- Welcome to The Journey.
Today, we're gonna talk about how to increase blog traffic
with 13 proven tactics.
Sam, did you know research shows that 61% of businesses
say that their biggest challenge is generating more traffic
and more leads?
- I didn't know that.
- So listen, if you don't wanna fall into this group,
here's what you wanna do.
You wanna learn how to publicize your blog
and this is gonna help you to generate more traffic,
more customers and spread more word of mouth.
- So to help you get started, we have 13 tips.
- Starting with promoting your blog on social media.
What a great place too.
Oftentimes businesses, they're posting on social media
and eventually they kind of hit that writer's blog like,
"Oh, what do I post today?"
Well, throw this into a calendar.
Get a calendar, plan out your posts
and maybe even on a weekly basis, maybe on a monthly basis,
choose to promote your blog in a creative way
on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook.
- And while you're promoting this on social media,
reach out to your friends and family.
They are the best people to encourage
to like comment and even share your post
'cause when they do those things,
you're opening up into new networks
whom you may never have had the opportunity to reach out to.
- Totally.
Speaking of new networks of folks
that maybe never heard of you before,
I encourage you to do guest blogging as well.
I know I do it on the GoDaddy team.
Whenever we do a webinar with other partners out there
in the marketing world.
After we do the webinar,
one of the things we do is like,
"Hey, this was a great webinar.
"We recorded it.
"We're gonna put it on our blog.
"Do you guys have a blog?"
And if that other company does,
we're like, "Let's do a guest blog."
So we'll have their blog that they did
and put on our site and vice versa
and it's just another great way
to get in front of new customers,
who've maybe never heard about you before.
- And collaboration is so much better than competition.
Don't be afraid.
There are people out there
that wants to join forces with you
to actually promote each other.
- And really important for your blog
when you are actually posting on there
and we're talking about social media,
make sure you have an easy way
for that traffic to share the blog posts
to social media platforms,
to even help you get in front of more
new customers and fans.
So I have an example here, GoDaddy, our blog.
This is a article that my teammate wrote recently,
Caroline Barker, shout out! - Shout out to Caroline.
- [Emma] It's for salons and it's about Instagram
and like How To Rejuvenate Your Instagram For 2020,
a very, very top of mind article.
But notice here on the left hand side,
you can share it to tweet it on Twitter,
you can share it to Facebook, et cetera.
So it's as simple as this, I go and I click on Twitter
and right away, it not only populates the link
but even shows the title there.
And then I can add a caption too like, "Read this article.
"It was rad and super helpful, #Instagram."
So this is just another tip that I would have
for every blog post that you do.
Make sure it's super easy for that traffic there,
to share it to social.
- And another little tip, something else that you can do.
If you have a certain aha moment in your blog
that you really want people to pay attention to,
this is an advanced tip,
you can actually make that small section tweetable
or you could share it to Facebook
and add that necessary widget so that people can add that--
- It's a great point, Sam. - To their social media.
- Another great point,
find your niche.
Focus in on what it is that makes you unique
and that's gonna also help influence your blog.
So I wanna travel over here
to one of my favorite clothing brands, Aviator Nation
and what I love about the blog,
the owner, Paige,
she has a passion for the 70s.
And not just the 70s but the surf culture
and this time period,
as well as the fashion then and the music then.
When you go to the blog,
you get that sense of her story, her vibe,
she even goes into the fashion, the music, the collection.
And in addition to some of the partnerships they have
like even with SoulCycle and Austin City Limits.
- Wow. - Yeah.
- And I know many people were saying,
"Oh, I wanna be able to reach everyone."
However, when you narrow your focus,
you'll be able to find very enthusiastic brand ambassadors
that'll be just eating up what you have to do.
So narrow that focus, find that niche
and you'll have those loyal brand ambassadors
just coming to spread the word about you.
- Yeah, send me your shirt.
I'll rep it on The Journey.
And also people like it when you keep it simple.
So make sure your blog is simple
in that, think about your audience.
They wanna know
exactly what they're getting themselves into
when they come to your blog.
- So next tip is SEO.
You don't wanna just write about everything and anything.
You wanna think about what is your audience
gonna be looking for?
What are they gonna be searching for online?
There are some ways of researching these keywords
to make sure that you're writing with a purpose
and these things that your audience is gonna be looking for,
like for instance, the Aviator Nation,
maybe things related to 70s or disco.
- Surf.
- Exactly, things that you know your loyal fans
are gonna be looking for. - Southern California.
Tip number five, publish consistently.
You have readers,
viewers anticipating what you're putting out there.
I know for The Journey,
we post two to three times a week
and that helps with retention.
So you wanna make sure you're incentivizing people
to come back.
