4 Focus Areas to Help You Build Your List Fast

You know you need to grow your list, but what if you’re putting a lot of energy into it already and still only seeing 2-3 signups per day?

To that I say I feel your pain, friend. I was there not too long ago, and today, I’m growing my list at about 600-900 per month. Let me help you do the same…

Here are 4 focus areas for building your list and hitting your $$ goal:

1) Narrow down your niche

Why is this even important?

Because if you’re not growing your list as fast as you’d like, it could be that people don’t know how to digest what you’re writing.

People have a limited amount of space in their minds and need to be able to put you in a box. Give you a label, type thing. A girlfriend is different than a wife, a boy is different than a girl, a chair is different than a table. You get the gist. A travel blog is different than a cooking blog.

This doesn’t mean you can’t write about multiple things, but it does mean that people need to know what they are getting from you (and that niche is not a four-letter word!)

Plus, if YOU don’t even have an understanding of your own category, how can you expect others to? I’ve had so many clients come to me wondering why their content isn’t sticking, but then they stammer and stall when I ask them what they do and who they do it for.

To be fair, I’m at fault here too. When I first started blogging, I thought I was writing for my person but I was missing the mark entirely. Once I got my focus on, my list literally doubled, tripled and quadrupled.

#MORALOFTHESTORY Defining your one person and your one thing should be at the core of your list-building strategy.

2) Step up your social media game

Hopefully you’re optimizing your posts for SEO so people can find you through Google and Yahoo. But search traffic can take some time to build up. You have to be posting regularly and for some time before Google takes notice. In the meantime, start creating your own traffic source via social media.

Wanna know what that looks like?

Something like this:

• You are everywhere, but then you pick 2-3 channels to become a ninja master of…You start building your audience, your business and your list at the same time.
  

• You follow people who follow others in your niche. You follow people with relevant hashtags or keywords in their profile. You follow people who follow and comment on your posts.

• Every time you publish a new post, share it everywhere. And then share it again a few days later. And then a week after that. And then one month later. I’m not saying you stalk people with your content, but the truth is you can’t be bashful about it. Feeds move quickly and your post can virtually disappear the minute you share it, so share it again and again to give it the best chance of people finding it. This blog promo plan will help you get started.
  

3) Create click-worthy freebies

Adding freebies (content upgrades) to my posts is the #1 thing that’s skyrocketed my list.

Ideally you’ll include a freebie in every blog post. Yes, that’s a lot to tackle but just so you know, it’s something to work toward. You can kick it off by adding a freebie to 5 of your most popular posts. If you’re curious, head over to Google Analytics (Behavior>Content>Landing Pages) to see which of your posts have the most page views.

What types of freebies to create?

The sky’s the limit. Cheat sheets, a PDF of the post, templates, swipe files, blueprints, checklists, Ebooks. Anything that will help your audience progress along their journey in a meaningful way. You don’t have to go crazy with it. Up to 10 pages is fine. It can even be a single page as long as it’s helpful. You don’t even need a fancy design. I know many successful bloggers copy their posts into Word, save as a pdf, and that’s it.

How to create your freebie?

My favorite tool is InDesign. There’s also Canva, Powerpoint, Keynote, Google Docs, Google Slides, and others.

Note: Not all freebies are created equal. Sign up rates depend largely on how relevant your post is to begin with, and how much your audience has a need for your freebie. Which, my friend, takes you back to tip #1.

4) Crank up the visual volume

This is a biggie. Such a biggie, and it’s still sinking in even for me. How your images look makes a huge difference in how much traffic your posts get.

You may know this already…over 75% of my traffic is from Pinterest, so it’s a no-brainer that I focus most of my efforts there.

HOLD UP – 75%?

Yep. Pinterest is huge for traffic. You definitely wanna get in on it. I literally spend hours tweaking, testing, refining, editing, chopping up my pins like some neurotic warrior princess.

And here’s how I know what visual content can do for your list:

A few months ago, I shared a pin that I knew would help my audience in a big way, and I wanted to share it in a BIG way too. So I saved my pin and kept checking in every day to see how many saves it got. After 2 weeks, it only got 400 saves and drove a tiny bit of traffic to my site. That bugged me, because a lot of people were missing out on my ridiculously helpful tip 🙂

So I created a second pin. This time I was more graphic, more descriptive. I made sure people knew what was behind the click and why they should take action. I even highlighted important points from my post. I went all out – there was no way people weren’t going to click, I thought.

And then poof! Just like that…

4 hours after I shared this new pin, it had more saves than the first one. PLUS, 15 people signed up within the first hour I shared it. Now get this. I was paying to promote my first pin, something like $200 a month. This new pin got more saves and shares than the pin I was paying for. That’s the power of visual content. I didn’t need to spend money to promote my pin anymore, because now I was getting crazy traffic.

#TIPOFTHEDAY Play around, look at other popular images, try different things, ABT (always be testing) and all that. If you know your post is what your audience needs, don’t settle for mediocre visuals. Make sure you shout it out loud and strong so it grabs people’s attention. Sometimes you have to shake things up a bit, right?