Search results for: “how to turn your blog into a business”

Why Your Blog Is More Imortant Than You Realise

These days blogs can feel like a second channel to the likes of Instagram, snapchat or even Pinterest. Content has changed, and what consumers want & how they consume content has changed too, whilst 5 years ago long form content and videos were readily consumed and devoured by readers who’d spend minutes (or hours) reading and enjoying them, these days often it’s a matter of seconds before that scroll moves you on or a swipe takes you to the next piece of content you’ve followed. This readily available, non-time consuming, beautiful content is what has made these new social channels so popular (and bred a whole new host of influencers and content producers from it too), it’s popularity has most definitely resulted in time, effort, and passion being redirected into short form content, and away from the likes of blogs, which is what most of us started with in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s no bad thing, evolution is absolutely necessary not least to ensure you’re providing what consumers want and appearing on the platforms they’re actively using. I can see for myself the power of getting on board a new platform or tech trend before it breaks, and the consequences if you don’t. I’m super behind in the Instagram game (let alone even starting on snapchat yet) because i’ve stayed so focus on my blog … this in itself probably wasn’t such a savvy idea because the power and opportunity to be gained from growing on a new platform is exceptional. But despite all the benefits of redirecting focus and prioritising other channels outside your blog, there are some risks too. And with recent changes to many of our favourite social platforms, the importance of having your own platform has become even more prevalent.

Today I wanted to talk to you about the reasons that prioritising your blog as a key part of your content strategy is still important, and has potential for the future too.

4 REASONS WHY YOUR BLOG HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT

You control the tech & changes are at your liberty

If you’ve been active on any social media channel in the last 12 months then you will have most definitely noticed the buzz, worry and concern relating to a few tech evolutions which the popular social networks have been making to their platforms, most noticeably instagram. As you will know Facebook bought instagram back in 2012, and for the first few years left it relatively unchanged, then things started evolving as they became more commercial, firstly with the terms & conditions changing granting third parties the right to your images (with no commercial benefit to you) which sent uproar into the celebsphere, secondly with commercial advertising available to brands (again with no commercial benefit to users who may have strong followings) and most recently with the change in algorithm meaning instagram will now define the images it believes users want to see – potentially having a huge impact on peoples likes, engagements and followers, all measures that allow instagrammers to commercialise their own instagram accounts. This is just one example of a social platform changing the game, and potentially creating a huge impact for people who have dedicated time to creating a following and business of their own from it. Another example is Bloglovin’s new change to ‘saved posts’, which has resulted in any posts that have been saved but not added to a specific collection being removed and now considered as a ‘love’ instead (despite the user saving posts into a ‘saved posts’ folder). Again a small change, but one that can actually really impact your content, the reach of that content and the discoverability of that content (bloglovin’s explore page was based on saves), and a change that can affect your brand / business without your control or approval.

Sometimes these changes can benefit users, other times they don’t, the point with your blog is you design the tech, you control the software, and you manage the design … you are in control and changes that can considerably affect your following, your content, your discoverability, your business, are 100% at your liberty.

You get the benefit of users, engagement & traffic

If you’re building a following and gaining traction with your content, of course you want the benefit of that, because ultimately it’s those things that help you build a brand and a business of your own. But when you’re building a brand or creating a following on a platform that you don’t own or control, you risk things happening that are entirely out of your control (as mentioned above), but more than that you’re not always benefiting or gaining credit for the content you’re putting on those platforms. A great example of this is again bloglovin, a hugely popular platform for bloggers allowing content to be shared and discovered (and one I am a huge user and fan of). Whilst bloglovin certainly brings bloggers a lot (traffic, new users, the opportunity to get discovered) it doesn’t however always give YOU the credit for your content views. I wrote a whole feature on the issue here as well as some tips to help resolve it so I won’t go into the details now, but there are potentially 1000’s and 100,000’s of views that you are not getting credited on your google analytics, despite people reading and viewing it. And this isn’t only true to bloglovin, pinterest, instagram, snapchat all of course can face similar challenges in their own ways.

The benefit of your blog as a primary platform is that you are tracking and getting the credit for all the views, engagement and interaction with your content … and given our content is our product, and engagement with that content is our commercial opportunity, owning and getting credit for your content is absolutely essential.

