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Last updated on December 17th, 2018 at 07:21 pm
In this post I share a super important, but often ignored key to grow your blog traffic and stop wasting your time!
When I first started blogging I didn’t have ANY audience for 1.5 years. In fact the first year I don’t think anyone ever visited my site. Google certainly didn’t know about it.
You know how other people say their moms read their blogs? My mom didn’t know about my blog.
She thought I’m selling books online. Actually I don’t know what she thought I was doing. She thought I’m studying microbiology when I was studying biochemistry.
However, despite the lack of audience I didn’t give up. Even though I was super inconsistent with posting while also being overwhelmed with how much I had to post – I kept going.
So a year and a half in, when even the crickets weren’t visiting my site anymore, I decided to CPR my blog into life and actually join social media.
Now it might not seem like a big deal to most of you, but for me this was SCARY. I was so used to writing for myself that the thought of actual people seeing my posts and what I wrote (even if I’ve never met them) was just terrifying. Terrifying.
The Great Expectations
I expected to join social media and people to go crazy about my blog once they found it. I truly believed I will become an overnight success and the paparazzi will wait in front of my house the next day.
Poor, little me. No paparazzi, no nada. Social media turned out to be one thing.
A HUGE waste of time.
And I didn’t even join Facebook. I remember I joined Google + (crickets didn’t stay there either) and then Twitter and Instagram. I did not know what I was doing on any of these platforms.
Then I realized people were following me, even though I was a small blog and I felt flattered, so I’d follow back. Then in about 3 days I’d notice they’ve unfollowed me. Well, that sucked.
How it all changed
Within 2 months I stopped caring about social media and started using ONLY Pinterest.
I had never used Pinterest before. I knew it existed, but I didn’t know what people were doing there. It seemed silly. I read many many, many, posts and watched a ton of videos on how you can use Pinterest to grow your business and get more followers.
At least I thought that I needed a lot of followers. So I joined and same thing – people would follow and then after I follow back – unfollow me. Then I stopped following back altogether and started joining group boards and repinning.
Within a month I had 19.000 visits to my site.
One thing you need to do to grow your blog and stop wasting your time
Stop trying to be everywhere and just be in the right place. Stay focused. That is all you need to do.
If you’re struggling to grow your audience and your blog, then this is probably one of the things you’re doing wrong. You need to stop being everywhere and decide where your audience hangs out and where you want to be. At least in the very beginning.
If your audience is on Instagram, I don’t even think you need a blog to be successful to be honest with you. I see A TON of people making money by simply promoting stuff on Instagram.
But if you want to grow your blog, Pinterest is the way to do it.
People will find you there.
Writing good content, being on Instagram, on Twitter, on Pinterest, on Facebook and living a life? That’s overwhelming. Start slow, with one social media platform and figure it out.
You’ll get better at it.
If you feel like you do need more help, please check out my free Step-By-Step Blogging Guide For Beginners with more in depth advice on:
- how to figure out what to write about in the first place
- how to launch your blog by choosing a cheap hosting (get 60% off) that is also super reliable, without downtime and with great support!
- the 2 most important keys to becoming a successful blogger
- how to grow your traffic using social media and
- how to monetize the traffic you get without feeling like you’re selling your soul.
I hope you enjoyed this post, make sure to share it with a friend who might need it if you do!