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Traffic Generation & Growth

Everything You Need to Know about Being a Hometalk Blogger

September 29, 2017 by Thane West 2 Comments

Want to know more about being a Hometalk Blogger and how you can use Hometalk to drive more pageviews, gain subscribers, and earn money? Then read on.

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I first heard about Hometalk back in 2015 from a blogging friend – Amanda of It’s a Fabulous Life.

She was raving about how she was gaining massive pageviews from the Hometalk for a recent post she shared there about how to dye Easter eggs with silk ties (totally cool by the way!).

However, others in our common local blogging group said they didn’t like sharing posts on Hometalk because they didn’t see pageviews back to their site and were then essentially giving free content to Hometalk, which they didn’t like.

So Amanda filled me in on her secrets of capturing some of the thousands and thousands of views her post on Hometalk was gathering so that I could do the same thing.

I am forever thankful for her!

Over my 2.5 year relationship with Hometalk, they’ve driven nearly 100,000 pageviews to my site, earned me over 700 email subscribers (at least), helped me sell multiple copies of my ebook, and earned me over $1000 from promoting their content on Pinterest and doing live demonstrations on their Facebook pages.

But, let’s backtrack a little bit, shall we?

What is Hometalk?

Hometalk is the “world’s largest DIY community.” It’s a user-generated sharing site for all things Home and Garden DIY. Hometalk receives 66 million page views a month and boasts over 12 million DIYers who share content, ask questions, and answer questions about all things Home and Garden regularly.

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From Holly at Hometalk

Content found on their site includes ideas, photos, and answers to things about:

  • cleaning
  • crafts
  • gardening
  • home decor
  • home maintenance and repair
  • makeovers (not the beauty kind)
  • organizing
  • outdoor living
  • painted furniture
  • painting techniques
  • remodeling
  • repurposing
  • seasonal decor
  • woodwork

They also have a huge social following: their Facebook page is massive with over 6.5 million fans. Their Instagram account has over 63,000 followers, and their Pinterest account has over 915,000 followers. Their email list is in the millions as well.

This is not some small site. It’s a site that is full of real, engaged followers and it’s growing. 

Who Can Join Hometalk and How Do You Join Hometalk?

Anyone can join Hometalk and start sharing their latest DIY projects and asking questions about Home and Garden DIY, not just bloggers. It’s a true community of commenters and engaged users. Joining is super easy.

When you head to Hometalk.com, go to the top right-hand corner of their homepage and click the “Join Now” button.

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You can either signup with a Facebook account, or sign up manually by simply putting in your email address, name, password, and zipcode. They also ask you to upload a profile picture (or you can import your profile picture from Facebook).

However, underneath the profile photo, they ask an important question: “Using Hometalk for your blog or business? Click here.”  Click it.how-do-you-join-hometalk-as-a-blogger-4979425

You will now see “Get more visibility and reach for your blog or business today! Find out more.”

When you hover over “Find out more” it says:

Promote Your Blog on Hometalk

1,000,000+ people per month view the projects that bloggers just like you post on Hometalk. Get ready for referral traffic!

Promote Your Business on Hometalk

Get your business discovered on the largest home & garden social platform on the Web. Share photos of your work and answer questions to generate business.

There are also two new boxes available to you to click on “My blog” and “My Business.” When you click the circle for “My Blog” it will provide another new drop-down option where you will enter your blog’s url.how-do-you-join-hometalk-as-a-blogger-or-business-5677300

Hit the blue “Save” button and you are officially the newest member of Hometalk!

How Do I Use Hometalk as a Blogger?

First, set up your profile. You can do this under your profile picture in the top right corner. Fill in all the information about yourself, create a custom profile page name (likely your blog handle), fill out the About Me section, and even your favorite area of home improvement.

If for some reason you didn’t tell Hometalk you were a blogger when you first joined the site, simply click the button that says “I am a blogger” and enter your blog url.

Next, go to your Account Status tab. It should say “You are currently a Blogger.” You can change the status of your account here to a regular member account, a professional account, or totally deactivate your account too if you wish.

Next, fill out and connect all your social media channels by visiting that tab in your profile settings. You want people to follow you!

And now it’s time to post a project!

How Do You Post a Project to Hometalk?

Every user is welcome to post a project to Hometalk. It’s how the community works!

As a blogger, you will post projects to Hometalk just like every other user – by clicking the “Post a Project” button at the top right of your screen.

When you come to this screen, you’ll be promoted to title your project and start sharing your project.

It gives you options to add text, add pictures, add video links, add hashtags, materials used for the project, estimated costs, difficulty level, and even add hyperlinks (you’re limited to three per post). Photos are added between text blocks in the editor and can be moved around (drop and drag style) as needed.

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Fill out all the extra details as it makes your post more searchable and more user-friendly.

Every Hometalk Project Post has to meet the following requirements in order for it to get posted:

  • 100 words
  • 3 Pictures
  • No more than 3 hyperlinks

Hometalk also automatically saves your drafts now too, so worries if you want to come back to it before hitting “Post,” or your computer freezes while you’re working on it.

You can schedule the project to go out at a certain time or day (I’ve never used this feature) or simply hit “POST” when you are done creating the content. You can also preview it before you hit “Post” to make sure it looks okay.

Posting projects is really super simple and doesn’t take much time at all, especially if you’re mostly copying and pasting from your own blog posts.

After you post your projects to Hometalk, others can find your posts in search and on the homepage, your Hometalk profile, and other places. You will likely receive at least a few comments and some traffic to the post without having to do much of anything to promote it.

Be sure to reply to any comments and questions you receive on your post!

You can keep track of the number of views your post has received at the top of the post underneath the title of the post after the first day of it being live on Hometalk; the first day it will simply say “New” there instead.hometalk-project-pageviews-6641702

If you are lucky, Hometalk may even pick up your projects and feature them on their Facebook page or emails! They regularly select new high-quality content to share on their social channels (namely Facebook) which can bring you Hometalk followers and referral traffic back to your site (more about how to get more click-throughs in a bit).

To increase your chances of people naturally finding your Hometalk posts, use relevant hashtags (Hometalk regularly emails their Hometalk bloggers with a hashtag calendar so be sure you’re on their email list), post seasonal and trending projects, use beautiful photos, clear well-written instructions, and in-process photos.

Hometalk Traffic Program for Bloggers

Because Hometalk values its best content contributors (bloggers), it’s created several various blogger programs. Their main one and easiest one to participate in is called “The Hometalk Traffic Program.”

Basically, the Hometalk Traffic Program rewards Hometalk bloggers who share regular high-quality content to their site with direct links to your website from their emails.*

This is huge. HUGE. Their daily email list is massive and the traffic goes straight to your site, not to your project on Hometalk first.

Being featured in their emails has brought me over 6,000 and over 7,000 pageviews in a single day and additional perks like hundreds of email subscribers (I’ll talk more about that in a minute too).

*One note about the program: your direct feature will be one of a “rotation of direct links” in their email. This means Hometalk will feature four different blogger links within the same email, with the links rotating so that email subscribers will receive any one of the four links. This means if you receive their daily emails, you might not see your link there, though other subscribers will.

To take advantage of this amazing opportunity as a Hometalk blogger, you do not need to do anything special. You do not need to “sign up” for it.

If you are a registered blogger user, you automatically qualify for this program if you meet the following criteria:

  • Share 3 high-quality posts (projects) within a 90-day period. The 90-day period applies retroactively.
  • Your blog must be in the English language.
  • You must have three blog links saved under your account settings for the Hometalk editors to choose from.

In order for a Hometalk post to be considered “High Quality” it must meet the following criteria:

  • At least 200 words
  • Contains 4 pictures
  • Includes a before picture and a completed after picture
  • Includes a maximum of 3 blog links, all of which must be hyperlinked to your blog
  • Include a full description of what you accomplished in your post
  • Include enough instruction so that the reader can understand what you did and generally replicate your project

They give this Hometalk post as an example.