It’s ‘evergreen’ for clients

Whilst influencers have managed to successfully commercialise the likes of instagram and snapchat to great affect, for many clients the fast pace nature of these social channels means they’re often one part of an ongoing social strategy, and usually supporting a much bigger content or communications strategy, therefore they have less budget and priority allocated to them. For most clients, rich, lasting (evergreen) and quality content is still an incredibly important and desired asset, not only does it provide them with mass reach, an opportunity to engage their target audiences with a rich experience of their brand (the editorial and imagery combined really provide an opportunity to deliver key messages and really bring to life the brand values and offering in a rich and engaging way), it also provides them an SEO and e-commerce benefit which is essential in advertising. So whilst social is certainly one revenue stream for bloggers, and one tool for advertisers, blogs, online publishers & youtube content is still and will still continue to be a critical part of any communications strategy, and given the nature of the content and the fact it truly is evergreen (unlike most social platforms), it can be a more profitable revenue stream for bloggers running their blogs as a business.

It’s a hub for all your content

But in this era of blogging and influencers, it isn’t about simply focussing on one thing, it’s about managing your content strategy across all your channels, from your blog and instagram to your pinterest and Facebook, to instagram and snapchat. There is absolutely no right or wrong way of doing it, its about defining your own brand and the channels that work for you, and importantly the content you want to share across these channels to help build one overall brand story and business. But whilst all your social platforms work in silo, your blog still and will always provide that hub for all your content, the destination for followers and readers to find everything and anything they want to in one place. Whether thats’s short snack-able ‘everyday’ content, long form rich and engaging content, videos, links to your social channels and curations of your favourite social feeds … your blog provides the hub for all of this, and can be evolved and adapted based on your, your ambition, your users and the market itself.

So while instagram may be the success tool of choice right now, don’t forget the importance of your blog, not least for the future success of your blogging empire.

How blogging full time can change your blog

Turning your blog into a full time career is something many bloggers and influencers dream of achieving, it’s become the ultimate success measure, and encouraged a whole generation of (largely) female entrepreneurs. I personally think it’s an incredible credit to our generation and a career to be proud of. But turning your blog into your career and full time employment isn’t all press events and holidays, it takes a lot of work, effort and not to mention commitment to sustain your blog as a career and maintain the level of passion and enthusiasm you had for it before it turned from luxury to necessity. And what comes with that change is a whole load of things that you might not otherwise would need to deal with …

5 WAYS BLOGGING FOR BUSINESS WILL CHANGE YOUR BLOG

Financial necessity

Firstly, blogging as a hobby places no necessity or urgency on earning money, it’s a bonus or a luxury that comes as a result of doing something you love. Some months you may gain work, others you might not, and that’s fine because it’s a hobby. However when your blog is your sole income (or at least a large part) regular projects and work is an essential and that may mean (unless you’re super fortunate) proactively seeking business and selling your blog to future clientele.

Continuous Creativity

When you have no pressure creativity and inspiration flows exceptionally easily, the moment you add pressure, deadlines and deliverables, inspiration and creativity can start to run a little dry. Blogging as a hobby comes with very little real pressure, however the moment you commercialise your content, and are required to make a living from your blog, pressure comes. So finding a way to sustain your inspiration and keep your content ideas flowing is super important.

Reality versus digitality

The other necessity when blogging for a living, is a real network, outside just digital conversations and interactions. Having a strong, solid and supportive network becomes a necessity. PR and agency relationships are absolutely essential, and events become a really important part of your networking strategy, not just a time to have fun (although they should still be that too). To be able to get regular work, PR agency’s, Networks, brands and even other bloggers need to know you, get you, like you, and want to give work your way.

Authenticity compromises

When money from content becomes an essential, there’s more requirement to protect and manage your blog authenticity. The balance between paid versus non paid content becomes really important, and readers trust becomes a precious entity you want to protect. One really interesting thing from my Q&A with the Pixi Woo sisters Sam and Nic Chapman was there limited brand collaborations, they truly limit the amount of videos they create as collaborations (in order not to jeopardise their brand or their readers), instead they diversify their income streams though things like events, product sales, and ambassadorship.

Commitment

Finally, it’s naive to believe blogging for a living would be an ‘easy life’, because actually blogging full time is actually about running a business for yourself, managing finances and partner contracts, with content production and creativity and ideation, not to mention new business and networking. Running your blog as a business requires serious passion, commitment and hard work. Just like I mentioned in my Pixi Woo Q&A feature, even though it’s an amazing career to create and have, the hours still remain long, the travel requires time, and the sustainability of your business lies in a true balance of commercial pursuits and content authenticity. The balance is absolutely essential to sustained success.

Do you blog for a living? What do you find the biggest struggle and the best perks?

