you want to find popular content and see pin counts of other people’s pins
Tribes – like groups, only on steroids (the accountability feature is what makes tribes work)
The SmartLoop – an easy way to automating sharing and recycle older pins so they’re always in rotation.

Bonus: If you want, you can use the Tailwind Tribes Cheat Sheet I created to help you get started with Tribes. It list over 150 active tribes categorized by niche so you know which tribes to join and how to join them. Click on the image below to access.

III. SHARE TO BOOKMARKING SITES

Create accounts on these free web submission sites to get traffic to your content:

19) Reddit

Bloggers beware! Reddit is one seriously intimidating platform. What I mean by this is that Redditors can smell spam a thousand miles away. Your account will quickly get banned if you don’t adhere to subreddit rules, so please be careful here. They can also be very direct (aka: school of hard knocks) with their comments. You need to be thick-skinned, but we’re fearless bloggers, so we got this…

Curious about subreddits? They’re just like Facebook groups. No biggie there.

The real question is Can Reddit really help boost blog traffic?

I’ve seen amazing blog traffic, and I’ve seen crickets. I’ve also been banned from some subreddits. So while I’m on the fence about it, the boost in blog traffic is noticeable and makes a difference. Reddit traffic tends to convert pretty well.

Just be careful about how you add links. Best practice is to approach subreddits the same way you would approach Facebook groups. When you come across a post or a question where you can provide value, include a link to your post within the comment.

20) BizSugar

I’ve been using BizSugar for two years and have gotten enough traffic to keep using it. Like any other platform, the more you share, the more visible you become. That’s when the magic starts happening.

21) Hacker News

If you blog about entrepreneurship, Hacker News will get you traffic. Plus, it’s so easy to submit your posts. Just share the link and a title, and you’re done!

22) Growth Hackers

If your blog has anything to do with growth hacking, startups, or tech, Growth Hackers is another place you can share your posts.

23) Scoop.it

What can I say about Scoop.it? First, it integrates with Twitter. If you have a following on Twitter, you can hit the ground running with a decent number of followers on Scoop.it.

To add content, either set up an RSS feed or add your posts manually, which is what I prefer to do. This way I can add specific tags to each one.

24) Flipboard

This is my new fav…don’t ask me why! It probably has to do with the design of the feed. I like hanging out on Flipboard, which is how you should approach the channels you choose.

If you love a particular site, dig in.

Keep in mind that you have to give each one a solid try before you decide if it’s working for you.

For instance, I originally thought BizSugar was a waste of time. Then I started getting comments and traffic.

With any platform, make sure you hang in long enough to evaluate the performance.

No doubt Flipboard is a keeper for me. I get blog traffic from it already and enjoy spending time on it. Win, win.

IV. FORUMS + CONTENT SHARING SITES

25) Quora

Quora is a powerful way to increase website traffic, when you use it right. Quora is a Q+A forum where people can ask and answer questions on any topic.

The key is to search for questions with at least 1,000 followers and only a handful of answers. Don’t worry if you can’t find the perfect criteria, though. In most cases, the number of followers and answers will be somewhere in between.

When you answer questions, make sure you provide detailed description with a link to a relevant post. That’s what will help you increase website traffic. I’ve received traffic and a number of clients using this method.

26) Tumblr

I love the layout of Tubmlr. I’ve noticed more and more blog comments coming from Tumblr users, which means it’s driving a decent amount of traffic.

27) Medium

Medium is a blogging platform, like WordPress or Blogger, where you share stories (on Medium, stories are posts). I haven’t tapped into how to increase website traffic yet, but I’m working on it!

Medium is designed to be a standalone blogging platform, and like LinkedIn, it’s best to republish an excerpt rather than your entire post. For instance, you can share the first paragraph or two. By only including a small portion of your post, you’re encouraging readers to click through to the article on your blog.

Make sure you use Medium’s import tool so that you get credited as the original source of the article. According to Medium:

Medium’s official tools for cross-posting (including the Import tool) add the source it is importing from as the canonical link automatically.

All you have to do is paste the article’s link into the tool and select import.

Once the story is a draft, you can delete unwanted sections. The import tool will automatically add a link at the bottom of the post identifying that it was originally published on your website.

28) Bloglovin’

Create an RSS feed and add your blog to Bloglovin’. This is another one I’m on the fence with, but it’s easy enough to add your feed to Bloglovin’ so might as well do it.

Make sure your post images include an enticing description, which I’m sure you’re doing already for Pinterest. Just note that your featured image description is the one that will be added to Bloglovin’.

You may want to consider using excerpts and directing people to read the full post on your website. (In WordPress: Settings/Reading/Summary).

29) Triberr

If I’m being honest, I have a Triberr account but haven’t used it. Every time I login, I’m immediately overwhelmed and hit the back button, quick like.

Having said that, Triberr seems like a good platform. It’s based on “tribes” of people with similar interests, niches, and expertise who form groups to promote and share each other’s content.

Hmmm, sounds like Tailwind Tribes (#19 above).

Yep, same deal here. Only difference is that Triberr folks share content on Twitter.

Now if I can only get my head around Triberr long enough to try it…

30) Zest

If you blog about marketing, business, or entrepreneurship, Zest can be a powerful method to promote new blog posts.

It’s a high-quality content streaming site that works through the Chrome extension.

Once you install the extension, you’ll see a stream of hand-picked content on your dashboard. Don’t get distracted by all those juicy posts, friend!

The real juice comes when you “suggest a post” and submit your own content.

I’ve submitted six posts and receive 30-250 clicks a post. Not bad for free traffic, right?

Looks like Zest needs to go on our blog promotion tracking sheet.

31) Snip.ly

This one’s a wildcard, friends. I’m not sure where to add Snip.ly in this list, or if I SHOULD include it at all.

Here’s why:

Sniply is one of those tools that enables you “hijack” another person’s hard-earned content with your own. Because of this, it’s sparked serious debate among content creators.

When you “sniply” a post, you add a widget to it that links to YOUR post.

(Widgets look like call-to-action buttons and are hard to miss. Hence, the big debate.)

Let’s say you find a piece of content that is perfect for your audience. You create a sniply for it with a link to your post and share to, say Twitter.

Someone sees your tweet, clicks on it, and reads the post. Then they click on your sniply. Bam. Now they’re over on YOUR site.

If you’re clever, your sniply will include call to action copy, such as Grab your daily marketing checklist here.

Done well, a sniply can seem like logical next step to take after reading the shared post.

V. PAID PLATFORMS

Still want to know how to get more traffic? Time to pull out your wallet, friend.

If you start small, limit your daily budget, and test ad copy, images, and landing pages, you can drive a decent amount of traffic for less than $10 a day.

32) Facebook Ads

Yes, they’re worth it.

Before you start with Facebook ads, you need a rock-solid strategy. In other words, make sure the post you’re promoting includes a content upgrade or CTA to encourage sign-ups. Or, run your ad to a landing page with your freebie, challenge or email course . . . you get the gist.

If you’re a superhero, which of course you are, you’ll include an option to purchase something in your delivery sequence (say, a $7 mini-offer). Take that income and reinvest in your ads and you’ll wind up spending little to nothing. Now who’s a game-changer?

33) Pinterest Ads

Pinterest ads are my secret weapon for traffic. They give new pins a boost in visibility while you wait for organic repinning to take over as more people see your content. Once you have some repins, you can ease up on advertising. The best part: You can get great results with an ad spend of only $5 a day.

34) Reddit Ads

Redditors can be so tough. Still, the traffic you can get is no joke, so I recommend giving ads a try. Again, you don’t have to spend much to test them out. I’d wait until you have a course or paid offer to promote because I think that’s where the magic really happens.

With Reddit ads you can choose to block or show comments. I suggest showing them because Redditors are all about being social. When in Rome, right?

35) Quuu Promote

Quuu Promote is a new platform I discovered where people share each other’s posts to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Think of it as a community of sharers.

I’ve used Quuu Promote to promote posts and have received a decent amount of blog traffic. Looks like their pricing structure has changed to credits. Somehow, I’ve been given five free credits and haven’t had to pay yet. I’m sure that will change soon!