To maximize the amount of click-throughs your direct feature will receive, choose to submit links to blog posts that have in-process, or step-by-step, photos! Hometalk is all about the process photos and has trained its readers to like them. These have done better for me than other content I’ve submitted to them to feature.

Featured on Hometalk.com

How to Drive Traffic from Your Hometalk Post to Your Website

Remember how at the beginning of this blog post I said that there were some bloggers who did not like sharing their content to Hometalk because they didn’t see much traffic come from sharing their content on Hometalk? Well, it’s because you have to write your posts in such a way to encourage people to click through. If you don’t, you will not see the traffic you’d like to see!

If you give away all the details on how to complete your project, the incentive to click through to your blog post on your site is little to none.

Which is why you should consider the following tactics when posting a project to Hometalk in order to drive more traffic to your blog:

  • Don’t give away measurements in the post. Say things like “Mix the hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, liquid dishwashing soap, and lavender essential oil altogether in the spray bottle. See my post for full directions [hyperlink].”
  • Don’t share every step. Instead, write something like “Find out the final steps on our blog! You won’t believe how easy it is! [hyperlink]”
  • Only share a small portion of larger multi-step projects, like room reveals and makeovers and encourage people to click through to see how the small project looks in the larger completed project that is on your site.
  • Don’t share where you bought certain non-common supplies. Instead, say something like “Find out where I found this great [piece] on my blog!” in your post.
  • Don’t share all the fine little details and processes involved in your project (meaning don’t copy and paste your entire blog post). Encourage them to get the full instructions on your site in the middle of the post, not just at the end.
  • Tell them you have more great content on [topic] on your site and link to the landing page of projects on that topic on your website.
  • Create an email opt-in incentive that relates to your project and link to a blog post about it. It can be a handy printable instruction sheet of the project, additional tips and tricks about [topic], or pretty printables that go along with the project somehow.
  • Include a link to a relevant product you sell. For example, at the bottom of my cleaning Hometalk posts, I say “If you love these type of practical cleaning tips for everyday things, be sure to check out Speed Clean the Deep Clean: A Collection of Time-Saving Cleaning Tutorials and Tips for Busy Moms! It has 50+ cleaning tutorials and tips to help you get every area of your home looking great, including this one!”

Even with using the above tactics, never expect to see a click-through rate higher than about 10%. People are busy and looking for inspiration often rather than full details right now. Many also don’t want to leave the Hometalk site, and simply want the full tutorial on Hometalk and are too lazy/busy or stubborn to click through for all the details in your post.

But, if Hometalk shares your post on their social channels or in their emails, and it does well, 2-10% referral traffic can add up, especially if it starts to amass tens of thousands of views, if not more!

My best Hometalk project has garnered an astounding 1,629,000 views. But, despite using many of the above tactics to encourage people to click through, I’ve only seen about a 3.5-5% click-through rate to my blog. But, that still equals out to about 34,500 pageviews!

In total for the various projects I’ve written for Hometalk over the last 2.5 years (which is only 27 at the moment), I’ve seen 56,456 referral pageviews from their site. But, I’ve seen another 40,307 pageviews from their email direct features, for a total of 97,063 pageviews! And that’s just for the traffic I’ve been able to see show up in my Google Analytics.

Those pageviews equal huge spikes in ad revenue. Those pageviews equal huge spikes in email subscribers. Those pageviews equal spikes in affiliate income. Those pageviews equal more sales of my cleaning ebook.

Optimize Your Blog Posts for Earnings and Subscribers

Whenever you share content to Hometalk, make sure your corresponding blog post is optimized for the traffic coming your way. It’s a fresh new audience checking out your site so be sure to wow them and capture them the best you can.

For me, this means I have email subscriber incentives related to the blog post content and multiple sign-up forms and pop-ups encouraging them to signup for my email list. And it’s worked. The day I received a direct feature in a Hometalk email, I received about 300 new email subscribers (and it could have been more but my ESP thought there was something spammy going on and temporarily suspended my account)!

If you have related products that you sell, be sure to highlight them prominently in your posts to help drive new sales.

Make sure you have ads set up on your site and have optimized with your ad provider so that you can make the most money possible.

Lastly, add in relevant affiliate links wherever possible in the post to increase your affiliate commissions! Any easy place to add affiliate links is your materials list!

To help your traffic continue, be sure to install easy to use and find social share buttons! You can turn direct traffic into on-going Pinterest traffic if enough people start pinning your content (it’s happened to me!). You can also have it take off on Facebook or other networks so have share buttons installed on your site!

Gaining traffic, subscribers, followers, and money from Hometalk is a fun and rewarding endeavor that involves very little time and effort! I highly encourage you to become a Hometalker and start sharing your amazing blog content with a fresh new audience!

Be sure to check out my second post about working with Hometalk to make money directly from them! 

Filed Under: Monetization, Traffic Generation & Growth

12 Ultra Efficient Content Marketing Tools for Bloggers

April 19, 2016 by Linda Craig Leave a Comment

Content is all about quality! If you manage to produce greater quantity without affecting the level of quality, then good for you! However, there is another aspect you mustn’t neglect: content marketing. Without it, the quality and quantity of content you publish doesn’t really matter.

The main question for every blogger, website owner, and marketer is: “how can I create awesome content, publish it at the right time, and get the attention of as many readers as possible?” Let’s see if we can come up with the simplest answer: you have to use the right tools.

Content marketing doesn’t start after you write the posts; you have to think about the promotion before you even start considering topic ideas. In the continuation, you’ll find a list of 12 efficient content marketing tools that will make your work easier.girl-sitting-on-the-floor-with-a-laptop-raising-his-arms-with-a-look-of-success

Quick Sprout

Before you can promote content effectively, you have to make sure you’re better than the competition. With this tool, you can analyze the content and performance of any website. You can be inspired by the posts that achieved the greatest popularity on social media.

Quora

Quora gives you access to some really interesting questions your target audience has, as well as to answers by experts. If you’re looking for topics that would perform well upon publication, this is the place where you can discover them.

Assignment Masters

So you discovered the perfect topic for your next post, but it’s outside your comfort zone and you don’t have what it takes to cover it? You can collaborate with a professional writer from the specific niche to write great content. In addition to writing assistance, Assignment Masters also offers editing services that will get your posts ready for promotion in no time.

Death to the Stock Photo

Paying for images is something that all bloggers and website owners would like to avoid, so this project will certainly make you happy. Once you subscribe, you’ll start receiving emails with links to the new collections of high-resolution lifestyle photos that you can feature for free.

Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer

Is your headline intellectual, spiritual, empathetic, or nothing at all? It’s very important to get the headline right, since it’s the aspect of your post that attract the most attention and helps you promote the content as effectively as possible. With this Headline Analyzer, you’ll get a score for the emotional marketing value of your headline.

KingSumo Headlines

The tool enables you to run A/B tests of the headlines – you provide few alternative titles for the post, and the tool shows them to different groups of visitors. Then, you get a report that shows you which headline gave the best performance.

GIMP

It’s great when you find the perfect photo for free, but it’s even more awesome when you create unique visual content to accompany your posts. Photoshop is the first option that comes to mind when you think of photo manipulation, but guess what: GIMP can do the same things for free.

Click to Tweet

Twitter is one of the most important content marketing tools you can use for free. This tool enables you to take fractions of your blog posts and share them as tweets. The best part is that your readers can do the same. When you create tweetable content, you will notice how the number of visits at your blog/websites is getting greater by the day.

Filament

If you want to deliver exactly what your audience needs, you have to listen. Filament will inform you about the visitors’ behavior and sharing at your site, as well as about its traffic patterns. Then, you’ll get automatic tips on how to improve the effect your content achieves. That’s what marketing is all about.

Buffer

Your content will achieve maximum impact only if you promote it at the right time. You have to follow the social media habits of your audience, and then you should serve your new posts during traffic peaks. With Buffer, you can schedule the publication of your social media posts at the right time.

MailChimp

Email marketing is more important than you think. If someone appreciates your posts so much that he subscribes to get email updates, you have to make the messages perfect! MailChimp is a pretty simple tool that enables you to create beautiful emails and send them to your list of contacts.

