blog traffic

Getting blog traffic with social media works. Some bloggers rely on social media for all of their traffic. For the past three years, almost half of my blog traffic has come from social media.

Twitter has been leading the charge and led over 110,000 visitors to my blog in 2015.

Social media is a powerhouse for blog traffic, but only if you know how to use it. Many bloggers go to social media to get more traffic. They’ve seen the case studies and listened to all of the recommendations.

And the fact that over a billion people use social media helps out with the decision making.

After that, the path gets foggy. Sending a tweet with your blog post’s link is the easy part. Getting sustainable traffic from social media is the challenge.

That challenge has its rewards. You’ll get social media traffic but you will also gain credibility which is important for standing out as an expert.

The key to getting sustainable blog traffic from social media is to put consistent effort in the right areas. What are those right areas? That’s what this blog post is all about.

 

#1: Post Your Blog Content Often

Hear about the 80/20 rule for social media. I’m not talking about the epic Pareto’s Principle (80% results come from 20% of the work).

I am talking about another 80/20 that plagues many social media users. The way this 80/20 works is that you promote other people’s content 80% of the time and you promote other people’s content 20% of the time.

LIE!

That’s not how it works at all. At least, if you want to get sustainable blog traffic. It’s great to share other people’s content, but you need to focus more of your time on sharing your content.

The truth about people looking for content is that the value of the content matters the most. It doesn’t matter if you only tweet your content. As long all of your content is empowering and/or entertaining, then your social media audience will always want more of it.

I post my blog content 95% of the time. I will occasionally share other people’s content and promote landing pages (other than my own) using my affiliate links.

But most of the time, I am sharing my own content. That’s how I am able to consistently get hundreds of daily visitors from my social media platforms.

 

#2: Outsource Some Of The Work

I know what some people are going to say. If you give the work you are already doing to someone else, then you won’t gain any additional blog traffic.

But you gain time. Lots of it.

The time you gain can be repurposed towards more profitable activities or activities that result in more blog traffic.

Suddenly, you’ll have more time to master AdWords, Facebook Advertising, and any other method of traffic generation that you choose to master.

Then, you might decide outsourcing is your secret weapon.

You can then learn enough about certain social networks and hire freelancers to grow your audiences on other platforms.

You have the expertise and know what to do. Then you hire freelancers and let them know what needs to get done.

Outsourcing creates more time, and if you use your time wisely, then you will increase your blog traffic and make a bigger profit in the long-term.

 

#3: Turn Cross-Promotion Into Your Friend

This is the secret ingredient for successful social media marketing. It’s the potent ingredient in the back of the refrigerator. It’s the ingredient buried deep within the cookbook.

Maybe I should stop now and keep it a secret. No, I won’t do that. You deserve to know for making it this far.

Cross-promotion is when you use one of your social media platforms to promote your other social media platforms.

It looks so innocent, but it’s impact is the secret part.

You can see cross-promotion in action with YouTubers. When they upload a new video, the savvy YouTuber will promote the video on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and a few other social networks.

The YouTube video then at some point (in the description and/or at the end of the video) promotes the Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media accounts that the YouTuber has.

The result is an infinite loop in which users continuously consume content from the same person across multiple social media platforms.

And the content is so good that these users follow the same person on all of his/her social networks.

Anytime these users are on social media, regardless of which social network they are on, they can encounter content posted by that person.

Think of the chances you see one of my social media posts if you only follow me on Twitter versus if you follow me on Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

The odds increase as you follow me on another social network. Cross-promotion makes sure people who follow you on one social network eventually follow you on all of your social networks.

And if you promote your blog posts on each of those social networks, then you can expect to get a lot of traffic in return.

 

#4: Make It Easy For People To Share Your Content

The easier it is for people to do something, the more likely they are to do it. At the bottom of many blog posts are a bunch of social sharing options.

Click the button and a social media post shows up.

If you want to increase the chances of people sharing your content, you need to make it easier for people to access those buttons.