How well does Quuu Promote traffic convert? Jury’s out on this one . . . I will keep you posted. 🙂

Any other ways to increase website traffic? Let me know what you’ve got and I’ll add it to the list!

by Sandra Clayton

SEO for Bloggers & Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide

Blogging

Search engine optimization is a big topic that can easily trip you up.

It definitely threw me for a loop! I was never quite sure what to do, where to place keywords, or how long my posts should be.

Sound familiar?

It’s hard to know how crazy you need to get with SEO. So if just hearing the word makes you feel flustered and overwhelmed, don’t worry. I’m going to clear up any confusion you may have around it right now!

For starters, on-page SEO is just a fancy way of saying Let’s create content that people want to read.

And then…

Let’s tweak it so that more people can find it.

I like to think of it in two parts:

The non-techie SEO: creating great content
The semi-techie SEO: tweaking your content for search engines

Not to worry, the semi-techie part isn’t all that techie. If you’re absolutely determined to go crazy on search engine optimization, focus on the non-techie part. After all, you’re in the content business. 🙂

Lucky for you, content is the name of the game for Google and other search engines. Every time you write an epic post, you’re creating an asset that will work like an employee for your business. Plus, you can always go back and make it even more SEO-tastic later on.

My take on SEO, algorithms, indexing and all that

If you’re curious to know what SEO really means, I’ll take a crack at it but please understand I know only what I need to know. Anything more than that and my creative brain gets woozy. Here goes…

Let’s say Jane decides she’s done with skinny jeans and wants a pair of “faded bell bottom jeans”. So she searches for them and waits for Google to crawl different websites and show her the jeans she wants.

Now, you happen to be a fashion blogger and know a thing or two about faded bell bottom jeans. And you want Google to show your blog to Jane.

So how do you do it? Basically, you use every opportunity you can to tap Google on the shoulder and say, “Hey this site is about faded bell bottom jeans”.

We’ll drill down more on this in the semi-techie part.

First, let’s dive into the non-techie part because this will be intuitive stuff and easy for you to execute. It’s the perfect place to start. The steps I’m sharing here are interrelated, meaning that the first step flows naturally into the second and so on. I’m structuring it this way so that you can get your head around what to prioritize when it comes to SEO.

Let’s take a look at my top SEO tips for bloggers.

Before we dive in, I created this SEO Checklist to help put what you learn into action.

PART ONE: THE NON-TECHIE SEO STUFF

1) Write great content

Yep, I’m saying it again. Creating great content should be the hallmark of your SEO strategy. Write content that engages your readers. Make every post epic. Put your heart and soul into helping your audience, which I’m sure you already do. So we can check the box on this one, awesome blogger.

When you write great content, you’re going to check the box on a few other things at the same time:

Long-form, well-written content
Includes multimedia – graphics, charts, video
Predominantly text-based

If you forget about these and just focus on writing great content, you’re probably going to address them without even realizing it. What I mean by this is, you’ll be writing SEO content with very little effort.

Let me explain how that’s so:

Long enough: First off, it’s going to take you some time to create a really valuable post – and by time I mean words. So right there, your post will be long enough.
Well-written: How can you create a highly valuable post without writing it well? You won’t. Because it’s not going to happen.
Multimedia: Next, because you’re all about creating remarkable content, you’re going to include multimedia wherever you can. Things like videos, images, charts…anything you can think of to make it easy for people to digest your message.
Text-based: That last one is a no-brainer. Blogging = Writing = Text-based. Done and done.

How’s that for SEO-friendly content?

See how focusing on just one thing took care of all those others? I’m pointing this out because sometimes we get caught up in minutiae and forget the bigger picture. Let’s go forth and write epic, remarkable posts.

I have just one other thing to say before moving on from this: the most important ingredient to creating truly great content is You. I’ve worked with so many clients and brands over the years who get a little nutty about “differentiating their brand”. What I think they miss, and what we can learn from that, is that brands are built from the inside out. Your brand starts with you.

Other bloggers will likely have covered your topic. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for you to add.

Maybe you’re BFFs with your topic. Or, maybe you’re out on your first date together. Either way, that’s the inside scoop that readers want. They don’t need you to regurgitate the same content they can find on 20 other blogs. They’re looking for you to help them interpret things and make sense of them. Make sure you infuse each post with your experience and perspective.

Okay, with that out of the way…

If you’re wondering how to make your posts even more valuable so you can really rock this whole “SEO for bloggers” strategy, there are a few things you can do.

I’m sure you understand your audience and have an editorial calendar full of blog ideas. Still, we can all benefit from knowing more about our readers. That’s where a little research can be your friend. It’s pretty easy to get inside the head of your audience if you have the right tools.

These are my favorite research tools:

Social media

Spend some time hanging out on the same social media sites where your readers hang out. When you see posts that get shared a lot, you know you’re on to something.

I’ve found Pinterest can be an invaluable resource here. When I first started my blog, my posts were pretty off-target, meaning I was kind of circling around my audience but not quite landing on the sweet spot. I decided to spend some time looking at popular pins around my niche, really trying to understand who my audience was and what they wanted/needed. I recommend doing this kind of research on Pinterest, Instagram, even Facebook, and Twitter.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a content analysis tool and a powerful research platform where you can find the most shared content around a topic, niche, niche, or even industry. So let’s say you search for the topic “photo effect tutorials”. You’d be able to see which content performed well and where it performed the best – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest or Google+.

The idea behind BuzzSumo is to find popular content and then beat ‘em. Write something better, more epic, more detailed. Use more photos, a better design, more points, you get the gist. But I digress, because you’re already doing that :).

BuzzSumo is also useful if you need help finding out where your audience spends their time. When you see posts related to your niche are viral on Twitter or Pinterest, you know that’s where your audience is. Check out this post for more on BuzzSumo.

Google Keyword Planner

Let’s look at another way to research using Google’s free keyword research tool, Keyword Planner. Just so you know, this is a useful all-around tool that will help you brainstorm different blog ideas PLUS find keywords to include in your posts, which is one of those semi-techie things I’ll get to next.

For the non-techie part, Keyword Planner will help you understand what terms people are searching for on Google. Let’s say you want to write a post about SEO but aren’t sure which subtopic to focus on. You can use the Keyword Planner to get some ideas.

Let’s say you want to write a post about SEO but aren’t sure which subtopic to focus on. You can use the Keyword Planner to get some ideas.

What I love about it is that you get back hundreds of other ideas that you can use for future posts too. So in addition to being a powerful keyword research tool, it’s also a great brainstorming tool.

Now that we have the non-techie SEO tips covered, let’s get into the semi-techie stuff…and remember, you got this!

PART TWO: THE SEMI-TECHIE SEO STUFF

2) Add the keyword to your post

It’s time to level up your post with keywords!

Let’s say you just used Keyword Planner to find some keywords. The next step is to add them to your post.

For example:

This blog post is about SEO for bloggers, so that’s the keyword I’ll use. And all that really means is, I think that you as a blogger might search for that phrase.

Psstt…Just so you know, a keyword isn’t a word. It’s a bunch of words strung together into a “keyword phrase”. If I had targeted the word SEO as my keyword instead of the keyword phrase SEO for bloggers, I’d likely show up on page 357 of Google.

Ok, let’s move on…

So now that I have my keyword phrase, here’s what I’m going to do next (and what you should do too). I’m going to add it to my post in seven places:

1) The blog title

If you only have time to change one thing in your post, make it your blog title. Make sure it includes your keyword and aim for 55 characters. Any longer and Google will cut it off.

2) The meta description

Meta descriptions are less about SEO and more about grabbing people’s attention in search results.

But they’re still important! Include your keyword and keep the meta description at about 160 characters. Google will bold any keywords in your description so they stand out.

3) Throughout the post itself

Add the keyword to your intro and outro and a few times throughout the content. Be careful not to over-stuff your post with your keyword, though. Google’s onto that trick, *wink.

If you use Yoast SEO, follow the prompts and you’ll be on the right track.

4) Subheadings (H2 tags)

Headings are your friends. They streamline your posts and make it easy for people to follow along and keep track of what they’re reading.