Google Webmaster Tools

You have to think about the rank your posts achieve on Google search, since that’s how many people can locate them. Among all different SEO tools you can locate online, Google Webmaster is untouchable. You can easily discover how you rank in the results for certain keywords, and then you can develop a link-building strategy that will help you achieve better results.

Content marketing is more complex than it initially seems. You can’t limit yourself to links posted on Facebook and Twitter; you have to develop an effective strategy that will get more audience at your site. The above-listed tools will support you on the mission.

Filed Under: Email Newsletters, Headlines, Photography and Images, Scheduling Tools, SEO, Time Management, Traffic Generation & Growth, Twitter Tagged With: buffer, content marketing tools, Mailchimp, photo editing, scheduling tools, stock photos

Why You Need to Use Pinterest Group Boards and How to Do It

February 11, 2016 by Thane West 3 Comments

You need to join group Pinterest boards!

If there was one thing that really, really helped me go from hundreds of pageviews a day to well over a thousand each day, it was Pinterest.pinterest-group-boards-682x1024-1044364

But, there were several things I did not know about Pinterest when I decided to go “Pro” with my blog back in August 2013, as I only had a personal account set up at the time.

I quickly learned that one of the simplest and smartest ways you can go big on Pinterest and gain a ton of traffic to your great blog content is by joining and pinning to group boards.

Group Boards on Pinterest

I honestly didn’t even know what group boards were until about November of 2013. And then through some blog groups started to hear more and more about them, but I personally didn’t follow any (that I was aware of) and didn’t know what the big deal was about them.

But, I was told by much bigger bloggers than I that I needed to join group Pinterest boards, and large group Pinterest boards.

They were absolutely right!

Nothing has grown my following and traffic more than group boards on Pinterest. Pinterest is hands down my biggest traffic driver and will likely always be my #1 traffic referrer. The key to gaining lots and lots of traffic from Pinterest lies in group boards, your pinning frequency, and the quality of your images and post.

But what is a Group Pinterest Board?

A group Pinterest board is someone’s personal Pinterest board that they choose to allow other people, called contributors, pin to as well. It can be as simple as allowing your BFF to pin stuff to one of your boards, and as complicated as having hundreds of people pinning to a board.

How do I know if a Pinterest board is a group board?

You can tell a Pinterest board is a group board because at the top right of a board, next to the title, there is little grouping of three shadow people (when looking at the board widget on someone’s profile or in search results). That signifies it is a group board.

If you visit a board page and see multiple accounts listed at the top left of the board, it is a group board.

Should I Create a Group Pinterest Board?

Probably not, unless you are a big blogger with a large following on Pinterest (i.e. several thousand followers): otherwise, I wouldn’t worry too much about creating your own group boards just yet. I have three group boards: Cleaning, Instilling Values in Children, and another for a co-hosted link party).

Here is why I haven’t created more:

  1. I don’t have a huge following. A new board of mine only has about 1300 followers (when I originally wrote this post). It important to note that your profile will have a large count number on it than a new board you create. This is because some people only follow one or a few of my boards and not all of your boards. Only those who follow all of your boards will be following any new boards you create.
  2. Creating group boards doesn’t equal growing a large new following because only people who follow all of your boards or that particular board will see the content anyway. This means if a big blogger with tens of thousands of followers joins your group board, that board will still only have the amount of followers you, the owner of the board, have, so roughly 1300 for one of my boards.
  3. People don’t generally want to join small group boards. It’s kind of a waste of their time to join and pin to because small boards don’t usually see a lot of clicks and repins.
  4. It can be a pain to monitor group boards. It’s fun to dream big and want to create group boards, especially for your niche, but with group boards often comes spam, especially if you allow people you don’t know on your board. Some may pin appropriate (to the board) content that you then have to delete. They may also be pinning the same content again and again. A good group board is monitored by the owner and cleaned up as necessary. I don’t want to spend a ton of time doing that!

If you want to create a group board, I suggest getting some of your blogging buddies involved, and find out who has the biggest following, and have them start the board.

What kind of group boards should I join?

There are literally thousands of group boards on Pinterest. And some cover very specific niches (like the color blue) and others very broad topics (The Best of Pinterest). Some are accepting new contributors and others are not.

The type of boards you should join greatly depends on what you write about. While you can certainly join any and every group board your heart desires (as long as the owner of the board or another contributor adds you), this is really about promoting your own content.

For example, I wouldn’t join a fashion group Pinterest board because I don’t write about fashion nor do I really care about fashion, and it’s not what my ideal reader is interested in. But, I would join a dozen or so kid-related group Pinterest boards because I write about family and parenting and occasionally kids activities too.

Even though I said I don’t make group boards because I have a “small” following, that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t join boards that have less than a 1000 followers. Because, some small boards still see a ton of repins or could be one of the few in your niche.

The more boards you join the wider the audience that will have the opportunity to see your posts and pins. But, be aware you may not get much back (in terms of PVs or repins) from pinning to a group board that only has 300 followers.

Group Pinterest Board Rules

Some group boards are very specific as to what you can pin to their board and how often. Please respect the owner’s wishes or you may get kicked off the board or reported for spam.

Some board owners only want you to pin your original content from your blog to their group board, and only once a day, once a week, or once a month. Others let you pin from anyone’s site or blog and often as you’d like, or up to X times a day.

Whatever they are, don’t be a rude contributor: play by the house rules.

A big part of that is only pinning applicable content to appropriate boards, even though it may be tempting to post your killer food recipe to a very large group board on parenting because pins do really well on that board. Don’t do it though. Don’t pin unrelated content just because you want it to repinned. That will be considered spam.

How do I find a Group Pinterest Board?

This can be done in several different ways. One way is to check out some big bloggers in your niche(s) and scroll through their boards and see what group boards they contribute to and ask to join those boards (I’ll tell you how next). Remember group boards will have three shadow people at the top right.

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However, that can be very time consuming and difficult! Here are some places to go to find group boards to join:

  • Pinterest Collaborative Boards –  Facebook Group (My #1 Source)
  • The Pin Junkie Group Listing by Category
  • PinGroupie.com
  • Board Deck HQ
  • Group Boards on Pinterest
  • Other Facebook/Google+ Blog Groups you belong to
  • Ask your friends to invite you to group boards they have joined

How do I Join a Group Pinterest Board?

When you see a board that you would like to join, click on the board. When you open a board and see all the pins, most group boards accepting new contributors will have information at the top in the description area as to how to join and any rules for the board.

Then do these steps –

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  1. Follow the board.
  2. Email the board owner if they provide their email in the description.
  3. Tell them in the email what board(s) you would like to join.
  4. Provide them with your Pinterest email address (that’s how they’ll add you).
  5. Wait to be added.
  6. If they don’t provide their email address, comment on a pin by the board owner (remove the board name from the url address) and tell them the above information.
  7. Use please and thank you.
  8. Wait to be added.
  9. Accept the invite.
  10. Start pinning!

How Many Group Boards Should I Join?

As many as you’d like! I know some bloggers belong to hundreds of group boards! If you are like me and write about a variety of topics, it is very helpful to contribute an assortment of group boards. If you realize later on that a board isn’t bringing you traffic or you never pin to it, you can always leave the board by clicking “Edit Board” and then the “Leave” next to your name.

How Should I Organize my Group Pinterest Boards?

Now that you are joining lots of group boards, your profile can get a little crazy if you let it. My suggestion is to only place group boards you own in the first few rows of your profile page. While it is tempting to put those seasonal group boards you belong to front and center, anyone who follows those boards aren’t going to become your follower, but a follower of the creator of that group board.

While I am all for helping out my fellow pinners, your profile page should be optimized for your benefit first. Put all of your own boards first, and then your group boards, however you want to arrange them. I try to have any in-season holiday boards first, and then roughly group them into categories (homeschooling/learning, parenting, DIY, kids, health/fitness, multiples/twins, holidays, etc). Play around with it, and try to have them make sense to you and any potential followers.