Buttons at the top and bottom of your blog posts are no longer enough. Blog posts are getting longer which means it takes longer for people to see those buttons.

More and more bloggers are shifting to drag-down social media sharing buttons that allow visitors to share your content across a variety of social networks regardless of what part of your blog post they are reading.

You can also make it easier for people to share your content by using plugins like this one:
[Tweet “7 Tactics To Boost Your #Blog Traffic With #SocialMedia.”]

This plugin is very useful for getting more people to share my content. The social media traffic you get isn’t just from your audience.

The social media traffic you get is a combination of your efforts and your audience’s efforts to promote your content. If your content is good, your audience will want to promote it.

If you make it easy for your audience to promote your content, then more people within your audience will promote your content.

 

#5: Use Better Pictures

Pictures are critical. Any social media post on any social network with a picture has been proven to get more engagement than the same social media post without a picture.

Pictures are so important that for certain social networks, you can’t post an update unless you include a picture (Pinterest, Instagram, and others).

You need to use pictures that grab attention and make it clear to your visitors what your blog post is about. That’s why all of my pictures include the title of the blog post.

Just look at the picture I used for this very blog post.

The title of the blog post is shown within the picture. The text lets Pinterest and Instagram users know exactly what content they will read before they read the Pinterest/Instagram post’s description.

If you can’t create compelling pictures or it takes too much of your time, hire someone to get the job done for you.

And it’s okay to hire someone. Every minute you spend creating pictures is another minute that you can’t promote your blog.

That may have sounded harsh, but it’s the way you need to think of your time. Your time is valuable.

 

#6: Get Creative

Social media is constantly evolving which means some methods rarely discussed will work for you. Sometimes, you have to be a pioneer and experiment on your own.

Kim Garst was one of the first social media experts (if not the first) to take Periscope seriously. She was a pioneer and now Periscope brings her six figures.

New social networks will come out in the future. The first batch of winners will primarily consist of the pioneers.

 

#7: Analyze Your Results

As you continue getting blog traffic from your social media efforts, you have to then analyze the results.

Which of your blog posts get the most traffic? Does a certain blog post perform better on Facebook than on LinkedIn?

The analysis is important. You get to learn what works within your strategy. Knowing what works allows you to make better decisions.

When I discovered my Twitter audience (unsurprisingly) enjoys Twitter related blog posts, I wrote more Twitter related blog posts. This decision resulted in more Twitter related blog posts that I could tweet.

That resulted in more traffic.

Making decisions like that based on your analysis allow you to better serve your audience, and in effect, get more traffic.

 

In Conclusion

Social media is the best place to get more blog traffic. You can leverage it as the foundation that results in more SEO traffic and more landing page traffic (which grows your email list).

Social media provided me with most of the building blocks that I used to create my blogging empire. Consistently put in the work day by day and you are bound to see results.

What are your thoughts on getting more blog traffic from social media? Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other tips for getting more blog traffic from social media? Sound off in the comments section below.

Getting more traffic has been engrained into every blogger’s mind. We want more people to see our content. We want to double our blog traffic only to then want to double it yet again.

This idea of constantly wanting to double your blog traffic is the Ambitious Blogger’s Mindset. However, if bloggers only focus on getting more traffic, then they are missing the entire point.

If your traffic keeps on doubling month after month and you eventually get hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, then your blog is in phenomenal shape.

However, if you focus more on the number of visitors than who is actually visiting your blog, then you are missing a grand opportunity.

Getting a lot of visitors but not knowing who your visitors are is just like having the key to a Lamborghini and driving it into a brick wall.

To best serve your visitors with your content and products, you must know who these visitors are. Knowing a handful isn’t enough.

You need to know certain things about every ideal visitor who goes on your blog. These are the three most important things to know:

 

#1: Their Interests

What do your visitors want to learn more about? The answer to that question must impact the types of blog posts you write. People who go on this blog want to learn more about digital marketing.