If it makes sense, go ahead and add the keyword but don’t force it. For example, here’s what NOT to do:

Blog Post Checklist #1: Use a Featured Image
Blog Post Checklist #2: Optimize Your Posts
Blog Post Checklist #3: Add Internal Links
Blog Post Checklist #4: Add a Content Upgrade

Yep, I tried that and paid the price (what did I know?). Google caught on and dropped me from page 1 to page 7, quick like. So be careful and only use the keyword if it sounds natural and organic. Even then, limit it to just one subheading.

There are plenty of other places to include your keyword.

5) Image alt text

Yes, it true! People can find your content through image searches. In fact, my fashion designer friend gets most of her customers that way.

So what images are we talking about? And what the heck is “alt text”?

I’m going to clear it all up for you right now! In terms of images, there are two kinds:

The featured image
Secondary images

The featured image is your main blog image and the one that’s shared on social media. Now, since you’re an epic blogger, you likely have images within your post too. Those are secondary images.

Next up, the alt text…that’s the text that would show in place of an image if it can’t load. It’s also a web accessibility thing.

From Moz:

“Adding alternative text to photos is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be read an alt attribute to better understand an on-page image.”

Bottom line, Google takes alt text seriously so we should too. In WordPress, this is where you’ll find it (while you’re there, go ahead and add your keyword to the image title):

If you want to be extra clever, make your alt text something elaborate and descriptive for Pinterest so that when people save your pin, the description goes with it.

Update: Some experts say that alt text should describe the image, and that’s it. They argue that pin descriptions doubling as alt text can hurt your SEO rather than help. So if you want, you can use Social Warfare or Tasty Pins to separate pin descriptions from the alt text.

Either way, just know that your target keyword goes in the alt text of the featured image. Use related keywords for the alt text of secondary images.

6) Image names

Same thing for image names. All those images I mentioned above should include your keyword in the name. What I like to do is use the blog post title for the featured image name. And for secondary images, I’ll use different variations of my related keywords.

For instance, the alt text for my main post image might be something like:

12 Blogger Plugins That Will Skyrocket Your Blog | Here’s a list of plugins I use on my blog and what I use them for. I’m hoping that a few of them will be useful for you too. Click through to see all the plugins!

And my image name would be:

blogger-plugins-to-skyrocket-your-blog.jpg

7) In the post URL

We’re almost there. The last place you want to include your keyword is in the URL of your post (for WordPress, this would be your permalink).

See how the URL for my SEO for bloggers post is conversionminded.com/seo-for-bloggers/, and not some strange set of numbers, like conversionminded.com/2017/5/6/, or even conversionminded.com/p25?. That’s what you want yours to look like.

Note: If you need to change your URL after you publish your post, use this redirection plugin to redirect people to your post’s new home instead of a Page Not Found.

Phew! You made it. Glad we got that out of the way. I bet you’re probably thinking That’s great, Sandra, but how do I get my keyword in all these places?

Stay with me, friend, here’s how:

3) Install the Yoast SEO plugin

Luckily, you don’t have to remember all of these SEO tweaks on your own! If you use WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is indispensable and tops my list of bangin’ plugins for bloggers.

Once you install it, you’ll see a section beneath the edit window where you can enter your keyword, edit the SEO title, and write a meta description.

From there, the Yoast plugin will give you a checklist of things to do, including keyword prompts for your content, permalink, images, headings, and other places we covered above. You’ll know Yoast is happy when you scroll up to the Publish section (top right) and see the green “SEO Good” icon. 🙂

4) Link to related blog posts

Links to your website are good! They send signals to Google that your content is popular and tell it to start paying more attention to your website.

Problem is, it can be hard to control external links (from other websites to yours). You know what you can control though?

Internal links.

Those are the ones that link from your post to related blog posts on your website. They help Google understand what your post is about, make you look popular, and increase your average visit time. All of this is good stuff, friend!

Plus, readers will spend more time hopping around from post to post. That’s another one of those things that tells Google, Hey people love my content. Gotta boost it now. *wink.

This right here is an example of interlinking.

5) Check your site speed

Google is all about the user experience and knows that people peace out when sites load slowly, so site speed is a HUGE ranking factor.

You can actually be penalized for having a slow site, which means that your posts won’t rank as highly as they could.

To check how quickly your site loads, use Gtmetrix, Pingdom, or Google Pagespeed Insights. Aim for under 3 seconds.

If your site runs slow, what should you do?

Great question!

Site speed can get pretty techie but one thing you can do is to make sure your images are optimized and compressed. I use TinyPNG to reduce the file size of all my images and I highly recommend trying it out.

It’s super easy to use. Just upload your image and download the compressed version of it. Sometimes it will compress your images by a lot and other times just a little. Every little bit counts. 🙂

6) Social media

It’s true, social media doesn’t have much to do with on-page SEO. But I’m throwin’ it in here anyway!

I’ve found social media to be a huge traffic source. So not to stress you out, but if you don’t have a social media following you may want to start. You’ll get more traffic from both Google and social media. And you’ll likely get indirect traffic as more people link to your content on social media. It’s a win-win, in my book.

There you have it! That’s my ultimate guide to SEO for bloggers.

What SEO tips are working for you right now? Let’s add them to the list!

by Sandra Clayton

14 Ways to Get Massive Traffic From Pinterest

Blogging, Social Media

Here’s why I love Pinterest so much:

It drives massive traffic to my site, easily OVER 60% of my total traffic
It’s fun to look through all the beautiful images
I find great content to share
Pins can take on a life of their own and drive traffic for months

So let’s jump in and start driving traffic with Pinterest.

SETTING UP YOUR PINTEREST PLATFORM

There are some things you want to do before you get going, such as set up your account, boards and pins the right way.

Updated: June 27, 2019

1) Create a business account

If you have a personal account, turn it into a business account. This will give you access to analytics so you can see which pins are getting the most repins, comments and likes. You’ll also be able to run ads and claim your website so that Pinterest can verify that the content shared from your website is, in fact, yours.

2) Tailor your profile to attract your target audience

Whether you have 100 followers or 5,000, there are likely tons of people who will view your profile each month. You want to make sure it attracts the right people so they stick around once they find you, right?

Include a friendly photo that reflects your brand and a brief bio that explains what you do and how you help. Keep the focus of your description on your target audience and not you! Check out this post if you need help crafting a killer description.

If you’re featuring a course or a freebie, this is a great place to include it. Take a look at Sarah Morgan’s Pinterest bio:

3) Create boards that are relevant to your audience

To rock this strategy, you want to have at least 10 boards that your readers would be looking for.

You probably have categories for your blog, right? Start there. Create different boards for each category that you write about. This makes it easy for people to find the boards that interest them without having to sift through irrelevant pins and boards.

I like to give my boards “active” titles (e.g., Start a Blog, Grow a Blog).

While you’re here, you may want to delete boards that don’t fit with your brand, personality or niche.

When you delete a board, you will lose the people who are only following that one specific board. Don’t worry, though! It’s perfectly okay to lose followers who aren’t interested in your main message. By narrowing your focus, you’re going to attract more of the right followers, and that’s what you want. Having said that, if you prefer NOT to lose followers, don’t delete the board. Instead, archive it. You won’t lose any followers this way.

Note: It’s okay to keep other boards if you want. Just make sure that your relevant boards appear first. Let people scroll down to see your other interests if they want to. Hey, you never know, you may make a wonderful connection in the process!

4) Create a brand board

Out of the 10 boards you create, one of them should be a featured board where you only pin your branded content. Set this up as the very first board people see when they find you. On this board you’ll pin only your pins.

Take a look at how I set up my boards:

Now, when you publish your blog post, the first thing you want to do is to pin to your branded board. You can use the Pinterest Save Button or install the Social Warfare plugin and use that to pin an image from your blog.

UPDATE: Brand boards are not a must today. If you already have one, keep it! Most of my repins still come from my brand board. But if you’re just starting out on Pinterest, it’s more important that your first pin is shared to the most relevant board. This will help Pinterest quickly index it so that you get more search traffic. Personally, I like brand boards because they make it easy for people to find your best pins in one place. For more on Pinterest SEO strategies like this, read this post.

5) Add some pins

Nobody wants to visit a blank board, right? The next thing to do is to fill up your boards with pins that your audience would find interesting.