You don't wanna just go and post once
and then totally ghost them.
- And then let them know,
"Hey, we have fresh content coming out
"Mondays and Wednesdays,"
so people know when to expect it and then they get excited.
They'll know to, "Okay, let me show up
"because I know every Monday and Wednesday,"
whatever works for you
but stick to it because you don't wanna lose those people
that have already invested into being a reader
or an audience member for your blog.
- All right, number six,
turn readers into subscribers.
You can't just sit back
and hope that they're gonna return to your blog
or gosh, I really hope they see
that social media post about it and they're gonna return.
Get them on that email newsletter
and that way, you can send them a nice friendly reminder
to one of your blog posts.
- And to make sure that they are on your email list,
call to action, let them know, "Hey, subscribe here."
You can add that at the bottom of your blog
so they know what to do.
Just a simple, tell them, "Hey, enter in your email
"so you're notified when we have this coming out."
And number seven, you wanna have the right cadence.
We did talk about scheduling your content
and having specific days for it to go out.
At the same time, you wanna know how many times
it's gonna be good for you.
Two times could be good for others.
Maybe once is for you, just play around with it.
Experiment.
- And if you're say a salon,
how often can you keep posting about how to dye your hair
or what styles are in.
By the way, balayage is still very cool.
So you wanna think about it.
You don't wanna lose the quality in your posts
and cadence is gonna help you to maintain quality.
- And plus people,
they don't necessarily wanna see something
from you everyday.
So take your time, figure out how much is enough,
just play around with it.
- Number eight, invite industry experts to guest blog.
So we talked about this very briefly earlier,
when we do our webinars with other industry experts.
And what's really cool
is they have an expertise
outside of what we're doing at GoDaddy.
And so they can come in,
do a post and that collaboration then allows us as a company
to get in front of a new audience.
- And it's a great way for you to leverage their fans.
They may not have known that you are offering
the different types of content
so they could become aware of you
and then potentially become a new fan of yours.
- Yeah, and then you're already getting credibility, right?
Because they're already fans of this guest blogger.
So then you have this instilled trust.
Number nine, balance your content and ads.
I know for me, when I go to a blog
and there's a pop up Window,
a little pesky popup Window, it's distracting,
it throws me off.
And also if you get hit with more ads,
I just wanna leave.
The credibility goes down, it feels like spam, so I abort.
- All right, so for number 10, monitor your load time.
40% of people say that they'll leave a page
if it hasn't loaded after three seconds.
And you wanna keep a close eye on this
because you take pride in your blog
and maybe you're adding things to it
and as you add things,
you don't know how it's affecting the load time.
So you wanna keep an eye on this
because you want your people to have a positive experience.
So you can use tools like Google's PageSpeed
to make sure that load time is still efficient.
- Number 11, make it easy for journalists to contact you.
So this is really a cool way.
Not just journalists,
but influencers to learn about you, collab with you
and then once again, what is that gonna help do?
Drive traffic to your blog.
A great place to do this,
really beef up your About Us section.
So let's go back over to my friends at Aviator Nation
and check out their About Business section.
So here's where I learned the story about Paige,
the founder and creative,
the whole vision that she got
about the California based brand.
And then you go into not only the story,
which is beefed up as they say, and the unique story
but there's great copy and images
that really embrace
her vibe and the brand.
One thing that I might advise
if Paige and I were to grab a cup of coffee
or catch some waves, I'd say add video.
I think she's super personable, I know she plays music.
It'd be cool to see that.
I know they do a great job of that on Instagram.
But this is where you tell your unique story
and then also you'll notice the partnerships that they have.
They're listed in here from South by Southwest
to the X Games
to Lollapalooza.
And that's another great place
where they're sharing their story,
sharing their partnerships.
So if when journalists or other influencers come across,
they get an idea of like,
"Oh yeah, this makes sense for us
"as you know, ACL to collab with Aviator Nation,"
because look who they partnered with in the past.
- So for tip number 12, replicate your success.
Now it may take some time to actually find your cadence
and get everything just right.
But once you do, keep it that way.
You've worked hard,
so you just continue to go with what works.
- And finally, number 13,
track which marketing efforts work best.
So set some milestones weekly, monthly, quarterly
and work as hard as you can
until you reach those milestones.
Track it, reflect on it and stay inspired.
By tackling your niche, posting consistently.
- And building relationships with your readers,
other journalists or influencers,
you'll be sure fire on your way
to getting more traffic to your blog.
- That's a wrap.
This is The Journey.
You just learned how to drive more traffic
to your blog site.
Be sure to comment below, like this video.
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when we have fresh new content coming out.
This is The Journey, we'll see you next time.