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How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar (Tutorial & Template)

Last Updated: October 3, 2023

Having a hard time figuring out what to post on social media? Do you want a template to organize and plan your content so that you always have something to share?

I’m with you. It’s hard to stay ahead of social media! One thing’s for sure: a social media content calendar template will help you stay on track, post consistently, and keep track of important events and promotions you want to share.

Today, I’m sharing how to create and use a calendar with Google Sheets, with a free content calendar template you can start using right away.

Let’s dig in!

#1: Create Monthly Goals

It’s important to have an end goal for all content you share so that you can track what’s working, which types of content drive your bottom line, and what to change based on campaign performance.

For most of us, our goals fall into the category of generating more leads and sales. Working backward from these long-term goals, we can create short-term goals that will help us achieve them.

The key with short-term goals is to start small, be specific, and set a realistic time frame to achieve each goal. At the end of each month, you want to be able to track your growth, see what worked, and set new goals for the future.

We’re filling up each of these goal buckets:

Content
Followers (new!)
Traffic
Subscribers
Sales

#2: Determine what you will share

The purpose of a social media content calendar is to provide a framework for sharing content that resonates with your audience and also sells your business. Before creating your calendar, be sure to plan content around specific campaigns and goals.

First, determine the types of content that make sense for your business and audience. The following categories are most commonly shared by small businesses:

Evergreen content – blog posts, freebies, user-generated content, case studies, educational tips
Inspire content – quotes, mantras, and motivational stories
Convert content – information about your product / services and promotions, events and announcements, free trials
Ask content – engaging questions and polls
Connect content – personal stories, lessons learned, behind the scenes
Holidays

Once you’ve chosen your categories, create a separate spreadsheet to use as a working library for the original content, products, events, and promotions you plan to share. It’s helpful to color-code each content type so that you can easily differentiate them on the calendar.

Make sure you include publishing dates, post descriptions, URLs, images, action items, campaigns, and any other details needed for your workflow. If you have weekly or monthly content themes, add a column to the left of the spreadsheet, and include your theme.

#COLORTIP Use the same color codes for each category in your scheduling tool! Color coding makes it super easy to spot your categories across multiple tools and spreadsheets.

Plan your content on or before the first of each month. Throughout the week, you can fill in by creating content, designing images, manually sharing posts, and adding them to your scheduling tools.

Bonus: If you want, you can use this social media cheat sheet with over 24 days of content ideas. Click the image below to download.

#3: Next Up, Create the Calendar

Here’s where the fun starts! Log in to Google D rive to create a new spreadsheet.

Create a sheet by selecting the New tab, and then click the title to rename it. Now it’s time to customize the spreadsheet and create your calendar template.

Since we’ll be working with seven columns, select columns A–G and drag them to the right until they fill the screen. Then delete columns H–Z.

Next, highlight the cells in the first row, and select Format from the top menu to merge the cells (Merge Cells > Merge All). Customize the font style, and center the text.

DOWNLOAD THE PRE-MADE CONTENT CALENDAR TEMPLATE HERE

In the next row, enter the days of the week, beginning with Sunday. If you’d like, you can freeze these two rows so that they remain in view at all times by highlighting them and selecting View > Freeze > Top Two Rows.

In the next row, enter calendar dates, and then select the top three rows and add a bottom border using the border tool from the top menu.

Next, add your social media profiles to each date, leaving one or two rows between each profile to accommodate your posting frequency. Then select each column, and add a right border to each.

Leave a few extra rows, and add a bottom border to the last row in week one. Then copy week one, change the dates, and complete the calendar template.

Don’t forget to download the done-for-you content calendar template so you can start using it right away. It’s a huge time-saver!

DOWNLOAD THE PRE-MADE CONTENT CALENDAR TEMPLATE HERE

#4: Add content to the calendar

Now it’s time to choose the specific days that you will share each piece of content. Using the same color blocks, add the content from your working library.

Customize the calendar to suit your posting frequency. For instance, you may want to include specific times you plan to share each post or add email and other distribution channels. I like to use the additional rows each day to highlight important events and promotion dates.

If you publish a large volume of content each month, you may even want to create separate calendars for each social media profile.

I regularly share the same content on each profile and find it helpful to use a simple color-blocked version of my calendar so that I can quickly see what content I plan to share each day.

#5: Create the Content

Now that your calendar is complete, it’s time to research, gather your content, create blog posts, and design images. If you find yourself struggling to find the time to execute on your social media plan and create the content you need, the tools below will help.

Canva

Canva is a graphic design platform that makes it easy for non designers to create beautiful images. It’s the fastest image creation tool I’ve used to create high-quality social media images.

For more on designing social media graphics, be sure to check out our post 10 Social Media Design Tips

The Content Calendar System

With the Content Calendar System you have a content library at your fingertips so you never get stuck on what to share. It has 730 daily prompts and 885 pre-written captions so you can relax knowing you’re always sharing a nice mix of content to fill up all the buckets you need to meet your goals.

And the cool thing is, there’s no monthly fees involved and you can use it for life and with the apps you already use (it’s available for Google Sheets, Google Calendar, and Trello).

You can learn more about it here.

Final Thoughts

Using a social media calendar will help you plan your content around smart social media goals and coordinate with campaigns and blog content to achieve them. If you use the tools mentioned here to create and share high-quality posts at the right time on each channel, you will likely see more results from social media.

Remember to monitor each channel for engagement, moderate comments, and reply to fans and followers daily. Check the analytics of each platform to see what content resonates with your audience, and use that to inform future marketing campaigns.

Over to you! Do you use a social media content calendar? What tools do you use for creating and scheduling your posts in advance?

by Sandra Clayton

Create a Killer Facebook Ad Strategy For Your Email List and Products

Social Media

My first stab at Facebook ads was a simple Page Like campaign. I remember feeling nervous and scared about it, and maybe a little dewy-eyed at the same time.

I had no idea what I was doing, what type of ad I should run or why I was even running an ad in the first place. My Facebook ad strategy left a lot to be desired.

It all started with my clients throwing me curveball questions like What type of ad should I run? Where should we direct people? How do we track the ads? How do I get people back to my website?

Uh…no idea.

I finally broke down and asked my business coach for help. Together, we created my very first campaign. All the while, I wondered why we were spending so much effort, time, and money on Likes (like…what’s that about?).

Vanity, I guess. Wanting to impress my clients. Or, maybe fear that if my page had fewer than 1,000 fans, I wouldn’t be one of the cool girls.

Fast forward a few months later and my Facebook ad campaign strategy turned out to be a success, in more ways than one.

First off, my page got over 1,000 likes. Woo! More importantly, I learned a valuable lesson:

You need a Facebook ad strategy that’s bigger than Likes.

In this post, I’m sharing some hidden gems I’ve discovered since then that will help you use Facebook ads the right way – to build your list and get more sales.

Before we dig in, there are three main components to Facebook ads:

Ad creative – your ad copy, image or video, and call to action
Ad targeting and budget – how much you want to spend per day and who you want to reach based on interests and audiences
Your landing/sales page – Where you direct people once they click your call to action

Much of what we’ll cover has less to do with the creative/techie side of things and more to do with sales funnels. I want to put #3 under a microscope and drill down on where to send people once they click on your ad.

Specifically, should you send them…

To a sales page where you ask them to purchase right away?
To a separate landing page with a free offer?
To no page at all (gasp)?

To help answer these questions, let’s look at two common mistakes people make with Facebook ads:

Mistake #1: Asking for a sale right away

Driving people directly to a sales page and expecting them to dish out on a first date is tricky business.

Let’s use Harry as an example (Harry is a fictitious name based on a real person). Harry has a nutrition program to offer and is eager to bring it to market. He’s been working on it for months and thinks Once this product is finished, I’m set. This is so great, everyone’s going to want it! All I need to do is run an ad, send people to my sales page and then sit back and watch the money roll in. (not)

HOLD UP. Can this strategy actually work?

Sure it can. IF Harry has seed funding and a fat checkbook.

