Strategies That Helped Me Grow My Blog Presence

Nearly 7 years ago I wrote my first blog post - I had no idea or direction, wrote when I felt like it, wrote about what I liked - so my second post was 3 month, and another one 3 months after that. It wasn't till summer of 2017 that I kind of got it together and decided to see if I can do this.  

I often get asked if you could start a blog now and still be successful. I 100% think, yes! The internet is a huge place and while there is not a “how to start a blog in 10 minutes”  and do well solution,  I am convinced starting a successful blog takes time, a lot of thinking and planning, and a lot of work before the launch and possibly even  more work after.  

If you are doing research the advice you get from most bloggers kind of sounds all similar – they aren’t wrong.  I think you need 4 things in order to be successful:  

Choosing your blog niche

Staring a blog is a good idea, but what are you going to blog about? What are you good at? What are you passionate about? Finding that niche early on is what makes all the difference. I didn’t have that direction  looking back now I would have spent more time to doing this, because  your niche core of your blog so you want to make sure that you’re thinking it through.

Build a strategy

This might be one of the most important things - how often are you going to post? When you are going to post? How will you engage? Where are you promoting your posts? Are there affiliates you need to include? How will you drive people to your content? - While there is 100 different questions you might not be able to answer, it all comes down to consistency and a great plan. I highly recommend having a game plan based on research before you even go as far as creating a blog.   

I have come to the conclusion that posting every single day will not make you more money blogging or necessarily mean you will be successful. I wasted a lot of my time thinking that I needed to publish a post every day and was posting random thing just to fill my que – while I post 4-5 times a week now there is rhyme and reason of why it's done that.

Choosing your (blog) brand

This is who you want to be – it is much more than just a cool logos, color scheme  or a well-placed social media content – its building who you want to represent yourself as, and aligning it with your niche.  When you start blogging, you become your blog, so I would spend some time deciding what your brand will be.

Choose your blog name and create a website

There are many places you can start a blog on - some free, some that you have to pay for. I started out on blogger, they have been good to me and the set up was super easy. Having a self-hosted blog, means you own your content unlike on some free sites - so in the near future I will be transitioning over to a self-hosted website. While you are setting you website, I recommend getting a domain name off the start, linking all your social

media, hover over Pinterest buttons, and e-mail address that is yourname@blogname.com or contact@blog.com. I personally think it looks more professional if you can be contacted and its all neatly laid out and matches your blog.

and than you start.
When I started blogging I promised myself that if I ever came to the point that I have figured out how to do this thing I would share it with you guys. Focus of most content here on letterstolalaland.com is to hopefully help and make a litter difference. So today I wanted to share two things that have made a world of difference for me in the last year:

Pinterest.There is at least 6 social media platforms that you can use to make sure your blog is a successful, its hard to choose. I personally made a huge mistake and dedicated most of my time and energy into Instagram, where now looking back if I would have chosen. Don't get mw wrong, Instagram has been beneficial to me growing my impact and engagement but it does not drive people to my content as  much as it should have. 
You want to make sure to set up your Pinterest account the right way (meaning you have a business account, with a verified website, a profile with good keywords, and well worded boards)  which will help you an start driving traffic and sales within a few weeks.

Easiest way to grow your Pinterest account is with Tailwind; you can check my post on how I went from 617 views to 55K+ in less than 30 days. Tailwind is a scheduling tool that is approved by Pinterest and Instagram. My favorite part is that it provides analytics and smart scheduling insight.  Not sure if you want to spend money on it, sign up for it! Start the FREE trial to check it out first. If you use this link you get to try it out for free for a month. I think urging it for a month gives you a good insight if it will work for you. It is $9/month after that per account.

People Map.I stumbled upon peoplemap.com after I was trying to find a better way to track an Instagram campaign I was runnin. Peoplemap.com is just that; the most affordable, comprehensive tool for authentic growth, campaign tracking, case studies and Instagram stats. There is power in knowledge – people map gave me just that. You are able to look at engagement rates of anyone with a public Instagram account which helped a lot as giving me a benchmark of what you should be striving for; most importantly I was able to track exact impact a campaign on Instagram has had. I include this information in my media kit and its made a world of difference in response rates when I do pitches. 

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