Here are some random thoughts about pinning:

To share other pins, repin the best content in your feed, or search for a specific topic (or brand in your niche). If you find something that your readers would love, share it!
The more you pin, the better. I pin 13x a day. I know others pin 30x a day.
Make sure you pin some of your own content as well as curated content. When I first started, I didn’t have original content so I shared other people’s pins. This is fine at first, just keep in mind that ultimately you want to share a mix of both.
Shoot for 30% your own content and 70% other people’s content. When you have more of your own content, flip that ratio.

PINTEREST TRAFFIC-BOOSTING TIPS!

6) Join Group Boards

Group boards give you access to audiences beyond your followers. So if you have 1,000 followers and you join a group board with 10,000 followers, you’ve just 10x’d your ability to get eyes on your pins and drive traffic to your blog.

There are two ways to find group boards:

Search on Pingroupie for group boards around your blog topics
Join group boards that other bloggers and brand in your niche are in

It may take a while to get invited to boards, but it’s well worth it! You may find that some that you want to join are not accepting collaborators, and that’s okay. There are plenty of others to choose from. Follow the board description for instructions on joining. In most cases, you’ll need to follow the board and moderator, then send an email with your Pinterest profile asking for an invite.

Try to join board that have more followers than you and a high engagement rate (lots of pins, repins, and likes).

Another thing: Pay attention to the board rules. Some will allow you to pin 1x a day, others allow 4-5 pins a day, and still others have no limits. You don’t spam your high-performing boards and run the risk of getting banned. I know this. I’ve been banned from boards simply because I didn’t pay attention to the rules.

7) SEO your pins and boards

Pinterest is a little different than Facebook or Twitter. It’s not really a social media platform. It’s a visual search engine, much like Google. When you log in to Pinterest, most of the pins in your feed are the result of the Pinterest search algorithm.

Pinterest ranks pins according to relevance. And relevance is based on the keywords you include in your profile description, pin descriptions and board descriptions.

If you want Pinterest to rank your content in their feed (and I know you do!), you have to implement search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. What this really means is that you should optimize your pins and boards so that they show up first in search results, the same way you would optimize a blog post to make it rank higher on Google.

1) Optimize your board descriptions

Now that you have your boards don’t leave the descriptions blank! This is valuable space to add in important terms that your readers would be searching for.

Go back and add in some keywords to your boards. This is the best way to help them rank high on Pinterest, PLUS your boards can actually rank on Google too. When people search on Google, your Pinterest board can show up on the first page!

If you’re like me, you filter your Pinterest searches by people, pins, or boards. Having the right keywords in your board will help them show up for relevant searches.

Here’s what you want in your board descriptions:

The topics you’ll be pinning about
Any keywords related to your niche (not limited to just one keyword). Include any relevant terms so that Pinterest knows when to show your board. For instance, my “Start a Blog” board includes these keywords: entrepreneur, solopreneur, small business, blogging tips, blogging tools, driving traffic, epic content, social media, content strategies, content marketing, startup tips, online business strategies, SEO tools.

2) Optimize pin descriptions

We are on a keyword roll! Every pin you save from your website should have keywords. This is what’s really going to give your brand the biggest boost. It pays to put the effort into your descriptions. You want them to appeal to people AND Pinterest.

You don’t have to add unique descriptions when you repin someone else’s content. But you certainly can if you want to. This adds extra work so be sure you’re not doing this at the sake of your own descriptions!

What you want in your descriptions:

A friendly recap of your post
Some relevant keywords that people would use to search for you
Two to three hashtags
A call to action, such as “Click through to see all the tips.”

Tip: If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, you can amplify your SEO and save a few steps by adding a pin description to the alt text in your featured image, or by using Tasty Pins. When people share the pin from your site, the description will automatically appear. For more on how to set this up, check out this post.

8) Create pin-worthy titles

You can have the best content with brilliant images, but if your headline falls flat, people will likely miss it. You want your titles to be actionable or inspire some kind of curiosity or urgency. Words like the best, secrets of and ultimate guide to make people want to click through to learn more.

Just remember, there are good titles, bad titles, and so-so titles. You want yours to be pin-worthy!

Some general thoughts here:

Benefit-rich titles will grab people’s attention right away. Will your post save people time, money, show them how to do something? Include your audience in the title too so that readers know it’s for them (e.g., 25 Ways for Entrepreneurs to Grow your Blog Audience)
How-to post titles tend to catch people’s attention quickly because they provide a solution to a problem or answer questions your peeps have
Titles like 5 ways to are powerful because they’re simple and actionable. Plus, they let people know exactly what they can expect.
Don’t be vague or generic. This is what will kill your post title more than anything else. If people don’t know what your post is about or who it’s for, why would they read it?

9) Make pins that stand out

I can spend hours devouring all the beautiful images on Pinterest! Your images need to grab people’s attention too. Here are some ways to do that:

1) Use images with nondescript people (aka no faces)

Images of people (but not faces) get more clicks than images with just graphics or a background color. Why no faces? Pictures tell a story, and people want to see themselves (not others) in your story.

2) Use whitespace

When I created my first pins, I made the text super big so that it would jump out at people. Turns out, larger text isn’t always better. Leaving some whitespace will actually help your images stand out from all the others.

3) Create contrast between elements

Take a look at your feed real quick. Which pins really stand out to you? If you look closer, you’ll see that the text on those pins is easy to read, and clearly differentiated from the background. Make sure you play with the contrast between your background and headline so that it jumps out.

QUICK TIP: Look at your feed from your phone. That’s where 80% of people will see your content.

4) Use strategic color combinations

I’ve experimented with everything from dark backgrounds, to light backgrounds, to reds, oranges, blacks, and even blues. Overall, lighter background colors seem to jump out more and get more clicks and saves. Reds and oranges catch my eye more than blues and blacks. What do you think?

5) Longer pins are better

Yep, it’s true. I get more clicks on longer pins. They give you more room to play and be creative. For instance, I could create a long pin for the post you’re reading, and include each step to give a peek at what’s inside.

UPDATE: Be careful with longer pins now. Pinterest no longer favors super long pins that hog up the feed. Read this post for more on Pinterest image sizes.

10) Brand your pins

When you find something that works, don’t change it! It’s okay to play around with the look of your pins at first, but when you find a style that you love and can recreate easily, stick with it. Lock it down in a template with the exact colors, fonts and other brand elements you will use over and over again.

I’ve seen many people (including me) use different fonts and colors on every pin image. Your boards can start to look a bit all over the place if you do this. Aim for consistency and harmony so that people instantly recognize your pins. People who know and trust your brand will tend to click through, regardless of how captivating (or not) your headline is!

Note: Make sure you include your logo and/or website in your pins. Check out this post for more brand and style guide tips.

11) Apply for rich pins

Speaking of branding, before you start loading up your boards with pins, set up rich pins.

Sounds techie, right? Really, they’re easy to set up and will give your pins a major boost. Once you have claimed your website, rich pins will display your brand name below your pin image.

Take a look at one of my pins to see what I mean:

When you use rich pins and add other brand elements to your pin image, you will have a leg up on your competitors. Here’s more info on setting up rich pins.

12) Clean up your boards

Every once in a while, take a look at your boards and get rid of pins with low engagement (aka repins). Pins that don’t get repinned and clicked won’t show up. They just kind of clutter your boards. Repin counts are relative to each board, so if most of your pins on a particular board have 100 repins, delete pins with fewer than 10 or 20. Make sense?

13) Display share buttons only on posts and strategic images

If you use SumoMe image sharer icons, the default setting applies to all images. What that means is that people will be able to share any image from any page on your site, including your logo, background images, header images, and more. But you want control here. If people pin random images from your site, they will likely share images you don’t want shared.

You can easily tweak the setting so that the share buttons display only on your blog posts. PLUS you can control which images display on your posts.

Let’s say you have secondary images to help readers digest your message, but those images aren’t pin-worthy. Just add <rel=”noshare”> to the image you don’t want people to pin and the share buttons will disappear. This way, you will only display share buttons on primary images (featured images, vertical images, etc).

14) Schedule your pins

I use Tailwind to schedule my pins and love it.