Pinning to Group Boards

Now whenever you pin your fabulous blog posts to Pinterest, make sure you are not only pinning to your blog or website’s specific Pinterest board (you have one of those right?) and any related boards you own, but that you are also pinning to your new group boards!

Hundreds and thousands of new eyes will get to read, like, share, and repin your awesome content. Soon you just may see that Pinterest traffic soar, especially with a great Pinning strategy. My very favorite way to schedule pins to Pinterest is by using BoardBooster (see my post on how I use it here).

Enjoy those higher pageviews, friends!

This post originally appeared on the International Bloggers Association blog. 

Filed Under: Pinterest, Traffic Generation & Growth Tagged With: Pinterest, Pinterest Group Boards

The Real Secret to Gaining a Blog Following

October 29, 2015 by Thane West 1 Comment

Your friend shared another article on Facebook and the title, again, made you curious enough to click through, hoping the promises of the killer headline would be fulfilled. However, you quickly see that it is another slapped together post that, while trying hard, didn’t really do a whole lot for you. The problem was that the content was lacking. It was just okay. You skimmed most of it anyway, looking for something to take away, only to give a shoulder shrug, click off, and move on.

If you are a blogger, like me, chances are you would love for people to stop by and check out your latest (and greatest) post for more than a few seconds before moving on. You want them to love you so much that they spend ten minutes of their precious time and read the entire post. After they are done with the post, you would love it even more if they actually took the time to comment or check out another blog post or two (or three). Ultimately, you would do a victorious fist pump in the air if they then signed up for your email list, bought a product you sell, or followed you on their favorite social media channel.gaining-a-blog-following-1024x537-2453475Us bloggers really like having fans, especially loyal ones who are gonna stick around, interact with us, share our content, and buy whatever we’re selling.

But, if we’re like that article our friend shared that let us down within only a minute of clicking over to it, we will never get the true fans we’ve been praying to get.

If you want a huge blog following, having tens of thousands of email subscribers and social media followers, then you need to be sticky.

My friend Kelly of IdealistMom.com is a skilled writer. Her blog isn’t the fanciest I’ve seen and her pictures are almost entirely made up from stock images. But her posts? They hook you in with a story you keep thinking about after you’ve clicked away. You hang onto her every word, dying to know where the conclusion to the problem lies. She does not disappoint and you really want to share the fantastic post you just read, and get notified of every new thing she writes because it’s just that good.

The most amazing thing about her blog is that she posts very infrequently, puts in only part-time hours, has never taken a sponsored post opportunity, and still makes a good full-time income on her blog.

And I’m totally jealous. The (Reformed) Idealist Mom has mad skills.

The good news is that she’s sharing her knowledge with everyone with her FREE 3-Step Sticky Blogging e-course. Her next session begins Monday, November 2, and registration ends Sunday, Nov 1, 11:59 pm CST and it is the last time this course will be offered for free!12193944_10153349734244164_1519322765_o-683x1024-8589528I went through it myself and can vouch that you’ll get a ton of new practical tips and tricks for converting your visitors into fans who join your newsletter, share your posts, and like your Facebook page. She knows how turn visitors into fans, how to make people stick.

And that’s exactly what is needed to build a blog following that will really matter, that will really convert.

No one wants to keep clicking through those dumb posts on Facebook that fail to deliver an amazing read. Make your visitors oh so glad they clicked.

Filed Under: Content Creation, Traffic Generation & Growth

How to Brand Your Personal Blog to Stick Out From the Crowd

October 15, 2015 by Thane West 2 Comments

Two years ago, there was an estimated 152 million blogs on the internet. I can only assume there are nearly double that many blogs online now in 2015. With such a flooded market, it may seem like it’s not worth your time or effort to create a personal blog or website, but I really wish everyone had their own blog!

There have been many times I have wished that everyone I knew had a blog, and had a blog over a Facebook or Instagram profile. Personal blogs are the perfect way to express yourself! They are way more effective than sharing a one paragraph update on Facebook, or that one single image on Instagram, or that 140 character Tweet.branding-your-blog-1024x525-1752792Personal blogs encourage you to really form a coherent thought, flesh out ideas, and share who you really are and what you are really about. Plus, with a personal website you are in control of your content and its far less likely to be taken out of context. Italics and bold text do wonders to clarify your intended meaning!

My blog, What’s up Fagans?, started out as a regular personal blog that updated our family and friends in other states about our adventures, complete with photos and updates of what was going on in our lives. It literally answered “What’s up Fagans?” But, even in its relative infancy, we often shared our passions and thoughts on marriage, music, movies, school, family, and friendships. My husband at one point thought our blog really should be named “What the Fagans think” because we stopped sharing purely update information and pictures and shared more of what we were currently interested in and thinking about.

Our blog started taking on this wonderful life of its own as we shared our personal and family goals. In some ways it’s held us accountable to them because we made them public, so we had to live up to them. Creating this personal website based upon us and our family was an exciting and fun creative outlet for both myself and my husband. Little did we know so many years ago that people from around the world would come to our website and follow us on our journey through life.

We no longer share as many personal updates about our lives in such blatant ways as we’ve transitioned our website into a business and not just a family-update blog. But, its still about us.

Branding What’s up Fagans? into our own unique website by buying a domain name and setting up hosting and hiring a designer (among other things) has helped our website be much more than just one of the millions of blogs out there. It has character and personality. What’s up Fagans? is its own little brand on the internet.whats-up-fagans-logo-24-6059312You might think branding is a weird term to use when referring to your own personal website or blog, but I assure you that as much as Martha Stewart or Oprah are brands, you can also be your own brand. I highly doubt you will ever become the international superstars that are, but with great branding and writing people will come to recognize you and even discuss your blog with their friends and family.

How to Successfully Brand Your Blog

Like any brand, you want to connect with your audience. You want them to identify your brand and your writing or photography instantly. You want them to understand who you are and what you are all about. You want to be recognizable! In order to do that, I suggest seriously considering the following:

1) Your Blog Needs a Personalized Design

Despite the millions of blogs out there, millions of them share the exact same themes, the exact same layouts, and the exact same color schemes, and often even similar content.

Your blog needs a good design.  You don’t have to get all fancy and be 100% unlike any other website. In fact, doing so may make it really hard for people to navigate your site if it is too new and too different to understand and find certain information. But, you should create a unique logo or pay someone to design one for you.

You also need to think about a color scheme for your blog and choose wisely. Colors affect us more than most of us realize. Choose colors that make sense with your blog content, its goals, and what emotions and feelings you wish to elicit from your visitors.

Once you have a color scheme and palette, customize your theme with those colors, and personalize how things look. Again, if you don’t know CSS or HTML hire someone to do it for you!

dollarphotoclub_92093384-1024x683-68999822) Your Blog Needs YOU

There are some seriously beautiful websites and blogs out there, but other than looking amazing, some of their content kind of sucks. You can wrap up a present beautifully, but if what is inside is garbage,  people will leave it behind and move on.

This is why adding in your personality is super important. People want to connect with you, as you are your brand; you are your personal blog! Write in such a way that your readers have a clear sense of who you are, what you are about, what you value, what you love, what you hate, what your strengths are, and what you have to offer them.

It doesn’t matter what your blog niche is, make it your own. I am not suggesting you write about whatever you feel like, but that what you do write has a slice of you in it. Maybe you’ll include a bit of your humor, or your humility. Maybe you’ll add colorful dialogue, powerful imagery, or casual everyday speech. People who come to your blog want to know if you will be providing entertainment, answers to their problems, encouragement, a discussion, a great laugh, commiseration, or inspiration. How you write often does that. Let your passion for your blogging subject show.

The reality is that a personal website allows you to connect with other like-minded individuals.

3) Your Blog Needs to be Memorable

A great blog design, logo, layout, color palette, writing, and photography all work together to help your blog become memorable. But something I hope you don’t overlook is the name of your website! A personal website and a personal blog should be as wonderfully special and unique as yourself, and leave people remembering it afterward. With the millions of blogs on the internet, a personally branded domain name will help you jump out at your visitors.