He’ll have to run his ads long enough to figure out: 1) who his target audience really is, and 2) if they love his product as much as he thinks they will. Plus, he’ll have a high customer acquisition cost (aka: huge ad spend) because he’s going directly for the sale.

Doesn’t matter where he runs the ad either. Harry can use Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, or Twitter for his ads and get similar results. His cost of acquiring customers will most likely be higher than he anticipated and higher than his budget. In my opinion, this is not the best Facebook advertising strategy.

#TAKEAWAY: Don’t send people directly to a sales page.

Mistake #2: Asking for nothing

This is the mistake that I made. Page Like and Brand Awareness ads keep people within the Facebook platform rather than driving them to a page on your website. Basically, asking for nada.

Sound familiar?

Based on my experience, what’s typically at fault is a lack of clarity around what you’re trying to achieve with your Facebook ad strategy.

Here’s where we can learn from Harry. Even though he’s misguided with his approach, he is crystal clear about his end goal: to sell a product. He simply needs to incorporate a sales funnel (more on that later) that will “pull people into a sale” rather than “push a sale on people”. Make sense?

Now, you’re probably thinking Okay then, where SHOULD I take people who click on my ad? And what should I ask them to do?

These are both great questions! The best ad strategies are ones that direct people to a landing page. First, I want to help you get crystal clear on what you want to achieve with Facebook ads.

#TAKEAWAY: Be very clear about what you want to achieve and make sure you send people somewhere.

Be very clear about what you want to achieve with Facebook ads before spending a dime.Click To Tweet

Facebook ad goals and objectives

You probably have many things you want to achieve in your business, such as:

I want more coaching clients
I want more consulting clients
I want to sell a digital product
I want to grow my email list
I want more sales on all my courses
I want more sales on my new products
I want to grow my Facebook engagement
I want to grow my Facebook group
I want more followers
I want more traffic to my site
I want to be known online

Whew! It’s a big list. To make it even more confusing, there are as many Facebook advertising options (or objectives) to choose from:

Boost post – promote your blog post to increase reach
Brand awareness – increase visibility of your brand and name
Reach – get your ad seen by as many people as possible
Traffic – drive people to a blog post of podcast
Engagement – engagement on your ad (like, comment, share, reactions)
App installs – get people to download your app
Video views – get people to see videos you uploaded
Lead gen – get people to sign up for your opt-in right on Facebook
Conversions – drive people to a page where they take a specific action (sign up, download, buy a product)
Product catalog sales – for e-commerce stores to promote their products
Store visits – for local brick-and-mortar businesses to reach people nearby

The trick is to choose the right goals from the first list and the right objectives from the second list. We only want goals and objectives that will help us increase sales.

If you’re confused by all this, I’m going to clear it up for you real quick…

First of all, forget about every ad objective except Conversions. Bump.

Now, from our goals list, let’s call the top six (in bold) our Power Goals. These are the ones that will directly impact sales and business growth.

The bottom ones…those leading to more followers, traffic, brand awareness, and visibility…are lacking muscle, meaning that they won’t have a great impact on your bottom line. Since these Wimpy Goals will likely happen as a result of your Power Goals anyway, there’s no need to chase them down with Facebook ads.

I’ll go so far as to say that Wimpy Goals will leave you thinking that Facebook ads don’t work. After my first Facebook campaign, I steered clear of Facebook ads for a looong time. They’re a total waste of money I thought. Which, of course, they were because I’d set out with a wimpy Page Like goal.

Don’t do what I did!

Next up, remember those sales funnels I mentioned? Time for a funnels throwdown, yo.

#TAKEAWAY: Always aim for a Power Goal with Facebook ads.

Aim for a primary goal with Facebook ads – your secondary goal will likely happen as a result.Click To Tweet

What is a sales funnel, anyway?

A funnel is simply a sequence of events you set up, where your target audience is first pulled into your content via a free training or awesome resource you offer, and then “gifted” additional content pieces that serve two primary purposes:

To educate them about said topic
To help them take actionable steps toward achieving something
To lead people to a purchase

Essentially, funnels take people on a scenic route to their destination, which is your solution for them.

Even though your funnel has one business goal, the most heart-felt funnels will provide amazing value that potential customers would gladly pay for…only they don’t have to because you gift it to them. This means that if at any point they drop off without purchasing, they will be taking with them actionable steps to help them achieve a mission-critical goal.

Here’s what a basic funnel looks like:

If funnels sound open-ended, as if you’ll be giving away the farm, I get it. Creating content takes a lot of time and effort. I’m five hours into writing this post and not one word has come easy, friend. 🙂

Still, I’m happy to do it! You know why? Because I get this little factoid:

People need a deeper relationship in order to buy from us.

Today, face-to-face networking is a ghost in our past, which means that the subtle innuendos and gestures we pick up on in person are missing. We have to rely on our content to fill in that gap and communicate who we are and where our expertise lies. Bottom line, gotta keep showing up, creating, and publishing.

#TAKEAWAY: Free content pieces should provide extreme value and lead to your end goal.

Sales funnels should include free content that helps people achieve something and leads them to a purchase.Click To Tweet

Side note: What should Harry do?

Harry should shift his strategy from pushing a sale to pulling people into his content. Focus on building relationships with people first. THEN, after he’s provided value and earned the trust of his audience, he can gently introduce his product.

Here’s what Harry’s funnel might look like:

Now, let’s put funnels to work for your ad campaign…

How to create your own sales funnel

First, work backward from your end goal. Think about what it would take for you to reach that goal.

Step back. Even further. Step waaay back from your product. Imagine that you’re no longer the creator. You’re no longer YOU. You’re a complete stranger who will be discovering said product for the first time.

Now, ask yourself What would it take to get me excited about this? What would be most helpful to me at this point in my journey?

Next, put on your inventor hat again. What content pieces can you create that would be most relevant to your product? What would organically lead people to a purchase?

By looking at your product from both angles like this, you can bridge your free content pieces to your business goal. Don’t limit your content to blogging and Ebooks here. Mix it up with videos and/or podcasts to give your people a sense of a one-to-one interaction with you.

For example, let’s look at what it would take if your Power Goals are to:

Build your email list
Sell an introductory product

A SUPER SIMPLE LIST-BUILDING FUNNEL EXAMPLE

You’d start with a funnel that includes these pieces:

A product – it can be a low-cost Ebook or workshop or a higher-priced course
A free course or resource – relevant to both your audience and product
A Facebook ad – with a conversion objective
A landing page – where people can sign up for your free resource (use LeadPages)
A thank you page – with an option to purchase the paid product
An email provider – ConvertKit is my new fav (read this post for how to set it up)

Can you see how this type of funnel would put rocket fuel on your list AND increase sales at the same time?

Let’s do some math. Say you spend $100 to test your Facebook ad. The ad gives you 20 new email subscribers, three of whom buy your ebook for $40. You make $120 in revenue and $20 in profit.

If we play this out for a minute, here’s what would happen if you ramp up your Facebook ad strategy and spend $100 a day:

20 new subscribers a day
3 new customers a day
$120 in revenue a day ($20 profit)

In one month, you’d have 600 new subscribers, 90 customers, $3,600 in revenue and $600 in profit. Bigger budget = more subscribers = more revenue.

So, how do you make this work?

The formula above uses a 20% conversion rate on ads and a 15% conversion rate on new-subscribers-to-customers.

I’m not going to lie. Hitting those numbers will take some work! First of all, you will need to create the content pieces. Then, you’ll need a winning combination of ad + landing page + free offer + paid product.

On the art side of the equation, you’ll need to have a deep understanding of what your audience most wants or needs. This is a biggie. If you jump into a full-blown ad campaign without solving a specific problem for people, it’s going to be hard to get results.

This is why starting with a small budget is so crucial. What you’re aiming for is to test your ads until one outperforms the others and yields a 20% conversion rate.

Don’t stop there…test your product, free gift, and landing page too.

I know you’re probably thinking This sounds like a ton of work!

