Typing the first few words of your very first blog post… is there anything quite like it? Knowing you have an outlet, somewhere to create and be yourself. But where do your visitors come from? I’m going to tell you how I market my blog and what does and doesn’t work for me.
I’m going to be using a month of my blogging stats as a case-study here to show you exactly how many of my blog views come from each of these platforms. This example is taken from a few months ago, I was posting at least twice a week consistently for the month to give you some context to my activity too.
I have no professional training or qualifications in how to run a blog. The skills I’ve picked up to keep my blog going and to market it have been self taught, or learnt from my day job in Digital Marketing. Please keep this in mind when you look at my stats below.
Total blog views during the month: 3,001
Social Media
Of course social media is going to be a HUGE help to bring in views for your blog, it is the ideal marketing tool. It’s free, fast and easy to access.
In my case, this is the best way for me to bring people through to my blog. I have spent a lot of time building up my Twitter following, now I have a strong engagement and reach on my posts, they’re the ideal place to share my blog posts. A third of my readers come through my Twitter feed. I try to share one blog post a day on there. I don’t want it to be all that people see, but I want to state my presence as a blogger.
Here’s some tips to grow your Twitter following
Total blog views from Twitter: 801
Instagram works in one of two ways to link people back to your blog, either via a link in your bio, or adding the swipe up feature in your Instagram story. The later is only possible if you have over 10k followers or are a verified Instagram account. I am neither of these, so I rely on sending people to the link in my bio, which will take you through to my blog’s homepage. Instagram isn’t a huge creator of traffic for me, but it still helps to make people aware I have new posts out. I’ll either announce this in my photo’s caption or create a post for my story.
Here’s some tips on how to boost your Instagram status
Total blog views from Instagram: 77
Everyone raves about Pinterest, with services such as Tailwind allowing you to schedule your blog posts as pins for months in advance. You can create free graphics on Canva and attach them to your blog posts and then pin them onto this innovative search engine. By joining group boards you can collaborate with thousands of other users and share your blog posts to more people everyday. This is where so many of their bloggers credit so many of their blog views to, I haven’t cracked it myself yet though. But I have just invested in a year’s subscription to Tailwind, so I’ll see if this makes a difference in the future months.
Click here to get your first month of Tailwind free
Total blog views from Pinterest: 36
This is one I have only recently started using and I don’t yet know how I rate it. It is my lowest scoring in terms of providing views and I mainly set it up so my Instagram could be a business account. But I push through my blog and Instagram posts to my feed so there is daily content. I have a few followers on it and to be honest, my stats for readers surprised me, I didn’t think it would have even made it into double figures. I think the use of Facebook for promoting your blog is more valuable when joining groups than creating your own blog page. My issue though is that a lot of groups are ‘Open’, meaning your Facebook friends can see what you’re sharing into them, which you don’t always want.
Total blog views from Facebook: 29
WordPress Tools
As my blogging platform of choice, WordPress does have some pretty handy tools to promote your blog without having to go to much effort at all.
Email Marketing
You can install a plugin called ‘Email Subscribers’ and configure your blog to send automatic mail outs whenever you publish a new post. This is really handy, because you don’t have to do a thing! You just have to be super careful not to hit that publish button before you’re ready. I’ve been slowly building up my email subscriber list, but I’m aware this isn’t always people’s preferred way of reading content, so I know this is a slower method to grow.
Total blog views from Email Marketing: I have no idea, because whilst this is a great tool, the analytics are not good.
Reader
By far the best aid WordPress can provide to offer blog views. Reader allows you to see everyone’s blog posts that you follow in one place. You can easily like and comment on the posts and interact with the blogs that you love. It’s also a really easy to find new blogs too, the search engine will pick up key terms to help you discover more content you will love. I find this to be a really handy way to let my followers know I have a new blog post out.
Total blog views from Reader: 306
Other methods
Some of the views from my blog don’t fit into any categories, so here’s the miscellaneous ways that I receive some of my views.
Search Engines
I work on my SEO in each post using the plugin Yoast, it helps you make your blog post as search engine friendly as possible. It indicates the readability of your post, helps you write your Meta data and add a sharable image for your post. I personally find it a really helpful tool, it tells me what I need to do and makes it simple for me to do it, allowing me to add a few more views to my blog. Some of my most popular search terms have been; ‘amazon‘, ‘book nest‘ and ‘booksnest‘.
Total blog views from Search Engines: 60
Other blog links
Having another blogger add a link to your blog in one of their posts is of course another way to receive some traffic. You’ll usually find this comes about in a ‘tag’ post, awards nominations, or shout outs. I receive around 2 or 3 views per tagged post I feature in, which is better than a poke in the eye!
Total blog views from Other Blog Links: 12
I spend a couple of hours each week as a minimum making sure my blog is going out across all of my platforms, my posts are all ready and scheduled and the imagery is all correct. Marketing your blog is hard work, but if you keep doing it consistently, then it will pay off.
Interesting to see where your traffic comes from. I’ve only recently started actively using Twitter and seen an increase as a result, opposed to Instagram where I have far more followers but not enough for the luxury ‘swipe up’ feature.
Some useful tips too so thanks for sharing! 🙂
Thanks Jason. I wish I had the swipe up feature on Instagram too, I’m getting there – it’d be a really handy one to bring in some more traffic.
Can you make a post about how to have more comments and followers?
I think that just comes with all of this stuff really. The more you post and interact with others and share your blog, the more your followers will increase and people will comment on your posts.
Ohh neat informative post, I love it!!
Most of my readers come from the WP reader (765), then the search engines (40) and twitter comes third at 29. I have no idea how my search engines is as high honestly xD i’m still on free wordpress so no plugins available and all that.. 🤷🏽♀️ But i’ll take it !
You must be doing a lot right with your SEO!
Wow such an informative post!😀
Thank you, glad you liked it!
Really interesting to see the breakdown. I really wish I had hosted my blog with wordpress rather than blogger to take advantage of the plugins.
You can always switch over! I’m with Lyrical Host and they have been excellent, they moved me from Wix to WordPress. I have an affiliate code for 10% off too, BOOKSNEST10 https://hub.lyricalhost.com/aff.php?id=135
Great article! Tailwind is definitely a great investment. It took me a month or two to see results, but now Pinterest is my highest source of views.
I think I still need to invest a bit more time into it to be honest!
Great post! Behind the WP Reader, the bulk of my traffic comes from Twitter with search engines coming in third. I love looking at where people come from.
It;s really interesting to see isn’t it!
Great post! Thanks for sharing the tips, they will certainly be useful 🙂