It is very important to find a great name right off the bat. Sometimes I have disliked What’s up Fagans? as a blog name, especially once I decided to kick my blog up a notch and turn it into a business. However, What’s up Fagans?, the original name my husband and I came up with on a whim way back in early 2009, has a sense of memorability to it! I’ve been told by several people that they love my name because it is easy to remember, and that they have fun saying it over and over! That is the power of a unique domain name!

When you are going to create your own personal website, take some serious time considering what you should name your blog. If you want a fun, and new, domain address that offers lots of great character and uniqueness then you should try out Domain.ME. Domain.ME allows you to brand your website with a unique .ME domain, similar to a .COM or a .NET with the same SEO benefits. If you really want to create your own personal brand or persona online, the .ME address is a memorable marketing tool. They are short,  provide a great play on words, they are available, and they are personable.

You can create a .ME domain name and even get help with website building through Name.com.  This limited offer will be available for one-month starting on 10/16/15. Create your own personal blog now!influencerpostsbanner-8703209For other tips on picking a domain name, check out my suggestions in my post How to Start a Blog that Will Make Money.

4) Your Blog Needs Consistency

A well branded blog is a consistent blog that sets up certain expectations. Readers will come to expect a certain consistency in the quality of writing and photography. They will come to expect a consistency in how frequently you update your blog and social media channels. They will come to have expectations about what content you will share, its length, and its purpose. They will come to expect a certain layout and flow.

An important part of branding will also come from how you open and close posts, divide up your texts, and even how you create pinnable images and your watermark on your photographs.

This can be hard for many of us to live up to these expectations placed on us by our readers and fans. But, the more we can meet them, the more trust we’ll build and the better relationships we’ll form with them. If you ever need inspiration for what to write about or how to make your blog hot, here are 135 blog post ideas.  These ideas can help you break through any writer’s block and even spice up the great content you are already (hopefully) producing by presenting them in exciting new ways.

I am not saying you have to be bossed around by your readers or your blog, but you need to understand that every great brand has consistency to their presentations, images, text, marketing and so on. Your blog should be the same.

I will admit that I do not have the best branded personal website out there. I lack in many of these areas, but I strive to present my readers with a good reality of who I am and what my brand is. Building your blog as a brand will not happen overnight. Thankfully it can also be tweaked and changed as many times are you need until you are really ecstatic about how your brand is perceived and the connection it is making with those who stumble their way to your 1 in 152+ million blogs on the internet today.

This post was inspired and sponsored by Domain.ME, the provider of the personal domains that end in .ME, and Name.com, a registrar that provides services like custom website design. They aim to promote thought leadership to the tech world. All thoughts and opinions in this post are my own, however.how-to-turn-a-blog-into-a-brand-683x1024-9971085

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Content Creation, Traffic Generation & Growth Tagged With: #BrandME, blog, Blogging, brand, branding, domain names, Everywhere Agency, Sponsored Post, website

The Best Blogging Advice I Ever Heard

June 25, 2015 by Celeste David 10 Comments

About a month or two after I started blogging I received the best blogging advice I’ve ever received.  This was during a time when I was consuming blogging advice the same way I consume Wheat Thins: rapidly and without constraint.  I pinned every pin that had anything to do with increasing traffic or followers or making money. I was joining all sorts of Facebook blogging groups and copying and pasting the advice they’d give into an email chain to myself.  I was watching YouTube videos about blogging while I did the dishes.

It was exhausting.

Then one day amidst this rapid-fire consumption, I happened upon the best blogging advice I’ve ever heard. It didn’t have anything to do with SEO or rich pins or what size your blog photos should be.  It was simply this:

Talk to your followers.  Love your followers and be content with your followers.Bloggers Talk to your People Overcoming the Numbers Game The advice giver likened blogging to a big conference.  Every blogger had his or her own room where his or her own followers were seated listening to them.  In this conference, it can be very tempting to look past all the nice people in your room and instead shout incessantly to all those people passing by in the hall, “HEY!  HEY!! COME HERE!  LOOK IN MY ROOM!  LOOK!  I’VE GOT STUFF TO GIVE YOU!!  COME INNN!!!!!”

It can be easy to look at those nice people in your room and think, “Hmph.  What a pitiful bunch.  I was hoping for more.  That person down the hall, they’ve got SO many more!  And they started after me!  How did they get all those people? WHY IS NO ONE COMING IN MY ROOM?!”

Don’t do this.

Realize, all those nice people in your room are there to hear YOU.  They’re there because they like you.  They like what you have to say. Talk to them instead of talking to all the people in the hall.  And if there are only three people in your room?  TALK to those three people.  Engage with them.  Love them.

You’ll be far more content and your followers will love you all the more.  Which will have the added benefit of, yes, growing your blog.  But, doing it in an organic way and bringing in far more loyal followers than those who came one time to get something for free.

When I received this advice, it was like a tangible weight had been lifted off my shoulders.  I thought, “Oh good, you mean I don’t HAVE to do all this extra stuff just to get more people in my room???”  I had never heard that advice before, in all my days of blog advice acquisition, the tips always told me to want more, more, MORE.  More re-tweets, more page views, more comments, more sponsors.  Never be content.  While these tips can actually be very helpful and necessary to grow your blog, it can be really easy to inherit a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality in the blogosphere if we don’t keep it in check.

For me, the advice to just talk with my people means blogging at the pace I want to blog at and letting go of all those little things that I don’t enjoy doing but do anyway because I think everyone else is (link parties, I’m looking at you).

So don’t worry what other bloggers may think of you because you’re not on self-hosted wordpress or you don’t have many twitter followers or you only make pennies on AdSense or whatever blog insecurities you have, just talk to your people.  (Also other people care far less about these details than we do).

A little example:  I’m a member of a group in my town called Interfaithful Moms.  Its a fantastic group- we meet together twice a month, have speakers from all different religions who speak on all different topics.  Our leader, we’ll call her Jen, works very hard to find all these speakers, type out discussion questions for us each week, find child care for the meetings, bring refreshments, etc.  We’re so very grateful for her.

And she wishes more people would come into this particular “room.”

Last month one of our meetings fell on Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Jen decided to make this meeting really special.  She found a speaker from Israel who had family members die in the Holocaust.  She put together a song presentation, a prayer ceremony, and a candle lighting where we each read names of some of those who died.  She bought dozens of white roses and attached a printed prayer on each one.  She posted fliers for the meeting all over town.

And on the day of the meeting??  It was only the usual women from our group that came.  No new members.  I’m not certain, but I think this saddened Jen a little- all those fliers, all those left over roses.  But did we, the people in the room care about the size of the audience?? No way!  It was an AMAZING presentation she had put together!  Tears were shed.  It was powerful and we were so grateful.

I really hope that instead of looking at the door longing for more people to walk through that Jen was able to look around the room that day and think, “Wow, I did this.  Look at these people who came.  They are really getting something out of this meeting.  That feels great!”

So, whether you have three people or 300,000, talk to your people.

Love your people.

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Traffic Generation & Growth

How to Grow a Successful Blog

May 2, 2015 by Thane West 4 Comments

I love blogging. Absolutely love it. It’s so much fun to write about things that resonate with people, help them better manage their homes, educate them about great new products, and speak to their souls. I love all the comments and shares I receive and am grateful, and humbled, for every single one. And I now especially love that my blog is successful: I make money blogging. While I am nowhere near a mega blogger who makes $10,000+ a month and have so much growth that can still yet occur, I have seen good growth and I have turned my blog into a business. (And I feel a bit like these kids sometimes:)growing-successful-blog-1024x538-5383565

Who knew two or three years ago I would develop this passion for blogging and that I would come this far so soon. I had originally hoped my blog would bring in a few extra hundred dollars a month for our family. We could use a few hundred extra. But, that couple hundred was surpassed pretty quickly; right now I’m averaging about $2000 a month before expenses. This money is definitely helping our young family as we work to pay off student loan debts and put my husband through his doctorate program. God has truly blessed us and continues to bless us. I pray for guidance as I write, blog, and seek new opportunities, always giving thanks to God along the way for the great opportunities and incomes this new business affords us.