However, I want to get as specific as possible. What digital marketing advice do they want the most? Do they want more about Twitter or more about Facebook?

There are several ways to discover what your visitors are interested in. You can give them a quick survey with 1-3 questions where you simply ask them what they want to learn more about.

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of creating a survey (it’s really easy on Survey Monkey), you can go ahead and create a Twitter poll.

Twitter polls are great ways to engage with your audience and get their opinions about virtually anything.

Creating the right polls will allow you to learn more about what your audience wants. You’ll also get a lot of responses in a short period of time. While writing this blog post, I decided to create a Twitter poll just to test it out.

In less than five minutes, I had a few dozen votes.

But not only do you want to know what your audience is interested in. You also want to know what they want from you.

And also what they think when they hear your name.

There are few better ways to discover what your audience thinks about you than by conducting a Google search of yourself.

I see “Marc Guberti Udemy” and “Marc Guberti Twitter” as the two main Google searches. That means people primarily know me for what I do on Udemy and for what I do on Twitter.

Since Udemy showed up on top of Twitter, I decided to conduct a search in Udemy’s search engine to see what showed up for my name. I was SHOCKED to say the least:

“Instagram Marc Guberti” was one of the top search terms. Not Twitter, Pinterest, or any other social network. The top search term (other than just my name, which by the way is spelled with an “i”) included the word Instagram.

And the Twitter poll suggests something completely different. We live in a funny world.

I then tried typing “Instagram M” to see what would come up. Sure enough, “Instagram Marc Guberti” was one of the top three search terms.

I have written a few blog posts about Instagram. Never have I created a training course about Instagram. If I had a training course about Instagram, I would appear as the top course for one of the most searched terms with “Instagram” in it.

Here’s my interpretation: People want to watch a course created by me about Instagram so badly that they will search for it using Udemy’s search engine even when they don’t see an Instagram course in my profile.

So creating an Instagram course is now a top priority. If I did not conduct this search, I would have never known that so many people wanted me to create a course about Instagram.

Until I create that course, courses created by other people will rank high for the search term “Instagram Marc Guberti.” The irony is blaring, but the solution is obvious.

 

#2: Their Desires

Once you know about your visitors’ interests, then it is easy to pinpoint their desires. A business owner would be interested in Instagram because that business owner wants to use Instagram for his/her business.

Finding specific interests is the hard part. Once you discover what your audience is interested in, finding their desires is much easier. You simply ask why your visitors would be interested in a specific topic.

The business owners interested in social media want to use it to generate social proof, grow their audiences, and get a strong ROI.

It doesn’t take long to connect the dots once you know what your audience is interested in. Once you connect the dots, you create products and write blog posts that match your audience’s desires.

 

#3: Where They Go

Even your most dedicated visitors will not be on your blog 24/7. They have other commitments in their lives.

I wish I could read Seth’s Blog forever, but when I have to write my own blog posts (or my dog barks a few times at the door indicating she has to do her thing), I have to stop reading his blog posts.

We can’t account for the times when our visitors leave our blogs to do things like write their own blog posts or walk their dogs. However, we can see which blogs they visit.

While I spend a good amount of time reading Seth’s Blog, I also spend time going through Jeff Bullas’ Blog, the Kim Garst Boom Social Blog, and a few others.

That’s the type of data you need to know about your visitors. Which blogs do they visit before and after yours? Alexa lets you see this type of information, but for a monthly fee (but you’ll get a lot of other valuable info too).

The free way to see where people go before and after visiting your blog is by seeing what your followers share with their audiences.

They may be sharing your blog posts, but what other blogs are they promoting? You can either figure this out on your own by going through all of the people’s accounts that mentioned you, or you can outsource the work to someone else.

When a task involves a good portion of my time, I go with outsourcing. Every. single. time.

 

In Conclusion

Getting blog traffic is good, but who is actually visiting your blog? Once you know more about your visitors, you will know how to better serve them and get them to come back for more of your content.