The Tailwind dashboard is super user-friendly, and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. For the most part, you’ll live in the Publish > Drafts or Publish > Scheduled sections on the left. On the right is where the scheduling magic happens! That’s where the virtual calendar lives and where you create time slots. Then schedule away!

You can even create board lists (groups of boards) to save time. I love board lists, especially since I discovered how to loop my pins with them, which you can do too! Pins you share to lists will be distributed to all boards in the list (make sure you set intervals between each pin).

The SmartLoop is another tool you can use to recycle pins. Just decide what boards and pins you want in your loop, and the SmartLoop will take care of repinning them. You can even enter group board rules! I use board lists to share new posts. and the SmartLoop to recycle older posts.

by Sandra Clayton

How to Choose the Perfect Name for Your Blog or Business

Blogging

OMG!?!! What’s wrong with me! I’ve GOT to move on, I mean, it’s just a name. It should be so simple and I can’t figure it out. How am I ever going to be successful if I can’t past this?

Ughhh, that was me trying to choose names for my first few businesses. I just couldn’t figure out whether I should give them a creative and “glitz” name or just use my own name.

By the time I launched my clothing line biz I was so exhausted with the topic of names altogether, I thought I’m going to just pick any name and get out there already. The naming thing had me tripped up for way too long and I so desperately needed to move on!

If you’re stumped with what to name your blog or business like I was, or have been putting your biz entirely on hold simply because you don’t know what to call it, I put together this list of tips and strategies that will help you choose a name for your blog with ease so you can unleash all your great ideas!

One thing that’s helpful is to step back and look at your business from a bird’s eye view. Where do you see it going in 2 or even 5 years from now? How big does it get? When you create a detailed plan for your future business, your success path becomes crystal clear and any confusion around your brand name goes away.

When you create a detailed plan for your future business, your success path will become crystal clear and any confusion around your brand name will go away.

To make it extra easy for you to plan your biz, I created the Blog Business Plan Workbook. Just click the button below to grab it.

1) First, try not to stress

Don’t let your name make you loony the way mine did! Your brand name is a big deal and not a big deal at the same time. Let me explain. I know you want to find your dream name, that perfect name that rolls off your tongue and captures everything about you, your brand, and your audience. That’s the holy grail of names, right? But what’s even more important is what your brand stands for. People are going to care less about your name than you think (trust me!) and care a whole lot more about your why, your mission, your values, and your vision. Those are the things that actually define your brand, not the other way around. It all starts with the You in your brand. Your name, tagline, logo, colors – all of that is pretty packaging for your brand. You may think there’s some better name out there, and truly, there may be. You can always change your name when your brand becomes hugely successful, and you know it will!

2) Give yourself a time frame

This is absolutely key because you can easily fall into a rabbit hole and wind up putting off all your great ideas, simply because you can’t decide on a name. Get in the habit of working on a deadline and then try hard to hold yourself to it. If you feel like you’re close to deciding or maybe you’ve narrowed it down to two or three names and you’re almost there, bravo! Why not give yourself until the end of the week and then call it? If you need more time to discover what your brand is about, that’s okay too. It’s just important to set goals and reach them. You always want to be moving forward and there are so many other areas of your business where you can get stuck. Don’t let your name keep you from getting out of the gate!

3) Define what your brand stands for

This is a must-do if you’re going to feel great about your name for years to come. When you know the foundation of your brand, naming it is a whole lot easier. Plus, you’ll probably come up with some great descriptive words you can use in your name.

What value does your brand provide?
Who is your ideal customer, and how do you help? What’s the one problem you solve for them?
How do you want people to feel when they interact with your brand?
What is your brand all about? What products do you sell? What blog topics do you cover?
What other brand names are out there that you love? Why do you like them? Do they make you feel upbeat or happy? Is their name easy to remember? Does it roll off your tongue easily?
What is your brand personality and tone?
What is your brand mission? Where do you see your business 5 years from now?

4) Explore using your name or a product name

Should the name for your blog or business be your own name or a product name? This one’s a biggie for a lot of people, including me. There’s really no right or wrong answer, but of course, we can try! Think about how you want your name to make you and your audience feel. Does your own name feel more authentic to you? Or do you love the idea of using a product name? I would try to avoid choosing a name simply because it sounds clever or catchy. You want to choose your name from the inside out. Your “perfect” name is the one where you can express yourself transparently, without hiding behind anything. You want that when people interact with your brand they see and feel a real human with flaws and talents, someone they can genuinely connect with.

Some things to keep in mind when deciding this:

Look at your answers from step 2 to get clarity on your industry and your vision
When you look down the road, can you see taking on a partner or even selling your biz? It may be better to go with a product name then. If you’re a coach, consultant or blogger selling your expertise, it might be easier for you to express yourself freely and connect with your audience authentically when you use your first name.
If you’re unsure where your brand is going just yet, don’t get too specific either way. We can always experiment with a combo of your name and a product name. I’m thinking of “That might be a great way to keep your name open-ended until you figure it out.
There can be a tendency to be fearful of using your own name, especially when you’re starting out. You may feel safer using a name that bolsters you up a bit, kind of makes you sound larger than you feel. Just be careful that the real you doesn’t get buried behind your name. You will connect with your audience more authentically when you expose your “humanness”.

So have I convinced you to use your own name? If so, you’re done, friend! Get out there and share your brilliance with the universe! If you’re still scratching your head for the perfect name, read on…

5) Write down some words that describe what you do

You know what your brand stands for, now it’s time to do some brainstorming. Make a list of words that describe your brand. For example, maybe you want to create a DIY fitness blog that inspires people to get in their best shape ever. You’ll be sharing at-home workout videos and tips for how to eat right without dieting or counting calories. Some words you can pull from that are fitness, nutrition, shape, work it out, best life, no more diet, energizing, fun, flat abs, 20-minute workout. Then use a thesaurus to find even more ideas. Maybe it’s the songwriter in me, but I love discovering new words! I’m a closet thesaurus junkie, for sure.

A few random thoughts about your words:

Don’t use a word just for the sake of adding a keyword. That’s called “keyword-stuffing”. I’ve noticed better rankings when you have a keyword in your domain, so there is something to it, but you don’t want to start there. If there’s a term that fits your brand and also makes it easier for people to find you, I say go for it!
Get creative with your list and have some fun! Change a word to make a new one, put two words together, search for similar words and pair them up all over again.
Walk away for a few days, and then come back and tweak, edit and refine your list.
Is it too clever? In the next step, you’ll see why I said that!

6) Make it simple and memorable

Remember when I said Don’t hide behind your name? A few years back I came up with “Moxiphiz” for my clothing line. I bet you’re wondering how to say it and what the heck it means, right? It’s pronounced “moxie-phiz” and it means “the face of courage”. I thought it was so super cool (and it was!) but people had a hard time saying it. It took a while for me to understand that I was the only person who knew what it meant. I can’t even remember how many times I had to explain it to people!

So take it from me, a simple name is better than a clever name. Don’t try to impress people. People should feel good when they say it and when they see it, and you should too! Here are some questions to ask yourself:

Is your name short and easy is to remember?
How does it sound? Words have a rhythm and melody to them and if you can make yours sing, you’re halfway there!
When you picture your name across the web, can you see it a cool logo or maybe an interesting play on fonts in there? Maybe one or two letters that would make an awesome icon? Your dream name should give you tons of design ideas.

7) Finally, check that it’s available

So you’ve got a name for your blog that you love, head over to GoDaddy and type in your name idea to make sure it’s available. If it is, grab it quick! I’ve seen available names get scooped up in the time it takes to refresh my screen. Don’t wait until later!

If your name isn’t available, try thinking of ways you can change it a bit. Experiment with reversing the words, making it plural or singular, adding a hyphen or short words like “to”, “a” and “the”. Also, you may want to visit the site to see if your dream domain is actually being used just to be sure the brand isn’t too similar to yours. If it is, you may want to change your name entirely.

You might see your name available as a “.co” or “.net” instead of a “.com”. I’ve seen people use both of these but there are disadvantages, mostly because when people think about your website, they think “.com” We just kind of expect to type in that domain extension rather than “.co” or “.net”. I recommend altering your name to get the “.com” version.