How to recover from a blogging dip, feeling disheartened and discouraged and get motivated again

 This week, after 5 years of blogging i had a real moment where I genuinely thought about giving up. It’s not happened before in all the years i’ve blogged for, i’ve never missed a daily blog post and i’ve always felt totally motivated and inspired to keep going and to keep doing more and more for my blog and my blogs success. I’ve done this whilst also managing a full time (quite successful) career, which if i’m honest i never really take into account when I’m thinking about my blogging achievements. But this week, I think because i’ve been working so exceptionally hard on my blog, I just hit a block, I hit a horrible horrible wall, triggered i’m afraid to say through comparison. Comparing my blog to others. My success to others. And it left me feeling rotten, so disheartened, so demotivated, and in all honesty super upset. I felt like my blog had achieved nothing in return for all the work, I wondered why I hadn’t achieved the same page views and followers of others who might only blog twice a week, I wondered why I hadn’t earnt the money others had who were ‘selling’ content that i was giving for free, I wondered why I hadn’t got the collaboration opportunities other people had …  i literally just got swallowed up in this big black ugly hole. And it left me feeling utterly awful.

I lost total sight of my own journey, my own achievements and my own goals, and I compared my blog and it’s successes to those who are smashing it right now. I added no filter to back myself up (you know, like the fact i have a career too) and I lost sight of everything I know to be rational, logical and productive.

I felt like giving up. I felt like all my efforts were worth … well what? nothing.

But 24 hours later i’m back in a positive mindset. i’m focussed, remotivated and in many ways a little more savvy. I accept that whilst i’ve been sitting here waiting for everything to happen, others have probably been out there proactively pitching their businesses, building their brands more formally and putting the business side in action.  Perhaps i’ve been purist or naive, or just optimistic. But this little dip has taught me a few things, not least how to pick yourself up after an episode of negativity, feeling disheartened or demotivated. And I wanted to share a few of those things today.

5 WAYS TO GET OVER A BLOGGING DIP & GET MOTIVATED AGAIN

You need a break

It’s been 5 years, it’s probably about time I hit the floor and just wanted a break. And so I did. I wrote a brief (rather emotional) post & fortunately had already scheduled one for the following day. I had almost 24 hours blog free. I appreciate that’s nothing for many people, but for me, that was a lot. And I needed it, I needed to stop, take a break and just let go. We know how much breaks help productivity, but it really helped me mentally too, it allowed me to get back to my usual positive self without pressure or force.

You need to regain focus

I lost total sight of my journey and my goals. I compared everything I have to everything of other peoples, I broke the most important rule of all and compared myself to others. I got upset because I didn’t have what they had. What I needed was time out, and then a serious session dedicated to regaining my focus. I sat and reviewed 5 years of google analytics data, I pulled out the highs and the lows, I reviewed the last 60 days, the last 30 days and the last 1680 days … I got my mind back into my game, my numbers, my schedule, my numbers. It really helped. And within a few hours I was already thinking about new ideas and new goals. I regained my energy.

Set yourself new goals

And I channeled that energy into totally reshaping my goals. I lost focus, I saw opportunities i’d not had, and I decided I wanted more, a lot more. So I scribbled out three things I want to achieve, and now i’m working through line by line how I will try and get there. Importantly though, my goals are entirely based on improving my own personal bests.

Make small changes

Actually sometimes to feel a little re-energised and re-motivated about blogging you need to give things a little refresh, a little spring clean, a spruce up if you will. It doesn’t have to be big changes or a total redesign, but sometimes a few little tweaks here and there is enough to make you feel a little more love for your blog again, to make things feel new and to give you a fresh start.

Push yourself one step further

You don’t get what you don’t ask for right? When it comes to blogging I never ask, but I realise I’m missing out and decrementing my own opportunities by not proactively putting myself out there. So to genuinely get myself back in gear and in the driving site, i’ve pushed myself one step further and proactively looked to try something new, putting my blog and writing forward for something outside just my website.  It doesn’t really matter what you do to go one step further, but what matters is you push yourself and move out of your comfort zone. If you really want things to happen and success to come your way, sometimes you have to go that little bit further than you might think.

Whereever you are in your blogging journey, sometimes you hit a dip, you lose track of yourself and need a moment to regain focus. It’s normal and you are by no means alone. But what’s important is that you take the time you need to feel ready again, that you focus on your own journey and your own goals and thtat you start to enjoy yourself again.

Have you suffered with a breaking moment like I did? How did you overcome it?