I hear you. If you hang in there and stick with it, your investment will pay off as you get more subscribers and customers and see higher profit margins on your ads.

#TAKEAWAY: Use this funnel to supercharge your list and sell your products without spending money on ads.

What if you don’t have a product yet?

That’s perfectly okay. You can still dabble in FB advertising. You’ll be looking at a longer-term play and a different Power Goal, which is to fill your list with people who may be interested in a future product. (Psst…want to know my top 4 list-building strategies? Check out this post.)

In this case, I recommend driving traffic to:

A standout blog post with a free offer
A landing page with a free offer

Since your ad revenue here will be future-based, stay with the small budget and plan on gradually building your list until you’re closer to launch. By then you should know which ads are working and where to invest your dollars.

Include content pieces in your funnel that prime people for your product AND offer amazing education and value. Remember, we’re killin’ two birds with our funnels.

If you’ve been following our Blog Profit Plan series, you’re already blogging around content themes and it will be easy to gather valuable pieces. Then, all you have to do is to gift these resources to your audience in a natural, organic, and sensitive way. Easy peasy.

#TAKEAWAY: Use a small daily budget if your Power Goal is to build your email list and you have yet to create a product.

There you go! Funnels are hands-down the best way to advertise on Facebook. Have you created one yet?

by Sandra Clayton

7-Day Social Media Planner for Your Blog

Blogging, Social Media

Need a social media planner to cover the entire week?

This is part #2 of the Build Your Audience + Traffic series, where we’re drilling down on how to drive traffic to your content and convert visitors into subscribers.

In part #1, we talked about fundamental ways to increase traffic and build your audience. We uncovered how important it is to really, really know your target audience, and to set monthly goals so that you know what to aim for.

We also touched on the tasks involved with putting your content out there like you mean business…like you want people to find it.

Today, let’s dive into the HOW.

Specifically:

How can you promote your content effectively on social media?
What things should you be doing each week, and in what order, to maximize your reach?

Time for a 7-day social media plan, yo. What I really want is for you to have a blogging workflow that yields amazing results for all your hard work.

Here are the weekly tasks I’m covering in this post:

Sunday: Research blog topics
Monday: Write your post
Tuesday: SEO your post
Wednesday: Create images
Thursday: Promote on social media
Friday: Repurpose for other platforms
Saturday: Add to schedulers
Rinse + repeat 🙂

Ready for it? Let’s dig in.

Bonus: I created this 7-day social media plan template to help put what you learn into action.

ON THE FIRST SUNDAY OF EVERY MONTH

1) Research blog topics

To get the most benefit from this social media plan, you need to stick to a regular blogging schedule. One of the best ways to do that is to have your topics ready to go, so that all you have to do is to start writing.

Remember the blog themes we talked about? On the first Sunday of every month, jot down blog ideas that support your themes. This extra effort upfront will save you loads of time plus give you valuable insight about your audience.

Here’s why:

Knowing what you’re going to cover ahead of time means less time struggling with what to write during the week.
Your content is going to speak to what your audience really needs vs what you think they need, which is priceless.
Researching content is about more than just blog ideas – you’ll see how people spin their blog titles too, which is a biggie for driving traffic.

Now that you know what you want to write, it’s time to create your blogging workflow.

MONDAY

2) Write the post

Try to write when you feel most productive and when you can block out time with no interruptions or distractions. What this looks like is no email, no calls, no texts. Time to shut out the world and focus here. Writing is a creative process and you need the mental space to be all in…

You can even use my Time Blocking Template to help protect your sacred writing time!

In terms of how much time to set aside, it depends on the length of your posts. I tend to write longer posts that take me about 5-6 hours. You may need more or less time and that’s perfectly ok.

What you can do, if you like, is to alternate between longer and shorter posts. The first week, maybe you write a longer post. Then the next week, you write a shorter one. Whatever you do, please don’t write less than 1000 words! We want to provide real value for our readers, PLUS give our work a fighting chance to rank on Google.

Good so far?

Oops…almost forgot one thing:

Make sure you format your posts with subheadings and bullet points so they’re easy to read. Use short sentences and even shorter words, e.g. hard vs difficult. You want that when people scan your posts, they get what you’re saying without having to work for it.

You’re doing great! Next, let’s get a jump on Tuesday’s tasks.

TUESDAY

3) Optimize for search engines

Tuesday is the perfect day to choose your target keyword and add it to your content, tags, and blog title. This way you have a final title for blog and social media images, which we’re going to create on Tuesday too, right after we sprinkle some SEO magic on it.

The reason I recommend optimizing your post AFTER you write it, and not before, is because it’s so important to focus on Step #1 first. The only thing you should be thinking about when you’re writing is how to get your readers from point A to point Z.

Then, after that, we can get jiggy with SEO.

If you’re curious about how best to optimize your posts, this post includes an SEO blog checklist you can download to help you remember all the steps.

Before we move on to images, let’s look at how to select the perfect target keyword. We’ll need Google’s Keyword Planner for this.

I usually select “Search for new keywords related to a phrase, website or category”. Your results will look something like the image below. What you’re looking for are keywords related to your search term that have a decent search volume and low to medium competition.

Once you select your target keyword, follow the steps listed in the SEO blog checklist to add it to your post.

And just in case you have a hard time finding the keyword planner once you log in, it’s hiding out in the “Tools” menu.

4) Create blog and social media images

#2FORTUESDAY We’re doublin’ up on Tuesday, so right after you’re done with step #3, it’s time to create share images.

Canva is a great tool for this. You can create and save branded templates with your logo, colors, fonts, and other brand elements all in there, ready to go.

I like to take my images one step further and use Photoshop. If you’re curious about Photoshop, this tutorial and social media template will help you get started.

Ok, so now you’re probably thinking What social media sites do I need images for, and what size should they be?

I’ve got all of that covered for you right here!

WEDNESDAY

5) Create a content upgrade

High five! We’re jammin’ and it’s only Wednesday. Let’s keep at it.

Content upgrades are extra freebies…things like checklists, cheat sheets, eBooks, worksheets, and templates…that extend on your post with even more value. They’re optional, meaning that you don’t have to create one in order to publish your post and promote it.

Hmm…or do you?

Nope. Changed my mind. You need ’em.

The reason is that this is the Blog Audience + Traffic series. What that means is that we’re building a community…our crew, our tribe. To do that, we need a way to stay in touch with the people who visit our site. The last thing we want is to throw a slammin’ blog party and then have people peace out before the fun starts.

Also, if you remember from part #1 of this series, freebies are a huge piece of our content funnel.

To give you an example of this, I’ve built my list to 4K in the last 3-1/2 months with nothing more than freebies. We’re talking no guest posts, ads, webinars, landing pages…none of that noise! Just straight up opt-in forms and freebies.

Can you see how powerful they are?

Now, I get that freebies take a lot of time to make, so believe me, I’m not recommending that you include one with every post.

Instead, you can alternate each week, the same way we’re alternating between longer and shorter posts (Monday, above). So one week you add a freebie, the next week you skip it, and so on.

If you’re wondering how to create your freebie, Pages, Word, Google Docs, and Canva or all good choices. I’ve been using InDesign forever so that’s what I prefer. Oh, and if you’re interested in learning how to create eBooks with InDesign, please let me know in the comments!

THURSDAY

6) Add the upgrade to your post

This part sounds simple, right? It actually takes a few more steps than you might think. What you’re doing is creating a 2-step opt-in form, where an image or a link triggers a pop-up. So let’s break that down, k?

First, there’s the link or image

I’ve found that a graphic button with a call to action like “Click here to download” works better than a text link. Images grab people’s attention more than links, especially if you’re following the blog SEO checklist and interlinking posts for search engines. All of those links can get lost after a while.

But a big, bold, graphic button? No one’s glazing over that, friend! The other thing to include in your button is an image of your worksheet or checklist. You want to let people see how helpful your freebie is, type thing.

Ok, so what tools should you use?

Great question! See those tools you used on Tuesday to create blog + social media images? You can use the same ones for your call to action button.