What ideas do you have for your brand name? I’d love to hear!

by Sandra Clayton

How to Start a Blog with WordPress in 20 Minutes

Blogging

How to start a blog? How long will it take? What’s involved? What’s the next step after I start? Will I need help to do it?

These are the types of questions I ask about every project I’m about to start.

Then what usually happens is I get freaked out by this huge mountain of stuff I need to do and think maybe (just maybe!) I didn’t need to know every single thing right from the beginning. Maybe all I needed to do was take the first few steps.

Starting a blog is kind of like that.

It’s easy to feel intimidated at first, but the mountain isn’t really a mountain. It’s more like a bunny hill. You only need a handful of things, and you can set it all up pretty quickly, which I’m going to show you how to do right now!

Before we dig in, I’ve turned this post into part 1 of The Launch series, which I’m hoping will be a useful guide to help you start AND grow your blog.

Here’s what’s included in the series:

Part 1: How to Start a Blog with WordPress in 20 Minutes
Part 2: How to Create an Epic Blog Business Plan
Part 3: 12 Blogger Plugins That’ll Skyrocket Your Blog
Part 4: 14 Things to Do Before You Hit Publish

Ready for it? Let’s create a website!

Wow. This step-by-step guide is insanely helpful if you want to set up a WordPress blog. Woo!Click To Tweet

This post contains affiliate links.

HOW TO START A BLOG: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

1) Purchase a domain

First thing you want to do is to lock down your domain. This part is fun and easy!

You can either use GoDaddy or Bluehost. If you decide to use GoDaddy, you’ll pay somewhere around $12.00 for one year, and then every year after that you’ll need to renew. Note that the price comes down significantly if you purchase your domain for longer, say 2 or 5 years.

If you follow step #3 below and choose Bluehost for web hosting, you’ll receive a free domain name upon purchasing your hosting. Want to see if your domain is available? Just enter the domain name you want below. Keep in mind that you may have to try some variations if the name you want is already taken.

Check to see if your domain is available:

Once you’ve finalized your domain name, I recommend purchasing it for five years. Generally speaking, Google sees a longer commitment as a sign that your business will be around for a while and will take you more seriously than a one-year purchase.

2) Pick your platform

Now that you have your domain and you’re ready to create your own blog, decide which platform you want to use. Depending on the amount of customization you want, there are many to choose from (Blogger, WordPress, Squarespace) – some free, some paid. Just know that serious bloggers tend to migrate over to WordPress once they start to grow (I use WordPress for all of my sites). Is it the easiest way to start a blog? Honestly, there’s a bit of a learning curve but after that it’s very straightforward to start a blog with WordPress.

Note: There are two different WordPress platforms, which can be confusing:

WordPress.com: a hosted platform which is entirely free with few customization options
WordPress.org: a self-hosted platform (meaning you host it yourself), which has endless options, add-ons and plugins, tons of customization if you know CSS. And because WordPress is probably the most popular platform, there are lots of beautiful themes to choose from that you won’t need to customize.

I highly recommend going the WordPress.org route, and here’s why:

First of all, when you think about it, our websites are the swiss army knives of our businesses. Just sayin’ – let’s not mess around here, friend. We want total control of all that.

This is where we drive traffic, educate, entertain, engage our audiences, create relationships, and most importantly, build a community. If we’re going to turn our websites into machines, we need to get under the hood every now and then.

With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can easily set up a blog and customize the way it looks and functions by installing “plugins” for just about anything…think opt-in forms, share buttons, click to tweet, related posts…all of those things that are going to help you build a scalable online business.

Now I know you’re probably thinking What the heck are plugins? How do I even add them to my website?

I hear ya, I really do! I couldn’t get my head around them at first either. Then I realized that I was overthinking things, because they’re really very simple.

Here’s an example:

Plugins are amazing! They give you total control of your website and your business.Click To Tweet

See that tweet? That’s the Click to Tweet plugin. Once you install it, you can access it right from your WordPress Edit window. So anytime you want to encourage people to share your post (which is what that tweet is all about), you simply click the icon and add your tweet. Easy peasy!

Can you see how powerful plugins are?

If you’re curious about how to install them, I’ll walk you through the steps in a bit. For now, just know that a self-hosted WordPress.org site is the way to go. Cool?

3) Choose your hosting company

If you’re going the WordPress.org route, Bluehost (affiliate link) is a great option for hosting. I use Bluehost for almost all of my sites, including ConversionMinded.com.

First of all, Bluehost is second-to-none when it comes to customer service. They’ve answered just about every question I’ve ever had relating to how to start a blog with WordPress on their platform. Plus, I can always get these guys on the phone, which is a big deal when you need to solve something on your site quickly. They’re happy to spend as much time as you need and walk you through things like accessing your FTP, installing WordPress, making backups, troubleshooting email (which is FREE, another perk!).

I’ve also used Flywheel, but honestly, $69 a month is a bit steep for me. Flywheel bases their fees on monthly traffic, so anything over 25K visits is gonna cost you.

This is what makes Bluehost (affiliate link) a no-brainer. You only pay a small monthly fee (only $3.95) regardless of traffic, and tech support is just a phone call away! Done and done.

On top of that, Bluehost’s One-Click WordPress Install is a breeze. Here’s how it works:

1. Go to Hosting and then cPanel, then select Install WordPress.

2. On the next page, select Install.

3. Select your domain. If you purchased your domain on Bluehost, it will appear here. If you followed step#1 above and purchased it on GoDaddy, you’ll need to point your domain to Bluehost. This post walks you through how to do that.

You can leave the boxes checked under “Helpful Plugins”. These are plugins to help you add optins and contact forms.

4. Enter the name of your site. The info on this page is what you’ll need to login to your WordPress site so be sure to keep it somewhere safe. I like to save it 3 places:

Take a screenshot and save it to a “Passwords” notebook in Evernote.
Open up TextEdit (I’m on a mac) and jot down the login. This is also where I file my FTP and cPanel information for when I need to give access to developers.
Save it 1Password, which I highly recommend checking out. This is where all I store all of my passwords so I can quickly login to everything with just 1 Password.

Once you’ve saved your login details, select Install and Bluehost will take of the rest.

That was easy, right? To access your site dashboard, enter “yourdomain.com/wp-admin” in the browser window and enter your login info. You’ll be taken to your WP dashboard with some widgets and links to everything you need on the left.

I hope this quick guide has answered your questions about how to start a blog using Bluehost.

Next up, time for designin’ and bloggin’…

4) Pick a design/theme

This part is fun!

Themes are pre-built designs that you can customize a lot or a little depending on your design skills. To start, I recommend choosing a minimalist theme and customizing just the header, background images, colors and fonts. If you need inspiration here, create a moodboard on Pinterest for design ideas.

For themes, StudioPress has tons of options. I also like Themeforest, especially the Avada, Impreza and Retailer themes. If you’ve got some design skills a framework like Genesis will give you a clean slate to start designing. Plus, you can also layer on themes if you like.

Once you’ve downloaded your theme, go to Appearance/Themes in WordPress to install and activate it.

Your site should include:

A killer Homepage with an image (ideally you) and message about your site
Start Here or About Page. Don’t know what to include here? This post will help!
Services or Product Page
Contact Page with a contact form so people can reach you
At least 5 blog categories
Social media icons
Popular posts

5) Create your first blog posts

One simple technique is to launch your blog with 5-10 published (and totally awesome) posts. The reason is that if you only have one or two posts for people to browse during your launch, they might not find anything that’s relevant to them. Creating multiple pieces of content gives them the chance to stay on your site for a longer period of time. With more content, there’s a good chance that they’ll find something that interests them and potentially subscribe. This checklist will help you optimize your site so that more people subscribe.

Some general blogging tips:

How-to and list posts are the most shareable.
Add a branded feature image to every post along with your title text.
Write the way you would speak to a friend – your style and personality should shine through.
Respond to readers’ comments and questions.
Blog about a different theme each month (helps to create a freebie, plus takes your readers on a journey).
Don’t try to learn how to start a blog and make money at the same time. There are stages to building a successul blog biz and you’re in the first stage, k? The money will come over time.

6) Bonus – what’s next?

Congrats, you’re all set to conquer the world! Here are some things to keep in mind as you grow. Think of them as bonus tips for starting a blog and beyond.