The Free Plugins You Need To Boost Your Blog Success & Grow Your Traffic

When it comes to optimising your blog, maximising your content and ensuring your blog runs smoothly, the reality of running a blog becomes quite a mammoth one. The truth is you can do as much or as little with your blog as you like, success can be achieved either way. There are some bloggers out there who are globally renowned but have the most basic blog set ups and barely do anything to drive their growth and success beyond posting simple outfits everyday, there are other hugely successful bloggers who have mastered every trick in the book to maximise their blog, their content and their business and who have garnered success through clever and smart blog management.

The reality is unless you’re a tech master, you probably sit somewhere in the middle. And that’s absolutely fine. Because the good news is, these days there are tons of plugins, apps and widgets that can help us achieve the tech mastery that a few years back we’d require a computer scientist to set up. Today I wanted to share a few of the absolute best plugins you can add to your blog in a matter of seconds, that can actually make a huge impact on your blog success, and also help your traffic.

THE 5 PLUGINS YOU NEED TO HELP GROW YOUR BLOG NOW

Yoast SEO

Learning how to master SEO can be difficult (I recommend checking out my SEO tips post if you want to start to learn about SEO), but actually there’s a plugin out there that makes the entire process super simple, super quick and super hard to forget. Yoast SEO is probably the best SEO plugin their is for bloggers, it has a super friendly interface that sits at the bottom of your page when you’re writing your blog features, allowing you to define your keywoard, update your URL slug, add a meta description (the sentence or two that shows on search engines when your blog page shows) and beyond that reports on your ‘SEO’ scoring. It makes SEO so easy to maximise for every post you create, and given the importance of SEO on your blog traffic and discoverability, it should be an essential plugin for every blogger.

Up Prev & Related Posts

I’ve always had a ‘related post plugin added on my blog ever since I launched by blog back in 2011, it’s the perfect way to direct readers to other relatable content so not only can they easily discover other content they might enjoy, but ultimately it keeps readers on your blog (reducing your bounce rate) and helps drive page per session views (increasing your page views). There are tons of plugins out there that allow you to add related posts to your blog, but a slightly fancier, new plugin I’ve recently added to my own blog is ‘UpPrev’. Up Prev offers a ‘pop up’ widget allowing bloggers to discover new content, it’s non invasive as it sits at the side of your page, but at the same time it creates some stand out and is likely to drive higher click through rates than standard in page plugins. You can use Up Prev in many ways, from directing people to newer or older features, to random posts, to other posts within a specific category. And you can customise the aesthetics to fit seamlessly with your own blog design too.

Advanced Excerpt

if you read this post, then you’ll know that not all your Bloglovin page views are accurately captured by your tracking code, and that’s due to Bloglovin taking your content into their own platform within their app but also within shared features. The good news is you can avoid this issue by adding an excerpt to your blog … really all this means is that when people are reading your content through your RSS feed rather than on your site, they’ll only see a brief overview (for example a featured image and a 140 word excerpt) to read the full feature they are redirected back to you own site … where your page view is registered. You can read all about tracking your views accurately & the Bloglovin issue within this post … but the advanced excerpt plugin will allow you to start tracking your views more accurately.

Revive Old Post

This isn’t actually a plugin I’ve used historically but it is now I’ve just discovered and definitely one I’m going to add. I talked this week all about maximising the life of your content and ensuring old features still get traffic and views, beyond SEO, creating evergreen content & utilising back links, one of my tips was to ensure that you continue to share old posts on your social channels so new followers can discover content they may have missed. I’ve previously done this manually, but I discovered a plugin today called ‘Revive Old Post’ which effectively allows you to schedule and auto set tweets for old posts to go out across your social channels, in particular twitter.

Pinterest Attraction

We all know the value of social media in driving traffic to our sites, so social share buttons are a no brainer and there are tons of plugins out there to help with this, but I’m only really realising now the value of Pinterest at driving blog traffic (some big bloggers gain 70% + of their traffic from pinterest). I’m pretty late to the game, but regardless I’m keen to up my Pinterest game and ensure I’m maximising the potential traffic there is to be had. One way of doing that is by ensuring that all your images are easily pin-able from your blog and therefore always directing back to your blog (source code), there are loads of Pinterest plugins & options out there, but the most optimum option is to have a pin button show when a reader hovers on your image (rather than just a button at the end of your post). Encouraging people to pin images directly from your site, means image click traffic will always revert straight back to your blog. May sound simple, but the simple things always work the hardest.