Working from home has not been easy. Starting a business from nothing has not been easy. Growing a successful blog has not been easy. Behind the scenes of this blog is a lot of work, time, dedication, and a never-ending hunger to push forward and continue to grow by learning and trying new things. It’s why I’ve decided that this year I would finally attend my first in-person blog conference(s). And I just bought my ticket to my first one last week!
dallas_2-8145846

I’m Attending the SoFabU OTR Dallas Blog Conference!

The only conference I have previously attended was the OnlineBlogCon 2013. In order to get discounted tickets ($49 instead of $99) to the SoFabU OTR (#SoFabUOTR #cbais) I agreed to write a little about the conference to share with you all, but all opinions are my own.

The Social Fabric University On the Road blog conference in Dallas is on May 30, 2015 at the Gaylord Texan Hotel and Conference Center. The pictures of it look amazing! The conference is sponsored by Johnny Rockets, Müller, Kraft and iBlog. It’s just a one-day event from 8am-7pm that Saturday and seemed like the perfect, close, affordable for me to be able to attend.

I have been working with Social Fabric (Collective Bias) for about a year now and work with them often. I have done more sponsored posts with their network than any other, and am proud to be a SoFab member! So, I am very excited to meet some of the people working at Social Fabric, networking with other Texas bloggers, companies, and learning how to be a better blogger! Plus, they will have some city adventures involving video, photography, and Instagram tours (details will be announced next week!) which I am excited to do as I haven’t explore Dallas before.

At this event we will learn How to Use Social Media to Drive Blog Traffic. We’ll learn the secrets of using social media platforms {Facebook, twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, and Instagram} to build an audience and drive traffic to our sites.  Whether a brand new blogger or a proficient user of social media, we’ll learn tips and tricks for branding our social media platforms, finding our voice, increasing social media followers, enhancing engagement, and forming a lasting social media strategy and presence on all platforms.  This sounds awesome for me! Because good traffic and income, I don’t actually have huge social media followers or know how to best use them all.

The main speaker at the Dallas conference will be Randi Dukes. Randi Dukes is the founder and creator of Dukes and Duchesses, a craft and DIY blog that has grown from a hobby into a business over the last few years. Randi loves creating sponsored content for companies and has worked with many large brands including Better Homes and Gardens, Michaels, and The Home Depot. Randi is passionate about using social media to promote and monetize her site and has developed strategies that have brought consistent growth in her social media platforms and steady, increasing traffic to her site. She has over half a million combined followers on her various social media channels. Randi has previously spoken at Haven Conference and loves sharing with and encouraging other bloggers. Regularly featured on sites such as Today, Country Living, and Buzzfeed, Randi enjoys inspiring people with simple seasonal and everyday projects. Randi lives in Dallas with her husband, five kids, and a very dirty dog.

Be sure to check out the agenda on the SoFabUOTR website!

Upcoming Blogging Awesomeness

As passionate as I am about the topics I write about here on What’s up Fagans?, I am as equally passionate about helping people become better bloggers. I know what a difference it makes to have someone help you grow your blog business. I would be struggling without awesome blogging friends who so freely shared their know-how with me.  And that is why I have some very excited things to share!

1) I am currently working on a blogging ebook with Katie Clark of Clarks Condensed all about how to turn your family blog into a profitable family business. We are hoping to launch the ebook in October 2015 and will be sharing a lot of our blogging advice. And since Katie has taught me most of what I know about blogging, it is sure to be a very awesome resource for so many people. We both believe in helping other bloggers succeed and not holding back information.

networkathon-twitter1-1024x512-17377562) I will speaking at the International Blogger’s Association’s inaugural Online Network-a-Thon! This online blog conference will be October 12-17, 2015 and I will be talking about “Awesome Places to Share Content and Increase Your Traffic.” You really don’t want to miss it! I encourage you to buy a ticket! It is only $10 to attend and there will be giveaways, twitter parties, exclusive content, and awesome opportunities to network! I will be there, so you know it’ll be awesome. 😉 Use code “KATELYN” to get $5 off! That means valuable information can be yours for just $5!

3) I am currently working with a graphic designer on an entire branding package! I am very excited to have a clear branding vision for my blog that will look much better. Stephanie Jones of Journie.com and I working on it and hopefully changes will be made by May’s end!

4) I am now doing blog consultations! If you are interested in having a fresh pair of eyes go over your site, your content, your pictures, your social media, your monetization strategies, or whatever blogging related, I can help! Shoot me an email at katelyn@whatsupfagans.com and we can get started!official-libman-blogger-badge-2003368

5) I am now an official Libman Family Blogger! They reached out to me after reading my blog post on “Why I Believe in Cleaning the House While the Kids are Awake.” I will now be participating on their forum Cleaning As a Family. The good news for you all is that they will let me share some awesome deals with you. Right now you can get a coupon for $5 off a a Libman Freedom Spray Mop!

6) I just got selected to be part of SoFab’s Creative Council! I’m excited about the three month position and hope I can indeed put some of creative juices (thank you art degree!) to good use and make a little extra money.

how-to-grow-a-successful-blog-1368056My Blogging Blog Posts

Did you know I have actually written several blog-related posts for various websites in the last year? I love sharing my blogging tips and knowledge, but don’t often feel that What’s up Fagans? is the ideal place for the content.  I am actually a content contributor at BlogChickaBlog and am also a VP of The International Bloggers Association. In case you want to know what I write about blogging, because you are interested in learning some new trips for helping your own site grow, or you want to learn a bit more about how I’ve been successful, please check out the following:

How to Make Money Blogging? 3 Ways to Monetize Your Blog – What’s up Fagans?

#ChickaChats Interview with Jill Levenhagen: How I took my blog from 6k pageviews a month to 400k pageviews a month in one year – BlogChickaBlog

How Monetize Your Blog for Mobile with PadSquad and Why You Should – BlogChickaBlog

Why You Need to Use Group Pinterest Boards – IBA Blog

The Keys to Successfully Using Round-up Posts to Drive Traffic to Your Blog – BlogChickaBlog

The Ultimate Blogger’s Guide to Stock Photos – IBA Blog

The Easiest Way to Drive Traffic to Your Blog Indefinitely: Use BoardBooster for Pinterest – IBA Blog

Link Party 101 – What they are and if they are worth your time – BlogChickaBlog

Save Time on Social Media – Use CoSchedule! – IBA Blog

Life Behind the Blog – What’s up Fagans?

All Work and No Play: 8 Tips for Overcoming Your Inner Work-a-holic – Bedtime Scoops

As I continue working on growing a successful blog, I really hope to continue to share more of my journey through various channels. If you ever have questions about something blogging related, please contact me!

And let me know what exciting things you are doing to grow a successful blog this year!

Filed Under: Blogging Q&A, Blogging Tips, Content Creation, Traffic Generation & Growth

The Keys to Successfully use Round-up Posts to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

April 26, 2015 by Thane West 17 Comments

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t seen a round-up post from Buzzfeed titled something like “28 Ways to Fix Stuff Your Kids Ruined” or “27 Household Cleaning Tricks Every Parent Should Know.” Buzzfeed is well known for their epic lists for all sorts of random things from entertainment and celebrities to parenting and homemaking to general life hacks.  All of these list posts  have something in common – they are a collection of images, memes, gifs, or pictures from other people, places, and the web. They are what many bloggers refer to as a round-up post. Round-up posts feature work from many different sources all on one single subject that are put it together in a visual or list way that is easy for readers to consume. And as consumers it seems we can never get enough of them as they tend to be very popular posts for small and large websites and blogs alike!the-keys-of-successfully-using-round-up-posts-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-main-4397271

Some of my most popular content are round-up posts and for many other bloggers too. People love being able to scroll through just one post looking for inspiration, a laugh, or that perfect helpful tip. The great thing about round-up posts is that they are often shared too. There is a science behind why people share things, and one of the reasons people share things is to look smart or be helpful. A collection of posts or images all on one topic, full of great pictures or information, is begging to be pinned, liked, stumbled, tweeted, or otherwise shared. This means the post can keep receiving traffic again and again. This is great for the person hosting the round-up and great for those who are featured in it.

