Staying consistent with blogging is easy, staying motivated on the other hand, isn't so simple. Growing your blog and gaining views on your posts is not an easy task these days, and does take a whole lot of patience.
It's not as simple as just posting your post and turning off your computer, there is a lot more to it. If you are like me and have a personal domain that you have paid for in order to get seen on google, there are a lot of steps for it to become effective and that you may want to know. If you don't have a personal domain, and only use the free versions of WIX, etc, then to get views you must share your content for people to see. Here I will be explaining both of these, as well as what social media platforms are the most effective in promoting growth.
Please note, growth to your blog and getting viewers is not an overnight job, even I still only sometimes get 5/6 views on some of my posts and I have had my blog since 2019- it takes time! and a whole lot of patience.
If you still haven't started your blog yet and need a few tips on where to begin, read my blog post by pressing the image below:
One of the social media platforms where I think the blogging community is most prevalent is Twitter. I have a separate account on Twitter from my personal account for my blog, which I think works best to not drown my personal account with blog posts. There is a huge blogging community on Twitter, you just have to find it!
What I find really useful, is following the blogger's RT accounts on Twitter, such as @RTbloggerdreams, @theclique_uk, @blogershut & @abundanceflavour. There are many more, but these are a few of my favourites. These are basically Twitter accounts, which post interactive tweets and callouts for bloggers to reply with their most recent blog posts. You then need to RT and like other posts, and then other accounts will do the same for you.
Here is an example of what some of these tweets look like:
I have gained a good amount of views on my posts as well as subscribers to my blog due to these threads, and really do find them useful. Every time I post a new blog post, I will go on to Twitter and paste it into some of these threads, and 9 times out of 10 I will get a good amount of people Retweeting my blog posts also, and even commenting on my link.
I also use Twitter to ask a lot of blogging questions I have, I feel like this is a great place to expand your knowledge, and see what other bloggers around you are doing and feeling. I definitely recommend starting up an account for your blog and giving this a go as it definitely draws attention to your blog, and makes other bloggers aware of you in the community.
Instagram is the platform where I am most active for my blog. I feel like Instagram is an extremely popular platform, which at times can be overcrowded, but it is such a good area to follow people similar to you and draw people's attention to your posts.
Every time I post a new blog post, I immediately take to Instagram to post about it and let people know, what you will find is you get the regulars who are always active and engaging with your posts, as well as the odd random accounts that pop up once, like and read your posts, then disappear. Both are really important in gaining traffic to your blog.
I love to make my Instagram account for my blog nice and tidy and consistent. I use the app canva to create free promotional photos for every blog post. I just created a template, and then every time a blog post goes up I will go onto the app and add the title, new photo, reading time as well as a category into the template. This way all my new blog posts/Instagram posts stay the same, and then between each of these, I like to post a random photo in order to make my account a bit more personal.
Here is what these posts look like:
I also like to share a lot of stories on my Instagram, such as interactive questions and things to get my follower's minds ticking. I post question boxes asking what my viewers want to see, as well as do polls for my blog posts to get public opinions. This way my followers feel they're included in my blog and are more likely to come back again to my account, or even remember it.
Another thing I also think is super handy and effective, is that I like to follow people who are related to my most recent blog post. For example, if I post a blog post about a restaurant review, I go ahead and try and follow a whole bunch of food bloggers, who when they click to see who I am, will see a restaurant review, making them more likely to read and follow me back. I have found this a super effective way of drawing viewers to my blog.
FACEBOOK GROUPS
A social media platform I personally feel can be a one-hit wonder, is Facebook. I personally do not have a Facebook account, or page for my blog as I feel like it wouldn't be a very effective way of promoting my blog posts as the general age of Facebook users is a lot older. However, what I do think is very effective is posting the link to your new blog post to Facebook groups that might relate to, or find the information useful.
I have actually done this twice, and it has been super effective. I wrote a blog post about Princess Diana, and her top 10 outfits ( A Look Back At 10 Of The Most Iconic Diana Dresses (rhicardsramblings.com) ) which I then posted to a bunch of Princess Diana lovers' Facebook groups. Keep in mind, in some of these groups an admin will need to accept your post but it is worth giving a go anyway. I ended up getting 110 views on that blog post, and a whole bunch of love from Diana fans. I also tried this with my blog post about Orlando, and which foods you need to try- (The Ultimate Orlando, Florida Food Check List: Things You Must Try Food Blog (rhicardsramblings.com)) I posted this into a bunch of Disney and Orlando tip groups, and I got a whopping 190 views on that post. I do think this is a super effective way to get viewers on your posts, and I definitely would do this again.
One thing I must say with this though is to be super careful how many groups you post into at once, as I posted into a whole bunch and ended up getting banned from Facebook for spam for a few days, so I definitely would only do a few blog posts at a time.
Pinterest is a place I hear a lot of other bloggers raving about, but a place I haven't quite conquered yet.
Every time I post a blog post and create my Canva ready to post to Instagram, I also post it onto Pinterest (again make a separate blog account). When you post to Pinterest, link your blog post to the photo and then add a brief description. This will then be accessible to the world of Pinterest, and when someone searches for something remotely similar to your post, your photo along with your blog link will come up. They can then pin your blog post, which again shares with everyone that follows that person.
It is a bit complicated to understand, and I am not sure I have properly got the gist of it yet fully, but it is a working progress. One thing about Pinterest is that it is a more timely way of sharing your blog posts. It just depends on when certain people will search for your content, so it may not get views or pins straight away. I often like to pin a few other people's posts a day, to try and gain as much attention as possible to my account and my blog posts.
So far, I have had a few clicks on my blog posts and a few pins, but nothing major. My account does say that I have 6.8k monthly views though, so I must be doing something right!
GOOGLE OPTIMISATION
For those of you with personal and paid-for domains, such as mine, then getting recognized on google is super important, and super difficult all at the same time. This again could probably take a whole other blog post but I will try to summarize it here best I can.
Here are some things I do for my blog, which help with getting recognized on google.
Make sure all photos on my website have SEO descriptions- this helps with getting found on google and bringing up your website when people search for what is in your photos. Here is an example of one of my photo descriptions, which is on my home page-
When I am writing my blog post, I like to make sure the title is relevant and I always put searchable keywords into the SEO google description box. For example, in the general description box, I will put just a small description of what the blog post consists of, and in the SEO description, I will put what I think people will search for. Here is what this blog post I am writing just now would look like in terms of description boxes-
General description:
SEO Description
I also use the website Google Search Console to track how well my posts are doing on Google. It can be quite confusing and daunting to start with, and I still am no expert and am still learning on this side of promoting my posts.
In short, all of your posts and pages are crawled by google bots before they decide whether the page should be eligible for google or not. A lot of the time, these bots will decline your pages and decide not to index them for google- this has happened to a lot of my posts. However, they do accept a fair few also.
Google search console allows you to track your site, and see what people are searching for and where your blog pages are popping up for people on google. Here is an example of what my Search Console looks like:
As you can see, my blog posts have shown up 204 times on google, and out of that my links have been clicked twice. This isn't great I know, but is definitely a start as only a few weeks ago I was getting nothing, so the fact I am even now showing up on google is a result! It does take a while for this to start to kick in, so be patient with it.
Here, it shows what people have been searching for and what my blog posts have been coming up in search in relation to:
Other Ways To Promote Your Blog
There are no doubt hundreds of other ways to promote your blog posts, but these are just the few that have worked best for me.
The only other thing I can say here is to interact with other bloggers and share their content, as 9 times out of 10 they will also do the same in return.
Give out the energy you want in return, and have patience.