Next up, the opt in form

This is the form that pops-up when someone clicks on the button.

I use Thrive Leads because I just loove it so much, but you can use OptinMonster, Leadpages, or SumoMe too. Just remember to connect the form to MailChimp, ConvertKit or any email platform you currently use.

Finally! Write a delivery email

We need a way to send the freebie to new subscribers.

What that looks like is when someone signs up for your freebie, they get a “tag” that triggers an email sequence (which is just a fancy way of saying “send more than one email”). Here’s an example of a delivery sequence:

Your first email will say something like “Thanks so much! Here’s your download.”
Then you follow-up a few days later with a reminder “How’s it going with the freebie? If you haven’t downloaded it yet, here’s the link again.”
The idea is to schedule these emails ahead of time, so it’s all on autopilot.

Ok, I know you’re probably thinking This is so much stuff, and it all sounds pretty techie!

I hear ya! There are a lot of steps here, which is why I like to think of Thursdays as #TECHTHURSDAY. Setting all of this up definitely takes a different part of your brain than writing or even creating images.

Remember too that once you set up your first sequence, you can duplicate it for the next one. And you only have to connect your service once to the form. Then you’re good to go.

Like anything else, the more freebies you create and add to your posts, the faster it will go. This is another one of those things where, if you hang in there with it, your investment will pay off later on as your audience and community grow and grow.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking If this is a social media plan, why are we spending so much time on blogging tips? What about tips for social media?

I hear ya! Everything we’ve covered so far is about blogging and creating content.

The reason is because content is the glue that makes social media so sticky. You need to focus on blogging from Monday through Thursday so that you have original content to share. That’s where the traffic part comes in! If you hang in there, over the next few days we’ll turn our attention to sharing and promotion. Everything will come together into a bangin’ social media plan soon. Pinky swear.

Real quick before we move on, there’s one more thing to do:

Check your Google Analytics at least once a month. What you’re looking for are the top 5-10 posts that are most popular. These are the ones with serious muscle, the ones driving the most traffic to your site. Make sure you go back and add a freebie to each of these if you haven’t already.

Next up: Time to pounce on social media!

FRIDAY

7) Publish and promote

#TGIF Almost there…just a few days left. You can do this…

First, publish your post

Whatever you do, please proofread your post before you publish it! I’m terrible at this… I’m always finding grammatical errors and typos in my posts months after they go live. Ugh. Sooo frustrating…and the longer the post, the more typos.

Do me one better here, friend. Give your post a once-over before you publish it.

Next, promote your post

This is the most important thing to do next, and I’m going to show you how to do it so that you get maximum visibility and traffic. Let’s look at the blog promotion tasks in 3 stages, done over the next 3 days:

Share on social media, bookmarking sites, and content communities
Turn your post into other types of content to reach even more people
Create and schedule additional updates, tweets, and pins

Some experts, like Derek Halpern, recommend applying the 80/20 rule to blog promotion. This means that you spend 80% of your time promoting, and 20% writing. Honestly, I think my split is more like 100/100 🙂

Can you see why Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are such important days?

Now you’re probably thinking How the heck am I going to do all of this without pulling my hair out?

I get it, I really do! It took me months to figure out a workflow that didn’t leave me feeling flustered. This is another one of those things where you need to hang in there! It’s going to get so much easier as you move through it. First of all, the weekly blogging plan we’re covering today will help you keep a consistent schedule, where you’re doing the same tasks, on the same days, each week.

And once you run through the steps yourself and nail down your best workflow, it’ll be easy to pass the promotion tasks off to a virtual assistant. You will get your weekend back later on. Pinky swear.

Here’s the template I use to share my blog posts:

You can download the blog promotion worksheet to share your blog posts too.

Ok, with that being said, Friday is all about sharing on social media and bookmarking sites.

Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
LinkedIn
And so many others…

Too much to list in this post… For the full list of sites, I recommend downloading the blog promo worksheet above.

SATURDAY

Repurpose your post

Repurposing your post is a techie way of saying turn it into something else, like a video, quick tip, Slideshare, or podcast. For our purposes today, let’s just focus on turning the post into:

A 1-2 minute video
Second Pinterest pin
Quick tip graphic
More tweets and updates

This is a much shorter list, and a lot easier to get your head around, right? Another way to think of it is that at the end of the week you’re going to have these assets for your post:

The post itself
A video
A quick tip graphic

I know that this sounds like a lot!

But really, it goes much quicker than you think. What you can do is use the same quick tip for your graphic and your video. And if you think about it, all you’re really doing is taking what you’ve already “scripted”, selecting a few highlights from it, and turning them into something new. Plus, in my experience, recording video takes sooo much less time than writing a post.

For the video

You can use whatever you have available right now. Let’s not get hung up on techie recording gear, k? Your iPhone or webcam is the perfect starting place. The point here is to simply get into the habit of turning your posts into videos.

Once you’re recording video on the regular, I recommend the Blue Yeti mic to help amplify your audio.

To record the video itself, I started out with QuickTime and now use ScreenFlow, mainly because of the editing features. And my brother has been bangin’ out amazing videos using Camtasia on his PC. All of these are good choices, in my book.

For the quick tip graphic

You got it. Same tools from Tuesday, step #4.

Additional tweets and updates

For each post, I write 15 additional tweets, and 3-4 updates for Facebook and LinkedIn, all linking to the post.

Here’s what those look like:

I should point out that these tweets and updates are all slightly different. What you don’t want to do is to repeat the same tweet over and over again!

In the next step, we’ll schedule these tweets (plus our new content + graphics) to be shared over the next week. This will give us an initial spike in blog traffic.

SUNDAY

Schedule updates, tweets, and pins

Woo! You’re really hangin’ in there!

This (almost) last step is actually pretty easy. All we need to do is to queue up our content for sharing.

Can you see how all of your hard work is paying off here? You have more content to share on more platforms, which means more people seeing your post.

More types of content = more platforms = a broader audience.

This is why I love social media scheduling tools so much! Even though you’re building your following on just 1-2 social media sites (as I mention in this post), these tools allow you to “set it and forget it” on the others, so to speak. That’s a win-win, no?

If you’re curious, in this post I share my favorite scheduling tools.

THROUGHOUT THE WEEK

Share to Facebook group promo threads

Almost there! One last thing…

If we’re really going to nail this blog and social media plan, we can’t forget Facebook groups, which can leave your head spinning if you don’t have a system in place.

Hmm…why is that?

I’ve been thinking about this, and the answer is that it really comes down to each group having its own rules, daily prompts, and promo days. The schedules are different enough that it makes them hard to track. You can feel like a scrambled egg trying to keep up with which group has a promo thread each day.

That said, FB is my #2 source of traffic, and I’m sure it must be because of groups. It’s got to be. I only have 400 or so fans. 🙂

So how do you promote your posts through Facebook Groups?

Great question! First of all, if you’re not in groups already, I would spend a few days looking for groups in your niche, reading through their descriptions, checking their rules, and so on.

What you’re looking for are groups with high engagement that have “Promo Wednesdays” type thing, where you can share this week’s post. Even if the group doesn’t allow promotions, you can usually include your link in a thread comment. Of course, you should check the group rules first.

Once you’re in a few groups, I recommend using a spreadsheet to keep track of each group’s promo days. From there, all you need to do is schedule Facebook posts in those threads (aka remember to share on those days).

If you’re curious, here’s what my Facebook promo schedule looks like:

So there you have it! If you follow these steps every week, you will start doubling and tripling your blog traffic and building a huge audience. Here’s the 7-day social media planning template again so you can get started:

by Sandra Clayton

How to Build Your Blog Audience Like You Mean Business

Blogging, Social Media

Seems like forever since my last post and I’m having a heck of a time getting back into it, even though it’s been just 2 weeks.

Have you ever experienced that?

Where you fall off your blogging schedule for a bit, and when you try to get back on, you have to force yourself. Somehow it winds up being so much harder than it should be, right?