So I want to share with you the ins and outs of both being on a round-up and putting together your own round-up for your blog or website so you can drive traffic to your blog.

How to be featured in Round-up Posts

It should go without saying that you need to have awesome, shareable content with great images if you want to be featured in a round-up post by someone. While less-than-stellar photography or posts can still be found in round-ups, the best round-ups have stunning pictures (think of those Home Decor round-ups or recipe round-ups) that take you to great content. So, make sure you are creating great stuff!

Sometimes you will randomly luck into being featured in a round-up, like if Buzzfeed likes and uses one of your posts. Those first two BuzzFeed articles I linked to at the start of this post actually feature some cleaning hacks from my own blog, What’s up Fagans?. It was a nice surprise to wake up one morning and see a trackback from BuzzFeed and to see some traffic coming my way from them.

But, most of the time you won’t just be featured, or at least very infrequently. If you are looking for a great way to drive more traffic to your blog, sometimes indefinitely, than you really need to look for ways to be featured in Round-up posts.

The best and easiest way that I have found to be featured in a round-up post is through Facebook groups. I am a member of three Facebook round-up groups: Operation Round-Up, Bloggers Sharing Links for Roundups, and KBN Content and Round-Up Requests. The last group is unfortunately limited to members of the Kid Blogger Network, so you have to join that first before joining their round-up group. Their content focuses mainly on kid activities, family, parenting, and all things kid-related. The first two groups are often chocked full of requests for recipes and DIY requests. But, you will find requests for many different genres in these groups as well, just not as often.

Several of these Facebook groups even have their own search engines for all the bloggers that have agreed to let people use them in round-ups. In fact, you can join a search engine of “Roundup Friendly Blogs” on this form. Basically, it’s an agreement that you sign that says you own the work on your blog and you agree to allow others to use those posts in a roundup (one photo with a link back, or just a title with a link back) and that if you create a roundup you agree to only use one photo and always link back properly. Once the agreement is signed you get the url of the search engine and can then can add your blog so others can find your post.

Proper Etiquette for Leaving Links and Being Featured in Round-Ups

The Facebook groups are set up in such a way it is pretty easy to scroll through and find applicable (to your site) threads to comment and leave links for. Personally, I find it it best to share a link with a brief text intro like “3-Ingredient Cheese Ball” and then the link. It helps the rounder-upper more easily find exactly what they are looking for. I also think it’s best to delete the preview, but some actually prefer it there, and some can’t remove previews from their mobile devices. When you share links, please be mindful of the poster’s due dates. I find it is best to check into these groups 1-2 times a week to see if there are any threads that fit your content so you don’t miss out.

Soon you are likely to see your content featured on various websites!

What to Do When You are Featured in a Round-up

When you get those trackbacks to your content, I find it is courteous to visit their post, leave a comment thanking them for sharing your content, and then sharing their post on your social media networks. I usually use ViralTag (my affiliate link – You’ll get a $15 credit if you sign up with it) to schedule several shares of their post to my boards and group boards I belong to.  Since Pinterest is my best social media platform with the largest potential audience, that is where I like to share content the most. In fact, I even created a “I’ve been featured” board on Pinterest where I always pin posts that I have been featured in as well as my guest posts and contributor posts. If I am running low on other people’s content to pin, I can always grab some of those pins and share again.

Another great place to share their content is on StumbleUpon which generally loves round-up posts.

Sharing round-ups you are featured in helps the poster gain more traffic, which helps you gain more traffic. And if a post goes viral on Pinterest or StumbleUpon, you are likely to continue to see hits to your site coming in over the next weeks, months, and even years.

How to Put Together Killer Round-Ups for Your Blog

While being featured is awesome, especially as a newer or smaller blog by a bigger and better site, it’s also great to be the one who makes that killer round-up that goes viral and gets fantastic traffic for a very long time. Primary traffic is always better than secondary. And I’m going to share tips on making sure your round-up does well and brings you as much traffic as possible.

Choosing a Great Topic

Not all round-ups are going to be smashing successes, often simply because the content or topic just isn’t as share-worthy. So, it is important to pick round-up topics carefully. It seems that many people have the best luck with very specific, niche, topics as opposed to more broad topics. For instance, a round-up of “50+ Dinner Ideas” might not do as well as “50+ Dinner Ideas that are Ready in 30 Minutes or Less.” This may not always be the case, but segmenting a round-up into more specific categories also can allow you to do multiple round-ups (or more blog posts, which means more potential traffic) on the same topic (Dinner Ideas). I also think making them more specific and helpful makes them stand out from the countless generic round-ups that are out there.

I also suggest thinking about your own content! What topics do you most often write about? Do you have several on the same or very similar topic? One of the smartest ways to do a round-up is to include several of your own posts in the round-up! It means even more pageviews and traffic for your site. Some people even do round-ups solely of their own content. It can be a great way to remind people of old content on a given topic.

Also, round-up posts can be a great way to feature your affiliates! I wrote a post about Freebies, Discounts, and Deals for Pregnant Women, New Moms, and Babies which is a collection (round-up) of several different products that I am an affiliate for. It often receives search traffic and income for me. So, don’t forget to look at your affiliates (or pick up a few new ones) and think about how to include them into a collection post.

Collecting Links – Proper Etiquette

When you are putting together a round-up, you can often ask in Facebook blogging groups you belong to for links. Refer to the Facebook groups that I mentioned above under “How to be featured in a Round-up Post”.

When you are starting a thread for a round-up request, it is often best to start with “ISO: Blog Post Round-up Topic” and then give any specifics as to what you are looking for (or not looking for) if needed for clarification, share what blog the round-up will show up on (as many VA’s use these groups for the bloggers they work for, or some sell them to other websites). Lastly, include an end date. Several of these round-up groups prefer to keep their groups clean, and will go through and delete old threads. While deadlines can move as needed, it’s helpful to give people several days (a week is pretty common) so that people who don’t check in every day can still submit their links.

However, sometimes, you may find that people do not have a lot of links on your topic, or the content isn’t quite what you are looking for, or the pictures or post aren’t so stellar. If this is the case, I often I go searching on my own for links. I have searched for great posts on my topic on Pinterest and even on Google. It is generally best to ask permission from the blog owners if it is okay to link to their site and use an image. However, I rarely, if ever, do. So far I have never had someone complain about me sending them traffic with proper credit and use of their pictures in a round-up. If it does happen, I would be more than willing to remove their site from my round-up. My point is, you don’t have to feel limited to blogging groups! The world wide web is full of millions of ideas just waiting to get shared!

Collect all the links, go through them, and narrow it down to the very best. One of my friends, Heidi of OneCreativeMommy.com, pins all the links to a secret group board on Pinterest. This allows her to look at all of them at once when she’s ready to pick her favorites. With a secret board, all the images she needs, post titles, and links are all neatly kept. When she’s done making the round-up post she then schedules those pins to her regular boards.

Round-ups usually consist of 5 or more links. There is a science behind the best numbers to choose, but really, it doesn’t matter too much. You don’t have to use the exact number in the title or Pin image. Sometimes people use something like 50+ as well, in part because they can then add or delete as needed later. Generally, I don’t see round-ups of items that are much bigger than 50 and some people have better luck with long lists and others with small. Sometimes it just comes down to luck!the-keys-of-successfully-using-round-up-posts-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-pinterest-491x1024-9245580

 Organizing Your Post and Pictures for Round-ups

There are so many different ways to organize and present a round-up post! If you don’t believe me, check out these three Pinterest group boards I belong to that are full of round-ups: Roundup of Roundups, Blogger’s Best Round-Ups, and ***Best Collections Posts from Top Bloggers***. You’ll notice that some images are collages and others are a single picture, but all share what the round-up post is about (Best Casserole Recipes, Rainbow Sensory Play Activities, or Top 10 Uses for Crest Toothpaste).

