When scrolling through Facebook groups, a major pain point among bloggers is growth. Growing your blog traffic, growing your follower count on social media channels, or just getting your audience to engage with your content can be a struggle. It may feel like the industry is saturated with thousands of bloggers trying to get noticed, but I believe there is room for everyone.
Write for your audience
With every blogger, influencer, or content creator – they have their own audience. There is a reason why their audience follows them and comes back for more each day. It’s the golden thread that ties them to their audience.
To share an example, I follow Alyson Haley on Instagram for fashion inspiration and to get updates on the latest must-have pieces. She really understands her audience and knows that they come to her for fashion and travel-related content. By sticking to her niche, she has a loyal readership because she understands what her audience is looking for when they come to her page.
In my opinion, and how I run Pink on the Cheek, is that blog content is king. It’s the main source of my traffic and all of my social media channels stem from my blog. I own my website and the content, my traffic won’t dwindle because of an algorithm, and it’s a channel that continues to grow each day.
The process to increase your blog traffic takes work and won’t happen overnight. It can get difficult to stay in your own lane when you see bloggers who have tens of thousands of followers, working with coveted sponsors, and seem to be living a posh life. But let me tell you, they are hustling every day. It’s a lot of work to keep up your content calendar, so I found a method that works for me.
Plan out your content
Holy moly, do you know how hard it would be if you tried to figure out your content, blog posts, and photos on the fly? Each day would be a struggle bus of trying to find inspiration on what to post!
Instead, to grow your blog traffic, you should plan out your content calendar in advance.
To get started, I suggest planning out one month ahead, and once you get the hang of it, going 90 days out. That way you can plan ahead to batch your photos together, extend blog posts so they follow a theme, and actually get more posts live on your blog.
Purple Trail has a large selection of content planners that allow you to see your calendar throughout the month and year. By writing down your goals, schedule, meetings, and events, you can accurately keep track of how your blog and social media traffic is growing each month.
Personally, I use both a paper planner and online applications to keep my schedule in check.
Read: 10 Absolutely Free Resources to Make Blogging Easier.
I always wanted to find a paper content planner that is specific for blogging and Purple Trail has it! I always tried to adjust my other paper calendars to be content planners, but they all fell short in terms of what I am looking for.
I appreciate that each day has a section for social media channels at the bottom. I like to use this section to keep track of my daily growth or if I need to call out a specific post that needs to go out that day. For example, if I have an Instagram-only campaign, I will call out on December 5th, and I need to post that day.
I also like that the beginning of each month has a section for monthly goals and monthly themes. It allows me to move ahead in my calendar to think about what I want to create for months down the road.
Utilize Pinterest – 60/40
Think of Pinterest as a search engine! It’s the largest source of the traffic to my blog and I am shocked when I hear that blog friends are not using this platform to grow their blogs.
My method of strategy and I can go into detail in another blog post, is pinning 60% of other people’s content and 40% of my own content. I also manually pin! I don’t use a third-party platform to pin for me.
I use my boards as a resource for myself and my audience. For example, one of my most followed boards is my Blogging Resources board. Not only am I pinning content for my own benefit, but I know that my readers are also looking for resources to help them grow. I try to find high-quality content that can help make an impact on their needs.
Utilizing these three steps will make an impact on your blog traffic and set you off on the right path to success. Creating a plan of action will allow you to think of your blog as a business when you write down your goals and action items.
Want to read more content on how to grow your blog? Click over to my business section and dive in!