Plus a Few More For Luck:

These aren’t necessarily plugins that will help you track, grow and boost your blog traffic and success, but they’re still super brilliant and well worth adding to your site to improve the overall functionality & consumer experience. These are: Super Cache (helps improve load times), Use Any Font (allows you to add new or custom fonts to your website for greater personalisation), Reward Style (if you’re part of the RS affiliate programme adding the plugin to your blog will allow you to add shop-able images to each post) & Disqus (I don’t actually use disqus, but love other bloggers that have it. It makes commenting simple and allows you to easily respond and engage with readers).

And finally it’s not just about growing your blog traffic, it’s about tracking it properly too and that’s where Jet Pack comes in. Jet Pack has tons of benefits and tons of different functions, from site tracking and security to design customisation and functions like related posts and contact forms, all of which are really helpful to bloggers. But for me, it’s the site tracking I find a really helpful and such a useful tool to have on my blog dashboard. Don’t get me wrong I log in to Google analytics at least once a day (and nothing compares to GA for tracking and analytics), but it’s so helpful having jet-pack stats readily available on my home screen.

So there you have it, some fab free plugins for your blog that can genuinely help boost your blog traffic and improve your overall blog success.

I’d love to know if there are any plugins you recommend?

How to drive traffic to old posts and increase the life of your content

If like me you blog daily then you’ll know full well that there are two downsides to this frequency of posting, firstly the time it takes, but secondly the shortened life of each piece of content you produce. This isn’t just an issue daily bloggers face but something we all face, we put so much work and effort into creating content for our blog, but sadly the content is soon replaced with new features and delegated to your archive pages.

Fortunately there are a few tricks to improving the life of your content, driving traffic to your old posts which improve your search visibility, and importantly increasing your overall blog traffic as a result, so today I wanted to share 5 super simple ways that you can do this.

5 WAYS TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR OLD POSTS & BOOST YOUR TRAFFIC

Create evergreen content

Firstly when it comes to the sort of content your creating, why not try creating more ‘evergren’ content, this type of content is not really seasonal nor topical, it’s the sort of content that’s forever relevant and interesting to people looking for specific information. My photography tutorials would be a great example of evergreen content, always relevant and therefore likely to always bring traffic from people looking to learn to use their DSLR. Maximizing your SEO is also key to making this content evergreen.

SEO like a boss

Which leads me quite nicely to point two, SEO. SEO affects your contents discoverability on search engines, if you have good SEO, search engines will share your content in response to a relevant search query. All content requires good SEO (you can read my tips for mastering your SEO here), but when it comes to driving traffic to your old posts, SEO becomes even more important … (because it’ll mean your content no matter how old is shared in response to a relevant search query – evergreen content & seo is a winning combination). SEO can be hard for some people to master, luckily there are places similar to www.seoai.co.uk that might be able to help with this issue.

Use social to keep traffic coming

When you review your google analytics you’ll probably notice that quite a large chunk of your traffic comes from social referrals, the likes of twitter, Facebook, even Pinterest, mostly this will be you or other people sharing links to your features. Now we all share our latest posts on our social channels (if you don’t you’re missing a trick), but how often do you share older posts? Assuming your posts are still quality and relevant, why not mix up your social schedule and start sharing a mixture of new and old content, and pinning your older pinks. More often than not something you wrote about 6 months ago will be topical again now, and your audience may have grown or differed, so don’t forget to share it and maximise the opportunity to reach and share old content with your new readers / followers. It’s also a great way of increasing engagement with your content too.

Make old content easily discoverable on your website

There are simple design tweaks you can make to your blog which means older posts are still easily findable and discoverable to readers. The two most noticeable ways to do this are by adding a ‘you might also like’ feature to the bottom of each post (showing related features), so that people who have visited your site and enjoyed your content can go and read other similar features you’ve written (there are tons of simple widgets you can use too add this), and the second way is by adding a ‘popular posts’ function to your blog. This is a great way to ensure your most liked, viewed and commented features still have a precedes on your home page, despite being perhaps 3 years old.

Back link to relevant features

My final tip technically does fall into SEO, but I wanted to call it out as it’s a really great way of driving traffic to other posts on your blog and also boosting your blogs rankings on search too … and that’s deep link back links. Simply put, linking to your old features within new features. Regardless of the technical see benefits to doing this, the simple benefit is that it allows readers to discover other relevant posts you’ve written, or at least find further information or read more about a specific topic. I do this quite a lot within my tips features, where I may be touching briefly on or refering to a subject in one post, but I may have a really detailed post about the topic in a separate post (just like SEO today for example).

Do you have any other tips or advice for increasing the traffic to your old blog posts and evergreen content? Did you find these tips helpful?