This struggle is what’s been on my mind lately and today, I’m sharing a blogging workflow to help you (and me!) stick to our blogging schedules like we mean business. This will be part 1 of my Build Your Blog Audience + Traffic series, where I will be digging into ways to improve your visibility and traffic, and ultimately, set the stage for making money with your online business.

Here’s what I’m covering in this post:

Knowing who you want to reach
Why you should be thinking about content funnels, even if you’re starting out
Setting monthly blogging + social media goals
Specific things to do each week to build your audience and reach your goals

Ready for it? Let’s dive in.

Step #1) Know who you’re trying to reach

Building your blog audience starts right here. This is such a biggie and worth mentioning again and again, even though you’ve probably heard it a hundred times!

The reason is because knowing your audience is the foundation of your entire business and online presence. And if you have a weak foundation, it’s hard to build up from there, with me?

To really build your blog audience, you have to solve one specific problem for one specific person.

If you want, you can download my Find Your Niche Workbook to help you zero in on your sweet spot – the intersection where your audience hearts what you heart, and your skills and passions allow you to charge premium prices. Just click the image below to grab it.

Let’s say you’re all about nutrition and eating a healthy diet, and you want to pass on tips that you’ve learned to others so they can be fit and healthy too. Your goal is to sell nutrition eBooks and products that help people get from zero to fit with ease.

This is a great start, but we’re not quite there yet. “People who want to eat healthy” is too broad a market, especially in a crowded niche like health and fitness. Let’s dig a little deeper.

First of all, are you trying to reach primarily men or women?

In the fitness and health blogosphere, women typically account for about 75% of purchasing decisions, so my vote is to focus on women.

Ok, we’re really getting somewhere here, but we’re still skimming the surface with “Women who want to eat healthy”. Let’s dig deeper and narrow it down even more. To do that, it will help to look at why it’s hard for women to eat healthy.

I’m taking a quick stab here at a few pain points:

Truly healthy foods are not easy to find
Fast foods, in large portions, are everywhere
No time to research healthy foods, so you just eat what’s available
Don’t know how much to eat, what to eat and when to eat it
You feel like you “deserve” a treat during (and after) a hectic day
Bagel Monday’s and Pizza Friday’s at the office are hard to resist

I’m sure there are even more problems we can uncover, but this gets us on the right track. Do you see how by doing this, we can really start connecting your blog biz GOALS to what your target audience NEEDS.

This is where the magic happens, and why knowing your audience is such an important step. After all, how can you build your blog audience if you don’t even know who your audience is, make sense?

If we look at just a few of the pain points listed above, our target audience might start looking like this:

Professional women aged 30-55 who want to eat healthy but struggle with a busy schedule, not knowing the right foods to eat and not enough time to make complicated meals at home.

When you really get this right, you’re going to build your audience and traffic with ease. Promise.

Step #2) Think of blogging as a content funnel

To make this step extra easy, I created the Blog Business Plan Workbook where I show you exactly how to create content that converts into sales. This is just one of the many “foundation” and “advanced” strategies I cover in the workbook to help you build a profitable blog. It may be just what you’re looking for! Learn more about the Blog Business Plan Workbook.

Content funnels are one of those things where even thinking about them can make you feel flustered. You may be thinking What the heck is a content funnel, anyway?

Some people call them sales funnels. I prefer to think of them as content funnels mostly because I cringe at the thought of being salesy. If you’re curious, funnels are how you move people through a process of:

Getting to know you
Starting to like you
Trusting you as an authority
And finally, purchasing from you

The way you move people through a funnel is with content, which is why I think content funnels are what we’re really talking about here, more so than sales funnels. And when I say content funnels, I mean all content…blog posts, webinars, videos, podcasts, emails, sales pages…all of it.

See how thinking about it this way marries each blog post to a sales system?

Your content becomes a system of building blocks that are interconnected. When you write a blog post, what you’re really doing is setting the early stages for people to buy. Here’s what that content funnel might look like:

In other words, a blog post leads to a freebie, which leads to a free course or training, which leads to a paid course or eBook. Can you see how this is all coming together here?

Now in terms of the funnel itself, consistent blogging will help people get to know/like/trust you. So my question for you is:

What would you like your audience to buy from you?

That’s a big question, I know. You’re probably thinking I have no idea what product to create. I really need more traffic right now before I can figure that out!

I get it. This is one of those things where starting with your end game is actually going to help you get traffic and build your blog audience faster. The reason is because you’re going to be laser focused with each post and frame it around your future products, even if right now you’re not sure exactly what those products are!

This means that you want to create content around what your audience most needs, and that content is going to be the “top of your funnel”. Over time, you’ll see which posts resonate the most with your audience and which products to create around them.

Can you see how step #1 helps us create bangin’ content funnels too? Let’s look at some of the pain points from our earlier example:

Truly healthy foods are not easy to find
Don’t know how much to eat, what to eat and when to eat it
Bagel Monday and Pizza Fridays at the office are hard to resist

Here are some blog themes that would be perfect launching pads for future products:

Theme #1: Quick, easy recipes
Theme #2: The mindset of eating healthy
Theme #3: Meal plans and diet guidance

There’s more to sales funnels than this, but for now, just start thinking about each post as having 2 jobs:

To help your audience solve a specific problem
To create a platform for future products and making money

3) Set monthly blog + social media goals

This is another area where starting with the end game will help you focus your priorities each week. From our Blog Profit Plan series, we already know the 4 things we need to focus on each month: content, traffic, subscribers, and profit.

So let’s say this month we want to:

Write 6 blog posts (content)
Get 35K unique visitors (traffic)
Build our list to 4,500 (subscribers)
Offer a free course that leads to a paid course (profit)

Your goals may look much different than this, and that’s perfectly ok. Maybe what you really want to do is to get your first 100 subscribers, or even to write your first few blog posts. Or, maybe you have an eBook you’d like to sell.

The point is to be very specific with your goals and know that you can achieve them, based on your schedule and where you’re at in your blog biz journey right now.

If you want, you can download my sample monthly blog plan that shows you the exact steps to getting more traffic to your blog posts and your business. Click the image below to download it.

Next, let’s look at how we’re going to achieve our monthly goals…

Step #4) Create a blogging workflow

If only writing a blog post was as easy as writing the post, know what I mean?

In reality, there are a whole slew of things to do if we’re going to build our blog audience and traffic like we mean business. A single post can easily take the whole week to create when you blog with intention, which of course is what you do!

You have to do things like:

Research post ideas
Create images
Promote the post
Create a freebie
Write an email delivering the freebie

And if we break that down even more, our list looks more like this:

And our monthly blog calendar looks like this:Whew! It’s a lot. And all of it works like a machine to help you build the platform for your sales/content funnels we talked about. This is what’s really going to help us build our blog audience and traffic.

Here are the planner and checklist so you can start creating your own traffic machine. This is the same monthly plan that has helped me get 40K visitors and 4K subscribers in 3 months. Click the image below to download.

I came up with this blog plan after months of experimenting and trying to figure out a workflow that was easy to follow each week.

With this planner, you spread out individual blog tasks (and even batch them if you can). Remember, you’ve got more to do than just write a post if you really want to build your blog audience and traffic!

Here’s what “writing a blog post” looks like:

Research blog topics
Write the post
Make it SEO-findable
Create blog images
Create social media images
Create a freebie
Add the freebie to your post
Integrate the freebie with MailChimp, ConvertKit or other email platform
Proofread and publish
Share with your subscribers
Share on social media and other channels
Repurpose as a quick tip graphic
Create a second pin for Pinterest
Repurpose as a short video
Write more tweets and updates
Schedule updates, tweets, the video, and quick tip
Share to Facebook group promo threads throughout the week

I recommend spreading these tasks out over the week for a few reasons:

First of all, building your blog audience takes time and there are a lot of pieces involved. Trying to cram every piece into just a day or two will leave you feeling frazzled, kinda like you’re falling behind with all of it. Spreading it out will make you feel calm, centered and in control of your blog biz.