1. Publish consistent content – The number one way to grow a blog is to post valuable content regularly. Post once every two weeks to start, then once every week, and build up to 2-3 times a week. Whatever your frequency, decide on a schedule and stick to it.

2. Help people find your site:

Create a Google Analytics account and track high performing pages, site errors.
Submit your sitemap to Google so it crawls your new site
Install the Yoast SEO plugin and use it to optimize your posts for search engines

3. Favicon – Important for branding. Upload a favicon (16px branded icon) to your theme. This is the icon that appears at the top of the browser window when someone is on your site. Most themes make it easy to add.

4. Engage visitors – Optimize your blog so that as your new visitors become raving fans, you have a platform to build real relationships with them.

Install SumoMe (or use OptinMonster ) and place opt-in forms at the top, bottom, middle or side of your site
Create a freebie to give people in exchange for their email

5. Get active on social media – Social media is an important step in building an audience and getting traffic. Select your platforms, share your posts, join conversations and even Twitter chats to meet new people. There are tons of online communities full of amazing, encouraging and supportive peeps as you grow your blog. As I mentioned earlier, aim for consistency with your social media profiles – they should match each other and your blog name.

That’s a wrap! Have I answered all questions about how to start a blog? Ready to launch your dream biz? Click the image below to get started.

Next up in the Launch series: How to Create an Epic Blog Business Plan

by Sandra Clayton

How To Create a Content Strategy That Works for Your Blog

Blogging

When you’re just getting started with blogging, probably the most important thing you can do is just start.

Start writing.
Start publishing.
Start sharing.

It can be challenging enough to get into the routine of it all. And you push yourself because you know there are many reasons you want to be blogging. Here’s just a few:

It can generate a huge amount of traffic to your business
It can help you become an influencer, with the right network
It can seriously boost your income and revenue

So with all that it can do for your business, why does it feel like you get sucked you into a rabbit hole every time you sit down to write? Where’s the real payoff?

The thing is this: without a strategy in place for your content, blogging can seem like a waste of time.

The good news is that it’s pretty easy to put a well-crafted content and social media strategy in place for your blog. Especially once you’ve written your first few posts.

In this post I’m going to explain why you need a content strategy for your blog, and simple ways to create one that works for your business:

1) Content is the New SEO

SEO, social media and content go hand in hand nowadays. You really can’t talk about one without talking about the other. Here’s why:

Google continues to change its ranking algorithms in favor of valuable content that provides a great user experience, so black-hat SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and hidden text doesn’t work today. Instead, search engines look at the relevance and popularity of your content as primary ranking factors.

Traffic from search engines isn’t the only way to generate a huge audience, which is where social media comes in. As a blogger and publisher, it’s amazing how you can leverage social media platforms to help people find your content and drive targeted traffic to your business.

The one thing that SEO and social media has in common is content. You need content for your keywords and search engines, and you need content for people on social media.

Content is the vehicle, and social media is the medium.

2) Content is How We Do Business

Consumer expectations are what’s really driving content marketing.

You can see the demand for content everywhere…trains, sidewalks, cafes, restaurants, nail salons, hair salons, parks, bus stops, the list goes on. Everywhere you go, people are buried in their phones and devices either on Facebook, Pinterest, or Google hunting for something they need.

They want access to the information they need, whenever they need it.

All of this means that as a blogger and business owner, you have to feed this “research-and-validate” mentality. The way to do that is by creating and publishing original content.

Content is how people do business. And it’s how people will find your blog.

3) Content Is Here to Stay

We’ve become a social world and that’s only going to continue to grow.

Especially given that social platforms are all mobile-friendly, and people can check out a pin, Facebook post, or tweet directly on their phone.

When you add in the fact that some big name employers are even implementing social “reputation scores” (similar to credit scores) as part of background checks during the interview process, social media isn’t going anywhere.

Since social media relies on content for its fuel, blogging isn’t going anywhere either.

4) Content Works For All Businesses

Here’s why:

It used to be that local businesses could rely on aggressive SEO tactics to rank high in Google. These were “black-hat” techniques that cared only about search engines, with a complete disregard for actual people.

All of that has changed and content is truly king when it comes to ranking in search engines.

Even B2B brands have integrated content into their sales processes.

Bottom line, people want authenticity and relevancy and that demand crosses over industries and business models. All of this comes in the form of content.

Here’s how to create a content strategy that works for your blog:

PART 1: LAYING A SOLID BRAND FOUNDATION

You’re blogging and you have some posts that you’ve started to share.

Before you move forward, now is a good time to plan ahead and tweak your blog’s brand based on what you’ve learned so far. It’s time to tighten things up so that you know exactly what content to create, why you’re creating it, and who you’re speaking to.

1) Who Are You Blogging For?

When I talk about branding your blog, I’m not talking about your logo, tagline, blog design, fonts, tagline or any visual elements right now.

I’m talking about positioning your blog, and that means knowing your audience way beyond things like their age, income or location. It’s one thing to know demographics and it’s another thing to know what their real motivations are for reading your blog.

You want to tap into how they’re really feeling. What does their day look like? What are they frustrated with right now? What do they want to be able to do? And most importantly, what are they saying around your brand?

Ask yourself these two questions:

How do people FEEL before reading your post? How do they feel afterwards?
What is an average DAY like for people before reading your blog? What is the average day like for them after they read it?

Answering these questions will give you clarity on the transformation that your blog provides for your readers.

This type of deep dive requires really listening to your audiences. A good way to do that is simply ask subscribers what they really want to know around your niche.

In my experience, inside your target audience you’ll probably have a couple of different “buckets” of people. You may have one group of people that are motivated by one thing and a second group that’s motivated by another thing entirely.

For instance, one of my clients is an online fitness coach and we discovered by asking and listening that there were four entirely different buckets of customers:

Bucket A: want a fun, quick workout with amazing results
Bucket B: want a safe workout that prevents injuries and pain
Bucket C: want to stop taking medications for blood pressure and diabetes
Bucket D: want a complete system of fitness and nutrition that’s done for them, where they don’t have to think

See how different people can have completely different pain points? People in Bucket A aren’t thinking about safety or even medications, they just want a fun workout. So blogging about blood pressure isn’t really going to capture their attention.

If you want, you can download this Blog Post Checklist, where I break down the blog post structure that will help more people find your posts on Google and social media:

2) Create Content Themes

The point is that they’re all having different conversations. Part of refining your blog’s brand is to take those separate conversations and develop content themes around them, with each theme speaking directly to the people in each bucket.

3) Map Out 2 Months of Posts

Once you have those themes, create an editorial calendar around each one. Maybe what you do is focus on one theme each month, so you can take readers on a journey with your posts. This will also help you come up with ideas around each theme that are related to each other.

I’ve found that 2 month’s worth of content at a time is enough. You can go for three, but usually by the time you’ve written content for 6-8 weeks, you have even more ideas and your topics will shift a bit. Plus this way you’re not overwhelmed.

PART 2: OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOG

It’s amazing how a few simple tweaks to your blog can be the difference between a little traffic and tons of traffic. Optimizing your blog for search engines AND for people will help you stay on top of your game and make sure every post reaches as many people as possible.

Here’s what you can do:

4) Add Social Engagement Elements

When you’re new to blogging, the best thing you can do is to make yourself available to people so they know that you’re a real person who wants to interact with them.

Here are some ways to make it easy for people to get to know you and get in touch with you:

Add a contact page to your website with a form and let people know how to get in touch with you (email, phone, social profiles)
Add share buttons at the beginning or end of your post and make your images shareable too. For more on this, check out this post.
Add comments to your blog so you can start to build a relationship with your readers. Make it easy for them to leave their thoughts and opinions, and then respond to their comments to show them that you care about what they think.

5) Make it SEO-Friendly

You know you have great content on your blog. But beyond posting it to your social sites, it kind of seems like you’re the only one reading it, am I right?

This is where SEO comes in.

I know that keyword research and SEO seem overwhelming, but don’t let that stop you from giving your post a winning chance of getting found when people type in important terms related to it.

Here are some ways to make it easy for search engines to find your site:

Use Google’s Keyword Planner to find popular keywords that don’t have a ton of competition. This just means you want a lot of monthly searches for the keyword with few competitors trying to rank for it. This will give you the best chance of ranking for that keyword.

