There are tons of these helpful posts out there that will all share a different perspective and recommend what you should be doing. I'm here to share what's helped me double my traffic most recently.
If you remember, I shared back in the beginning of the year that I would be approaching blogging a bit differently this year. I work full time, have a family to focus on, yet I still love connecting and sharing our adventures with all of you. What I also realized is that sometimes you need resources to help propel you to the next step. Sometimes it's ok to cut out the time consuming fluff posts and share more quality over quantity. All of this has helped me to breathe a little better and get back to spending more precious time with the people I love.
Ironically enough, when I approached blogging differently my traffic grew, my comments increased, and my earnings grew as well. Here's how I went about doing that...
GOOGLE ANALYTICS: I've had google analytics set up on my blog for as long as I can remember. I would jump on every now and then to see who was viewing my blog in real time, but I never really focused on analyzing the content. I've also learned that you can't go off of your page views through your blogger or wordpress site because apparently they take your own clicks and bots into consideration. For example, you might see that you have 15,000 page views for the month when you login. However, if you actually review those statics in Google Analytics it might be cut in half. From what I understand, Google only counts legit page views. It's also important to take a look at the content that is being viewed the most. My posts that offer some sort of value to my readers are the ones that do the best as opposed to a random day spent at the park with my kids. Don't worry, I don't plan on retiring those posts anytime soon, but it is nice to know what thrives.
PINTEREST BUSINESS ACCOUNT: I decided to convert my account to a Pinterest business account. After getting more into the analytics of my blog I also wanted to see how my other accounts where performing. I love being able to see how many times my pins have been re-pinned now and how many people they are reaching.
PINTEREST RICH PINS: after I switched to a business account for some reason I thought I would automatically be able to have rich pins. Not that I actually knew what rich pins were, but I knew I wanted people to be able to see more of a description and extra information with my pins. You also want to make sure you have a pin it button on your blog. A lot of my traffic is generated from people using their cell phones who don't have access to a pin it button on a tool bar. If you don't have a pin it button setup for your content, you could be missing out on your images being shared.
TAILWIND: I'm actually annoyed that I didn't sign up for Tailwind sooner because it took my monthly Pinterest views from around 7k to 128k. I still wouldn't say that's anything ground breaking, but it has in turn brought more traffic to my blog. I can't say it's all because of Tailwind, but I know it has helped. *Here's a link for you to try a month for free and in return if you sign up, then I get a month for free as well. It's a win-win for both of us.*
Now, Tailwind can be tricky. I had to do some extra googling and watched a Youtube video before I kind of got the hang of it. I would recommend to join a few tribes once you sign up, follow their rules, and start repining. Then, when you pin your pins to that board you have a chance of some large accounts repining yours. Some of my successful pins have been because of repins from my tribes. You can also schedule your pins on Tailwind and they will analyze your best times to post and do it automatically for you.
Now, Tailwind can be tricky. I had to do some extra googling and watched a Youtube video before I kind of got the hang of it. I would recommend to join a few tribes once you sign up, follow their rules, and start repining. Then, when you pin your pins to that board you have a chance of some large accounts repining yours. Some of my successful pins have been because of repins from my tribes. You can also schedule your pins on Tailwind and they will analyze your best times to post and do it automatically for you.
CANVA: I used to be a PicMonkey girl but once they started charging and I realized their editing options weren't as user friendly as I thought, I was out. Canva has been a game changer for me. It's so easy to use and they have dimensions for blog posts, social pins, even Pinterest pins. My posts with a pinnable image also bring in a lot more traffic.
FACEBOOK: for the longest time I stayed away from using facebook for my blog. Why? I'm not exactly sure. Maybe because a lot of my friends don't necessarily understand the whole blogging world and I think I was worried about people who were following me on my personal account could see what I was posting. Fast forward to learning more about having your own facebook page (and not caring what people think) and groups to support that. If you search on facebook there are a ton of blogger groups you can join where you can add a link to your post, participate in follow threads, re-pin threads, etc. However, with that, also comes time and commitment. You can't just drop a link and then leave. You have to reciprocate, and most of them you have to do it for everyone participating in that particular category. I think they're great to use in moderation but they shouldn't be your main focus. I will always go back to the best approach being to build your own sense of community, comment on other blog posts, and establish a loyal following.
BLOGLOVIN': if you're a blogger and you aren't on bloglovin' I'd have to say you're missing out. If you also don't have a section on your blog for people to follow you on bloglovin' you could be missing out on followers. It's the number one source I use every time I want to catch up with my favorite bloggers. It basically has a chronological feed (that's something we don't come across very often anymore) and when you post from your blog it also posts it to your bloglovin' feed. You can follow other bloggers and also explore tons of others. If your post gets a lot of likes on there, you also have the chance to hit the explorer page which in turn can bring in more views. On bloglovin' you see the person's featured blog image, a small blurb from their post, and you can choose if you want to click and read it. It really makes keeping up with bloggers so much easier.
STUMBLEUPON: this was another one that took some time for me to get used to. I checked my views one day and saw that I had all of this traffic coming from something called StumbleUpon. At first I got really annoyed because I thought it was a bot just messing with my site. Little did I know that people can stumble your posts if they like them and add them to their pages for others to "stumble upon". I still don't know who actually stumbled my first post, but thank you to whoever it was. Since then, I've signed up and it's increased my traffic. You might also notice that at the bottom of this post, under my share via buttons, is a stumble symbol where people can just click on that and share it there.
What are some resources you like to use to help improve your blog traffic?
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