The other reason is that when you think about it, all of the tasks listed above are wildly different. It takes a different head to write a post than to create graphics or even a freebie. And it’s a completely different “techie” head for opt-in forms, email integration, sequences, and so on.

We already know how task-shifting can act like a lead weight on your brain. Too much task-shifting inside of any given day will slow you down and make you feel foggy. What we want is to speed things up, right?

So there you have it. That’s a wrap for part #1 of The Build Your Blog Audience + Traffic series.

Next up, we’ll drill down on a 7-day marketing plan to build your audience:

Part 2: 7-Day Blog and Social Media Plan

If you want, you can download the Social Media Planner I created and start working on your marketing plan right now. Click the image below to download it:

by Sandra Clayton

Why You Need a Social Media Strategy (And How to Create One That Works)

Social Media

Part 3 of the Blog Profit Plan series. This was originally a 2-part series, but after the last post, I realized that we still have a missing piece:

A social media strategy.

The missing piece is crucial if we’re going to tie our four buckets together:

Traffic
Content
Subscribers
Money

Social media is the bridge that connects you to your future customers and when you do it right (which I’m going to show you how right here!), it will be a game-changer for your blog and business.

If you missed parts 1 + 2 of the Blog Profit Plan series, here’s what we covered:

Today, I want to look at part 3. Before we dig in, I should mention that having an effective social media strategy is all about showing up. Everyday. Even if it feels like a colossal waste of time and you have so many other things to do already, if you stay with me here, you’ll see the payoff. Promise.

Let’s dig into the strategy.

I created this social media strategy blueprint to help put what you learn into action. Click the image below to download.

This post contains affiliate links.

Step 1: What are your monthly goals?

Write this all down so you can see your priority goals for the month. This way when you share content, you have a strategy and a plan behind it. All successful social media strategies start here.

What’s the most important thing for you to accomplish this month? Do you want to:

Add 1,000 new subscribers?
Launch a new product?
Gain 3,000 Pinterest followers?
Sell 25 products? (remember the blog income formula)
Get 200 webinar signups?

Knowing your end game will help you plan what types of content to share (including any promotional content), plus give you actual numbers to hit.

For example, if your month’s goal is to get more subscribers, you would want to schedule blog posts that include a freebie or opt-in offer. And if your goal is to promote a new service or product, you would want to schedule blog posts that contain links to your product offer, coupons, discounts, and so on.

Step 2: Share content

Now that you’re clear on your goals, it’s time to share content to support your monthly goals and help build your following. There are two types of content you’re going to share:

Other people’s content
Your own content

We could just lump these two together and call it “share content”, but I’d rather break this section down because our strategy will be different for other people’s content vs our own content. First of all, it will take some time to develop a system for your original content. Sharing other people’s content is easy to set up and you can build a ginormous following this way. I grew my Twitter account to over 16K doing exactly that – retweeting and curating content.

Now, would I recommend sharing only other people’s content? No way. Definitely not a good plan if we’re going to build a platform for a hugely profitable business (which is exactly what we’re going to do!). Buuut, a following of 16K means that when you start sharing your own content, you have an audience ready to consume it. I say let’s check the box on it, so we can move on knowing that we’re revvin’ up a social media strategy the right way, k?

First up: create a source library of bloggers, influencers, pins, and posts.

Here’s how to do it:

1) Create a Feedly source library

There are likely blogs and influencers in your niche that you follow (if not, time to crack the books!). Make a list of sources that are relevant and useful to your audience. The sources can be anything…blogs, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts…anything.

For instance, my list includes:

Social Media Examiner – socialmediaexaminer.com (social media tips)
Copyblogger – copyblogger.com (blogging tips)
Amy Porterfield – amyporterfield.com (online courses)
Jeff Bullas – jeffbullas.com (online marketing tips)

Now that you have your sources, it’s time to import them into Feedly. Feedly will read and organize all of your favorite news sources in one place. Uh, huh? It sounds more confusing than it is. With Feedly, you have access to all of your favorite content right from their dashboard. This means that whenever a new post is published, Feedly will update your feed in real time, so you only have to check one source to see fresh new content.

Lookin’ good… Later on, I’ll show you how to share all of your epic Feedly content, but for now, fist bump.

2) Create secret Pinterest boards

Now we’re going to do the same thing on Pinterest using secret boards. Secret boards are Pinterest boards that only you can see, so when you save pins here, they’re just for you and no one else. You’ll see them below your other boards, like this:

I recommend keeping your source list handy (plus any other brands that pin great content). This way if you can’t find valuable pins to share right there in your feed, you know where to go to find them. What I do is once a week, or when I’m catching up on Hulu, spend 30 minutes pinning content to my secret boards.

For example, my secret “source” boards are:

+ Blogging/Biz Pins Source
+ Entrepreneur/Freelance Source
+ Social Media Source

The + sign is how I know that these boards are secret. See the mood board in the image above? That’s another secret board where I pin everything that inspires me…things like colors, fonts, work spaces, interiors, textures, fashion, logos, other brands…everything I love gets pinned here. If you want a place to gather design ideas for your brand, this is a fun way to do it! Gotta love Pinterest!

Step 3: Create and share your own content

Next up: let’s look at your own content. Here we’re talking about all the content you create: blog posts, tips, promotions, products, Ebooks, quotes, behind the scenes, stories, and so on.

The best way to approach this is always to be thinking about how you can turn one piece of content into something new. This way you’ll have multiple visuals to share, plus you’ll be building up a huge content library.

What do I mean by this?

First of all, for each post you want to create a number of assets, which is a fancy way of saying that every time you publish a post, you create a few pieces of content for it. Think of it as your blog post kit. For example, for each post you might have:

The post itself
A free offer
A quick tip from the post
A video summarizing the post
An email for your subscribers

Phew! This looks like a lot, I know, but can you see how much content you can create by repurposing? Once you have a system together with branded image templates (use Canva or Photoshop), things move much faster.

Here’s an inside look at the content I created for one of my posts:I’ve also got a blog promotion plan for social media, which you grab right here.

Step 4: Schedule content

I’m a huge fan of Buffer, SmarterQueue, BoardBooster, Tailwind, and Planoly for Instagram. What’s the deal with all these scheduling tools, you ask? Here’s how I use them:

BUFFER – $10 a month
Use for Twitter

To share other people’s content, I use it with IFTTT, where my recipes pull my Feedly feeds into Buffer. I also use Buffer to give new posts an initial spike in traffic. When I have a new post, I create 15-20 tweets and schedule them throughout the week in Buffer. I’ve found this to be an effective Twitter marketing strategy for my content.

SMARTERQUEUE – starts at $20 a month
Use for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

A serious game-changer for me, I heart it big time. SmarterQueue is like Buffer meets Edgar without the huge monthly fee. Once my queue reaches the bottom, SmarterQueue loops my posts so that they are always being shared. The only thing on my wish list is a better way to promote new blog posts, which is why I still use Buffer. Hopefully, these guys will be adding that feature soon.

BOARDBOOSTER – $10 up to 1000 pins a month
Use for Pinterest

Pinterest accounts for 80% of my traffic at this point and BoardBooster has been a huge reason why. This is a cool way to pin all at once but have Pinterest space them out for you, so you don’t bombard your audience with 30 pins in one hour. Oh, and remember the secret boards we created? BoardBooster is where you’ll set up campaigns to share those pins with your audience. We’re talkin’ set it and forget it here, friend.

TAILWIND – $10 a month
Use for Pinterest

BoardBooster has a semi-steep learning curve. There’s a lot to digest, and it takes time to set up your campaigns. If you want to get a jump on scheduling and get right to it, Tailwind is your answer. It’s amazingly easy to use, and all of your scheduled pins will be right there on the dashboard, so if you’re a visual person like me, you will love it!

There’s also a way to loop your pins similar to BoardBooster. If you’re curious about how looping on Tailwind works, this post is a good read.