If you have a longer list (50 items) it might be a good idea to think about how to best arrange them that would be helpful to a reader (crafts first, then recipes, then costumes if doing a round-up for a themed birthday party). I once did a round-up post called “Spring Cleaning Tips and Tricks for Deep Cleaning Your House” and broke up the cleaning hacks by room, using a <hr> and heading text to divide them up better.

If you have different categories, like crafts, recipes, and costumes, you may think about making a collage image for each section. This will give you more options of pinnable images for the same post. Some people number the images in the collage, with text links underneath. If you do a collage, you could also look at making the images in the collage clickable and linked to the corresponding source using image-maps.com.

However, you don’t need to use images from every single post you use in a round-up post. Some pictures aren’t great from a blog post, or the topic/content you are rounding-up doesn’t really lend well to pictures for whatever reason. Or, the round-up has so many links that including a picture for each one would make your post way too long. I once collected 138 links about teaching kids moral values, and I certainly didn’t include a picture for each link! In that case I just made a single image (not a collage) for the post.

If you are including pictures because it’s a round-up about home decor, crafts, or yummy recipes, and you want people to see these gorgeous pictures, I recommend several things.

First, make the images smaller and uniform in size. Typically my images in-post fill up the space horizontally, but in a round-up of 25 images, that would make for a long post with too much scrolling. Scale them down (or scale them up perhaps in some situations), and make them the same width. It just makes it look better. Also, do not crop out watermarks. A lot of bloggers really do not like that!

Also, when using pictures you MUST link the pictures to the posts you got them from! While this isn’t so much for copyright sake, it is for ease of use for a reader!  I hate clicking on an image in a round-up post only to have it take me to the jpg image url only. And be sure to make sure the images and all links open in a new window (html is: target=”_blank”). You want people to stay on your site and click through to more of the posts.

Third, make sure you download and upload images to your blog post instead of copying and pasting them! The main reason is that you are then relying on another site’s server to load the images, and the images are traced differently. So, take the time and do it right and your images won’t disappear randomly, and your page will run faster too.

Another great thing to do is make the links personable! Add some commentary! Make people know what you loved about this link and why you included it in your round-up. It adds value to both you as the collector and to them for having a truly great idea. But, please don’t give away all the details! Those you are linking to also want to get some traffic.

Some bloggers who put together round-ups prefer to organize their round-ups using a site like LinkyTools or InLinkz. It really helps to limit how long a post gets if including lots of links, standardizes the sizes of the links and images (square), automatically makes the links open in a new window, doesn’t bog down your site speed (which using lots of pictures definitely can!), and is less time consuming to make. However, some people don’t like it when bloggers do this because it doesn’t give Google Juice to the person who’s linked in the round-up. And sometimes the code will break randomly and you won’t realize it until someone points it out to you! My friend Katie of Clarks Condensed sometimes uses InLinkz for her round-ups, like in her 30 Ways to Use Leftover Hard Boiled Eggs post if you want to see an example of how it looks.

Great Shareable Image

I will be honest and tell you that I am not sure what is the best image type for a round-up. But, there are generally two ways of going about making images for round-ups: Collage or a Single Image.

If you are doing a collage, I would recommend picking only the very best to include in it and don’t feel like you need to include all of your links in the one collage! Pick the pictures that are crisp, colorful, bright, and already well composed. I would also recommend zooming in on each image so as to eliminate any text, titles, and even watermarks (but only for a collage image). This makes it look cleaner in a collage and less chaotic. You also want to make sure there is a good balance of negative space, colors, lights, darks, etc. Which is why sometimes making a great collage image is much more difficult than you’d originally thought.

To make a collage image, tools like PicMonkey are great. They already have preset grids and designs for you. When making an image for Pinterest though, vertical is best, and square is second best. I like my vertical images 735×1103. But other dimensions work well too, including much longer ones. You also need to think about creating a horizontal image that will look great on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. I prefer to use 1200 x 630 for my Facebook images.

Another tool you can use is Canva, although I don’t like using them to make the collage image. Often I have made the collage image in PicMonkey, saved it to my computer, and then added text or other details in Canva. What I really like about Canva is that it saves your work, offers grids and guides, and have lots of preset text graphics, and it’s still all for free (or $1 depending on the graphics/images you choose). Since it saves your previous work, it essentially has created a template for you to use over and over again for future round-ups, which I love! I have created four different round-ups for my blog using the same basic setup, just changing colors, transparency, or fonts. (My Popcorn Printables, DIY Elsa Costumes, DIY Anna Costumes, and DIY Christmas Stockings.)

You can also use Lightroom to create collages. Jill has several FREE Collage Templates over on her Flourish Photography site. You can then add text in PicMonkey or Canva.  If you are a Photoshop user, The CoffeeShop Blog offers hundreds of free collage templates for free.

One of my friends, Clare of Super Mommy Club, does lots of round-ups, and definitely has a set style she uses, with similar text, colors, and collages. She has really branded hers with her unique style. Often it is a good idea to leave a blank space in the collage where you can add the text explaining what the round-up is all about. Jill made up this example to show you:

the-keys-of-successfully-using-round-up-posts-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-pin-1711187

But, sometimes collages just aren’t the way to go for various reasons, and one great image may do well to represent your round-up and draw readers to click to check it out. If you have a small round-up or a huge round-up, or the pictures just aren’t lending well to a collage format, it’s worth thinking about just using a single image. The image doesn’t have to be from any of the sites you are rounding up, but could be a stock photo (like Jill offers for free or from a host of other great free stock photo websites) or a photo of your own. I have done this with a few of my round-ups (Top Moving and Packing Tips and The Parent’s Guide to Raising Kids with Moral Values).

In most of the graphics for round-ups there are generally numbers! Tell people how many tips, tricks, hacks, activities, recipes, or inspiring DIYs they will find when they click through.

Great Headline

I plan on writing a great post about how to make killer headlines soon, but let’s just say, that if you want your round-up to do well and be successful, you don’t want to give it a lack-luster title!, especially after all the time you spent collecting links, organizing it, creating shareable images, and formatting it all just right!  While often we use titles that are SEO friendly because we want search traffic, we can do that without being so boring! Add strong verbs (need), immediacy (now!), descriptive adjectives (best, ultimate, yummiest, unique), and make it stand out from other similar posts.

Also, avoid using the word “round-up” in the title. I swear the only people who use the term “round-up” are bloggers. The word “collection” may be okay, but generally, I would just use “ideas” or “inspiration” or “tips” or “ways” or some other word. Just tell people what they will find in your post. And the use of numbers is usually a great idea too.

Sharing Your Round-Up

Obviously, you’ll share your new post like you share all of your posts on your social media networks. However, because your new post is a collaborative post with other people or businesses links, I recommend sharing your link directly with the individuals you featured. Tweet the link and tag the people or businesses you featured. Drop the link on their Facebook page via wall post or message. This notifies them of your post in case the trackback didn’t show up on their end. Some people or pages will likely visit, comment, and even share your post. These are all things you want! So, be sure to let people know you featured them.

Also, I suggest submitting your round-up post to StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon users seem to love lists and round-up posts! You could definitely see some on-going traffic if you do.

The Greatest Benefits of Round-Ups

I don’t do a lot of round-ups and I am not featured in others all that often, but referral traffic from round-ups continues. Everyday I see traffic from round-ups I have been featured in. While sometimes it is only 50 hits in an entire month from one post, others bring me in hundreds, and all together, it equals thousands of new sessions to my blog each month! And some of the round-ups I have created receive regular search traffic and Pinterest traffic, and thereby continue to drive traffic to my blog, earn me money from ad impressions, and gain me followers.

And don’t forget that these round-ups give you good Google juice! More quality sites are linking to your blog, and you are linking to theirs.

I really hope you consider making round-ups for your own site as well as trying to be featured in round-up posts on other websites using all of these great tips!

Do you do round-ups? Have you ever been featured in a good one? Any extra tips to share?

Filed Under: Content Creation, Headlines, Traffic Generation & Growth Tagged With: Blog Round-ups, Round-up Blog Posts

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