Install the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress and add the keyword to your page title, description, subheadings, and a few times in the copy (it will red flag anything else to do)

Add a featured image and other images to your post. Include the keyword in the name and in the alt text (make the names slightly different)

Make it as long as you can. The reason is that Google sees longer posts as a signal of relevance, plus you have more room to weave in your keyword.

I recommend writing your post first, and then going back and adding your target keyword later. This way you can keep a flow going with your writing and it will sound more organic and authentic instead of sounding like you’re forcing it.

PART 3: DEVELOPING THE CONTENT STRATEGY

6) Offer a Content Upgrade

It’s a great feeling to write an in-depth and valuable blog post. Especially when your topic is something that took you a long time to figure out. You just know that your readers will benefit a lot from it and that following your tips is going to save them a lot of time and effort.

So why not let them download the post?

You can actually make this a part of your content strategy, where every time you write a detailed post, you copy it into Word and save it as a PDF. You don’t need a fancy design or anything more than a checklist or cheat sheet.

Include a link to it in your post with a simple call to action like, “Download this post as a PDF”.

Your readers get a perk because they have a resource they can reference when they need it, and you get a perk because you collect their contact info in exchange for the download.

7) Provide Real Value

I mentioned earlier that longer posts will help you rank higher in search engines, and there’s actually a way to control this even more.

That’s by creating epic content. I don’t really like this term, because it just kind of makes me scrunch my nose and go, “huh?” It also takes the focus away from what it really means, which is to create valuable content.

So your next questions are probably “What does valuable content really mean?“, and “How do I create it?”

Here’s a quick checklist that should help:

More detailed. Make it an undeniable and in-depth resource that people can’t do without.

Better. Research trending content around your keyword, find the gaps in what’s already out there, and then improve upon it.

Longer. Long-form content isn’t really the end goal here. Just know that you can’t get away with 500-word posts any more. Google (and your readers) want long comprehensive posts.

Be useful. I’m not talking a little useful. I’m talking life-changing useful. Solve a problem, help people save money, save time, or make something easy to do. Give them so much value that they can’t imagine not reading your content.

Unique. Your experiences are what separate you from other bloggers, so make sure people feel you in the post. They’re looking to you to interpret information, not just present it. Bottom line, be a real person having real conversations.

8) Extend Conversations Into Future Posts

You put a lot of time into writing your blog post, so why not track how well it performs across your social networks?

Most of the scheduling automation tools mentioned earlier will provide analytics where you can see which of your posts are popular across each network. Most social media platforms provide this data too.

Keeping an eye on performance will help elevate your social media marketing because you can:

Discover trends across your social networks
Come up with future blog posts
Know which posts aren’t as popular so you can focus your time on better ones.

There are several other ways you can track conversations that your audience is having online, including Reddit, forums around your topics, and comments on your actual blog posts.

If you track your social media analytics plus these other discussions that are happening online, you can spot questions and problems that keep coming up for people. Leverage that information to write your next blog post or for your editorial calendar.

9) Repurpose your Content

You accomplished so much by writing your blog post, and now you’re probably thinking “How can I reach even more people with it?”

That’s where repurposing comes in.

Repurposing your blog post just means packaging it up differently for a new medium and user, such as a YouTube video or an infographic.

Repurposing gives you a chance to have an even greater impact on your readers, so long as you don’t overdo it. Not every post is a good candidate. You want to add another level of value and not just duplicate your content. Make sure people will experience something new.

When you upload a video or create a podcast, add a link back to your post for even more traffic to your site.

If you want to get massive traffic to your posts, I created a blog promo cheat sheet to help you plan what you need to share, and when, so that your legendary content gets found by people ev’rywhere on social media.

Click the image below to download your blog promo planner.

PART 4: DEVELOPING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

You have engaging and easy-to-read blog posts that are ready to be shared across social media.

To get your content on social media where people are talking about it and to get people interacting with your posts, follow these tips.

10) Create Profiles Everywhere

You’re probably thinking Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter and maybe LinkedIn when I say that. The truth is that there are so many sites out there and if you really want to leverage social media for traffic, you should consider creating a presence on other ones too.

Besides the obvious ones, here are some other places to create profiles:

11) Choose a Few Channels And Dig In

Now that you have a presence of all of these channels, it’s time to really dig in, right?

Hmmm, maybe not so fast.

Building a following on social media takes time, and the last thing you want to do is to try to be everywhere at the same time. It’s one thing to share your posts everywhere (Reddit, BizSugar and others mentioned earlier), and another thing to create a community on each one.

Focus on two or three channels where your customers show up, and then commit to showing up regularly there too.

For example, if your target audience is women, Pinterest and Instagram may be a good place for you. If you’re a web-based business, Twitter and Facebook may work well, and if you sell to professionals, try LinkedIn or Google+.

If you want some insight into each channel, BuzzSumo is a great tool where you can see the most popular content around your keyword, sorted by platform. It’s also a great way to get future blog ideas!

12) Promote Your Content

Now you’ve got all the right elements to your post to get more eyes on it, but still that’s only half the battle. You have to hustle your posts if you want to see a real bump in traffic.

Right after you publish your post, follow this sequence to share it:

Pinterest
Google+ personal profile
Twitter personal profile
Facebook personal profile
Facebook Groups (if any)
LinkedIn
LinkedIn Groups
Other Twitter profiles
Facebook Page
Google+Page
LinkedIn Company Page
The other sites I mentioned (Reddit, BizSugar, etc)
Instagram

13) Automate Your Posts

After you share your post the first time, why not use social media tools to get even more exposure and reach even more people? With so much content out there, you’ll want to post it a few times beyond the initial share to get the most eyes on it.

You can schedule additional shares, pins and tweets to go out throughout the week, and even a month or two months later. This way you’re constantly sharing a mix of fresh and older content so people have a good chance of seeing it.

These sites will help you schedule your posts on popular social media sites and pick the days/times you want to share them:

Hootsuite
Buffer
SocialOomph
Meet Edgar

While you’re at it, why not use these tools to share other people’s content too? It will help you build up a social following and help you round out your overall content strategy.

Oh, and if you’re on a tight budget or just don’t want to pay monthly fees to automate social media, there’s a brilliant way to do virtually the same thing using IFTTT and Google Calendar, absolutely free! You money-saver, you!

14) Know The Best Time to Share

Timing when you share your posts around when people are most active will help you get as many eyes on it as possible.

For example, Twitter users are more active in the afternoon, Google+ users generally prefer the morning, and Facebook and Pinterest users are all about the weekends.

Test each site and then use the social automation tools mentioned earlier to time your shares perfectly and get a leg up on your competition.

15) Build a Following

The big thing about building a following is that you can become an influencer, just like the influencers you like and follow. “Influencer” just means that you have a big enough following where you don’t need other forms of traffic like SEO and paid media.

For example, the banking firm Goldman Sachs has such a huge fan base that it now relies solely on its own social platforms for things like press releases and updates.

The key is that when you have a following, you have your own traffic source. Pretty powerful stuff, huh?

Start by following other people in your niche. Many of them will follow you back. On sites like Facebook, you’ll probably need paid ads to promote your content and grow your following that way.

16) Connect With Influencers

A great way to start building your following is simply by following expert bloggers or “influencers” in your niche. Some of them may follow you back and even help boost the traffic and social shares to your blog.

You can also learn a lot from them by seeing how they use social media to their advantage, what types of posts they share and which ones get the most engagement. Even just seeing how frequently and at what times they post will give you an idea of how often you need to share content.

Bonus if you mention an influencer in your actual blog post and then tag them with a link to your post. Who knows? They may share it with their followers too.

Just be careful not to spam timelines. You need to have the appropriate context to tag them.

For instance, if you just briefly mention them and then tag them, this would not be inappropriate. Make sure it really relates to your post and is something substantial, like if you wrote about them extensively or if you know it’s something they would want to read. If this is the case, you can go ahead and tag or @mention their name.

by Sandra Clayton

About the author

I love sharing everything I know about online marketing to help entrepreneurs and bloggers build profitable businesses that set your spirit free.

Last Updated on May 12, 2022

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