PLANOLY – $7 a month
Use for Instagram

If you’re a control freak like me and want all of your images to have the same look and feel, with Planoly you can tweak designs in Photoshop, schedule them straight from your desktop, and share them from your phone. I started using this tool a few months ago and have to say it’s a fun way to schedule posts on Instagram. I’ve grown my following quite a bit thanks to Planoly and highly recommend it.

Step 5: Engage with your audience daily.

Make sure you engage daily with your audience – reply to comments and tweets, like other people’s posts, share, comment, and so on. The trick here is to get in and get out so you don’t get sucked in! Try to limit your time to 15-20 minutes a day. Preferably this will be your downtime, so you don’t interfere with more productive tasks, like creating content.

Phew! You made it. We’re gettin’ close…just a few more things to cover.

[ WHAT SHOULD YOU POST, AND WHEN? ]

Step 6: What types of content should you share?

The best social media plan includes sharing the right types of content on each platform. For instance, Facebook and YouTube are perfect for videos. Quick tips and inspirational quotes work well on Instagram, Facebook, and even Twitter.

Instagram and Pinterest are visual platforms. You’ll need to focus on creating eye-guzzling graphics that stand out and grab people’s attention. A straight text post won’t do on these platforms.

On Facebook and Twitter, you can include text-only posts, just know that these tend to get fewer retweets and shares than graphic posts.

What you can do with text posts is to ask engaging questions, such as:

What is the one thing most people don’t know about you?
If you could wave a magic wand over (your subject), what would you like the result to be?
What are the top 3 things you want to learn more about?
Are you excited about (insert subject)? Yes/No

People love inspirational quotes, quick tips and videos, so I like to spend a day or two at the beginning of each month to create graphics and quick tip videos. If you do this, you’ll always have content to share, even if you fall behind with writing blog posts. Been there, done that!

If you need help brainstorming what to share, this social media calendar has over 24 different types of content to help you get started.

Step 7: Best times to post

I’m going to give you general guidelines for each platform, which I also cover, and more, in this post. Here again, you should track the analytics on each site to find the times when the largest number of your fans are online. (Psst…I’m working on a social media strategy template to help you with this, so stay tuned.)

The reason I recommend tracking your analytics is because I’ve seen some interesting patterns for my blog. Even though the best times to tweet should be weekdays 1-3 pm, I see a lot of retweets happening between 2-5 am, and again at 11 pm. This tells me that my Twitter audience is very active in the middle of the night, and not so much during the day. And with Pinterest, everyone (including me) will tell you that Saturday is “Pinit-Day,” but recently I’ve been getting more Pinterest traffic on the weekdays than on the weekends, including Saturdays.

You’ll likely experience the same thing, and these insights can be applied to your social media marketing tactics and posting times. I recommend starting off using the times below as a guide. Then, check your analytics every month to find the best times for you.

When to post guidelines:

Facebook – 12-3pm & 8-9pm weekdays, weekends 12-1pm
Twitter: 10am-6pm, sweet spot between 1-3pm weekdays
Pinterest: 5pm – 12am, all day Saturday
Instagram: 12-3pm, 8-10pm

Analytics tools:

Facebook – No more guessing! Use Facebook Insights (Your Page > Insights > Posts) for the best times of day to post. Here’s what your data will look like:

Twitter – Tweriod is a site that will give you the same data as Facebook Insights. I believe you can even view individual days for more specific data.

Instagram – Since you’ll only post on Instagram 1-2x daily, it’s crucial that you nail down the times that your audience is most active. Now, Planoly is a very pretty way to schedule Instagram posts but Iconosquare is going to be your one-stop Instagram HQ. Use it to find out which times your audience is actually engaging. Then schedule your posts accordingly.

Update: If you have (or switch to) an Instagram business account, you’ll see similar data in Instagram Insights.

Pinterest – If you use Tailwind for nothing else, use it for the analytics. With a premium account, you can see the best times to post based on engagement, which is what you’re looking for. You can use the data to schedule pins either through Tailwind or BoardBooster. Make sure you pin heavy on the weekends, especially Saturday. As I mentioned above, that’s when people are most active on Pinterest.

That wraps up the analytics. Now that you have your toolkit make sure you pop in once a month to review and tweak your social media strategy according to your best times to post. Your goal is to get the most engagement for each piece of content and skyrocket your growth.

Step 8: How often should you post?

Each platform is different. On Twitter, you can post 20-30x a day. Same for Pinterest. On Facebook and Instagram, you’d be spamming people’s feeds if you did that.

Here are some daily guidelines:

Facebook: 1-3x
Twitter: 13-20x
Pinterest: 10-50x
Instagram: 1-2x

You’re probably thinking How the heck am I going to post 30x on Pinterest or Twitter?

I’m right there with you… It’s a lot. I recommend starting small and scaling up. Think of the guidelines as your finish line. They’re up ahead, around the corner, and you’re going to reach them, just not quite yet. First, let’s put our heads down and focus on the start, which looks something like:

You post once a day on each platform.
Once you’re comfortable with that frequency, increase it to twice a day.
Next, pick one platform to dominate, preferably the platform where most of your audience hangs out. Become a Ninja Pinner or Instagram It-Girl, kind of thing. The key here is to focus on just one platform for a long time.
Once you’ve mastered step #3, repeat it for the next site.

Let’s recap: our monthly goal is to tie all of our buckets together (content, traffic, subscribers, product). And we want to do that with social media.

Here’s what a day on social media might look like:

Share on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram: Your own blog post, a quick tip, other people’s content from resource list
Share on Pinterest: 5 pins from your source boards, 5 repins
On all platforms: Moderate, engage, comment, like, reply, retweet, share

The beauty here is that the only thing you’re doing in real time is that last one: moderate and engage. Everything else has been planned and scheduled ahead of time. Super fantastic, you’re all set!

Psst… an easy way to build up your content library is to repurpose your blog posts as videos, helpful tip graphics, questions, text posts, and so on. I know I’m repeating myself here, but I learn things visually, so figure it can’t hurt. Here’s what I usually create for my blog posts:

Then I share each of these the first week my post publishes to get an initial spike in traffic. If you want, this blog promo plan will show you what to share on each platform so you can do the same:

We’re almost finished.

If you feel like this is a lot, I get it. There’s a learning curve to all of this. No one becomes a ninja warrior overnight 🙂 If you hang in there with me and put in the time, scheduling social media will soon become effortless. And it will be so worth it. You’re going to rock social media and your goals, k? Just one last step which is super important and we can’t forget it.

Step 9: Queue it all up – one day a month

Spend one day a month planning your content around your monthly goals, so that you know what you want to share. Preferably you do this on the first of the month. What this looks like is you use the monthly calendar (step #1 above) and gather your content for the month around it. Pull from your blog posts and your resource lists from Feedly and Pinterest.

What this looks like:

You use the monthly calendar (step #1 above) and gather your content for the month around it. Pull from your blog posts and your resource lists from Feedly and Pinterest.

Then on Sundays, schedule your content for the week and create the images you need. This will include blog post images and other social media images, such as quick tips and inspirational quotes.

Here’s what I create for each post (now this is the 3rd time I’m saying this haha)

2 pins (for A/B testing)
2-3 Instagram images with links to my posts, or inspirational quotes
an image for Facebook and Twitter
a video of my post
a quick tip image for Facebook and Twitter

Let’s wrap this baby up!

Here are some final thoughts:

Consistency is key to getting results on social media. Show up each day, and you will grow your following and your business. No doubt.
Create a social media marketing plan each month for what you want to achieve on social media. Social media can really suck you in, so I recommend doing what you need to do each day and that’s it. That means you comment, like, moderate inside each platform, but do all your other work outside of them.
When you’re starting out, share other people’s content first, then focus on original content. This way you’ll build your following as you rev up your own content machine.
Use the tools mentioned above (BoardBooster, Tailwind, Buffer, etc.) to schedule your content.
Share content on each platform to start, then focus on growing one site. I recommend digging into Pinterest first because that’s where you’re going to get the bulk of your traffic. When those are bringing you great results and you feel comfortable, move on to another platform.
Test and check analytics to see what posting schedule works best for your audience.
Always include an image with your posts, unless you’re asking an engaging question. People are very visual, and this will help your posts stand out and be seen!

I would love to hear how you made out with this. What does your social media strategy look like?

Having fun with the Blog Profit Plan series? Let’s keep it going:

Part #4: Affiliate Marketing for Beginners: How To Start Making Money With Your Blog

by Sandra Clayton

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

Blogging, Social Media

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

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

Social Media Image Sizes [Profile Pics, Cover Photos & Shared Images]

Social Media

Seems like there are so many different cheat sheets out there when it comes to social media image sizes. I was actually a bit stumped gathering these dimensions because there’s so many sources out there with completely different info.

The reason is that things change on each network, and each network has a completely different set of dimensions, viewable area, positioning and requirements for cover photos, profile pics and shared images. It can be overwhelming knowing where to start.

So I put this resource with information together to help you make sense of it all. I’m hoping these are current and accurate. If not, please let me know and I’ll update it right away.

My top recommended sizes are:

For profile pics: 500 x 500. You can edit, crop and resize inside each platform.

For cover photos: See below – varies for Twitter, LinkedIn and Google +

For shared + link images:
1200px square for Instagram
1200 x 600 for Facebook & Twitter *
736 x 1102 (up to 2061) for Pinterest

*Even though Facebook and Twitter dimensions have slightly different proportions, following a 2:1 aspect ratio for both has worked fine for me. Also, since Twitter updated its tweet image size to 506px square, you can use the same 1200px square image instead of the horizontal image. Keep in mind that if you’ve enabled Twitter cards on your site, when you post a URL to Twitter the image will still crop to horizontal. So 1200 x 600 may still be the way to go for FB and Twitter, at least for now.

Part of the decision here is your blog design and sizing of your featured image. If your blog is designed for horizontal images, go with the 1200 x 600 as a template size. If you’re using a masonry type grid, a square might work well. And if Pinterest is important to your brand, a vertical image will work well. I use a horizontal image as the main featured image and add a vertical image inside the post for pins.

Updated: January 18, 2018

Facebook Image Sizes

Cover photo: 828 x 315 desktop / 828 x 462 mobile
(New) Group Cover photo: 1640 x 921px
Profile pic: 180 x 180
Link image: 1200 x 630

For Facebook profiles, your profile image will cover a good part of the lower left side of the cover, so if your cover photo incorporates text like mine, make sure you placement clears these areas. Keep in mind that mobile cover photos are taller and extend to 462px, so if you don’t want the left and right margins to be cropped, use 828 x 462 for your cover photo and adjust the placement of your images and text so they clear the difference. For instance, on the desktop my cover photo is cropped to 351px, but on mobile shows the full image:

For Facebook pages, you don’t have to worry about your profile pic interfering with the cover photo. There’s less nudging and tweaking you have to do because the profile image now appears to the left. You have the full canvas to use for creative elements, branding, icons, CTAs and so on.

Twitter Image Sizes

Header: 1500 x 500 (1500 x 389 visible)
Profile pic: 400 x 400 (displays as 200px)
Tweeted image: 1024 square or 1024 x 512 (2:1 aspect ratio, displays as 440px wide)

For Twitter, even though the height of your file should be 500px, the visible area will be cropped to 398px high. And a portion of your profile pic is positioned on the lower left corner, like Facebook. Be sure to take that into consideration when placing creative elements.

Another thing to note is that the cover photo is responsive, meaning that the size will adjust according to the browser size and resolution. This means that your profile pic will shift left and right as people adjust their browser windows, so be sure to block out enough room for error on either side.

Instagram Image Sizes

Profile pic: 180 x 180 (displays as 110 x 110)
Shared image: 1080 x 1080

Note that Instagram images are no longer limited to a square shape, so you can work with 1080 wide, and choose a height anywhere from 566 to 1350 high. This larger 1080 image size means that images will be high resolution, so people may want to download yours for their own use. To prevent that, consider branding your photos with a watermark.

Pinterest Image Sizes

Profile pic: 165 x 165
Board cover: 500 x 500px recommended
Pins: 736 x 1104 (up to 2061)

Pins longer than 2061 will be cropped in the stream on mobile.

You can create custom pins for each of your boards – which I’m on the fence with – as a way to brand your boards so that they have a consistent look. If it bugs you that you can’t crop or reposition standard pins to get them to display the way you want, creating board covers may be the way to go. Personally, I’m okay with the look of my boards without customer covers. I figure that when/if Pinterest changes board cover sizes again, I won’t have to worry about chasing new designs!

Still want to try experiment with custom board covers?

All you have to do is upload a pin sized to 500 x 500px, give it a description with a link back to your website, and assign it to your preferred board. Then edit the board and select the new pin you created as the cover photo.

Here’s where you do it:

LinkedIn Image Sizes

Profile pic: 200 x 200
Profile background: 1400 x 425
Update image: 698 x 400

Just like Twitter and Facebook, part of your background photo is hidden by your LinkedIn profile, which overlays the mid- to lower- section. If you have a free account, an additional 70px on the top will be superimposed by LinkedIn banner ads. So even though you do need to upload a 1400 x 425 image, the visible area on a free account is more like 1400 x 355. This is not the case for premium accounts – with premium accounts your profile will be superimposed but you have the full 425 height for creative elements.

Make a note of the invisible areas below when designing your cover. If you have messaging or images you want to showcase like I do here, make sure to clear those areas. The background photo is responsive, so depending on browser sizes and resolutions your background image will scale larger or smaller.

Google+ Image Sizes

Profile pic: 270 x 270
Cover photo: 1080 x 608 (displays as: 920 x 518)
Shared image: 800 x 600

Did you know that when someone clicks on your name in the Google+ feed, both your profile pic and cover photo appear? It’s kind of cool and called your “hovercard”, which is like a digital business card.

If you’re a Google+ user, when someone visits your profile the visible area is about 1080 x 372. That means that any elements you place on the top and bottom won’t be visible when your profile initially loads. Users will have to scroll up to actually see the full 608 height. Keep this in mind when placing text, branding and graphics you want people to see right away.

Keeping current on social media image sizes can be such a headache with all the changes. It doesn’t have to be! Help spread the word to make it easier for everyone else. I will try to keep this as current as possible as new updates are released. In future posts, I’ll walk you through determining which template sizes are best, how to create them, and how to watermark them with your own brand elements, colors, fonts and logos. That way when it’s time to share your images, you have a process down that will save you tons of time.

Feel free to pin this 2016 social media image size cheat sheet so your followers can benefit too:

by Sandra Clayton

Social Media Cheat Sheet + Content Calendar for Biz Owners and Bloggers

Social Media

Last Updated: October 4, 2023

If you want to use social media to grow your business, but are a bit stumped with what to do, this social media cheat sheet is for you! It will help you plan out your content so you know what to post, when to post and how to post it. You’ll be on your way to blowing up on social media instead of feeling overwhelmed! I could have made this 30 days but actually, you don’t need it – just repeat it all over again on Day 25.

Follow these simple tips for massive growth:

Share other people’s content and your own. Plan it all out and write it all down.
Part of feeling overwhelmed is when you plan out more than what you can actually do because it looks great on paper! If you can share your own content once every two weeks, just fill in with more quotes, announcements, roundups, and other people’s content to give yourself some breathing room. When you have more time, you can share more of our original stuff.
Pre-schedule your posts with services like Buffer, HootSuite or our absolute favorite, Metricool (affiliate link) which has an outstanding free plan with tons of time-saving features.
Be visual. Visual content is 40x more likely to get shared than other types of content. Use Canva to create appealing graphics and title images for your posts. Remember to brand each image with your logo!
As you build a following and engage with people, you’ll see a boost in traffic to your blog. Make sure your posts encourage people to sign up for your newsletter or opt in to a freebie so you can leverage the traffic to build a mailing list.
Study the things that other brands are doing to build their following and do that too. Monitor everything after the first month to see what’s performing well. Then do more of it!