Getting traffic is at the forefront of many bloggers’ minds. This goal, combined with knowing who your visitors are, will result in returning visitors who come back for your blog posts again and again.

What piece of information do you believe is the most important thing to know about your visitors? Do you believe we must know other information about the people within our audience? Sound off in the comments section below!

Most blogs see a consistent level of traffic. No big increase and no big decrease. Stuck at the same level whether that by 10 daily visitors or 100 daily visitors.

Just because a blog is stuck at the same level does not mean that will always be the case. By striving to turbocharge your blog’s growth, you may get thousands of daily visitors to your blog in just a few months.

It all depends on how much work you are willing to put in.

Turbocharging blog traffic is what allows people to get twice as many visitors in just one month. It results in the exponential growth of your blog.

Interested in learning how you can make that happen for your blog? Here’s how you can start turbocharging your blog traffic today:

 

#1: Get Hyper Active On Social Media

Getting active on social media means going on social media often and posting content whenever you feel like it.

Getting hyper active on social media means going on social media and scheduling numerous posts to get published each day.

On Twitter, I tweet more than 100 times per day. On Pinterest, I have a freelancer pinning my content dozens of times throughout the day.

90% of these posts should focus on promoting your blog posts. Most of the tweets I send promote my blog posts. That’s why Twitter is my #1 source of blog traffic and routinely brings in hundreds of daily visitors.

If you want to get hyper active on social media, then you need to use HootSuite. HootSuite does a great job at connecting all of the social networks together.

That way, you don’t have to log into and out of each of them.

If there was a holy grail to social media, it would be this dashboard. I don’t need to have 10 tabs open on my browser to update all of my social media accounts. I don’t have to use my iPhone to post something on Instagram.

My social media strategy’s foundation is within the HootSuite dashboard.

 

#2: Become Comfortable With Writing Blog Posts

The more comfortable you become with writing blog posts, the easier it will be to provide value. The more valuable your content is, the longer people will stick around.

Becoming comfortable with writing blog posts also enforces consistency. Consistently updating your blog will help out with SEO since your blog would always be fresh with new content.

The more important benefit of consistent blog posts is that some of your readers will discover your publishing pattern.

Just as all Big Bang Theory fans tune in on Thursday nights for new episodes, your readers will learn what times to tune in for new content on your blog.

I publish content on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and always at 9 am. Maintaining that consistency for over a year creates a schedule that my readers can rely on.

I’m sure some of my blog readers are back on my blog during those days and times just to see what I published next.

The more comfortable you get with applying a skill, the better you get at applying that skill. Writing blog posts is no different.

 

#3: Focus On Growing Your Email List

I won’t go into the spiel about why it’s so important. I have done so before, and I’m sure you have heard many marketers go into their spiels about the email list.

I’ll save you the speech and end off by saying focus on growing your email list. That’s how you get consistently rising traffic and revenue.

I wrote a blog post that goes into detail about growing your email list.

 

#4: Communicate With Your Email List Often

No matter how large your email list is, if you don’t communicate with that email list, it is worthless.

You could have one million subscribers, but if you don’t communicate with them, then you’re no better than the person with one subscriber.

Don’t wait until you have that many subscribers to start communicating with them. Communicate with them now, even if you have less than 10 people on your list.

Communicate with the people on your email list at least once per week. The more they see you in their inboxes, the more these people will remember you.

Get in the inbox too much, and then people will get annoyed, so be careful.

What would you tell your email list about? Here are a few suggestions;

• Your blog posts
• Your YouTube videos
• New project you are working on
• New product

Just start somewhere. Get to know the people on your email list and see what they engage with the most.

If you realize that your email list responds well to blog posts about Twitter, then continue writing blog posts about Twitter.

If you realize that your email list responds poorly to blog posts about chess, then don’t write any blog posts about chess for a while (or forever depending on you, your blog, and your audience).

I can’t give you the silver bullet and tell you how to communicate with your email list word-for-word.

The truth is that we all have our own silver bullet. We just have to find it in the very bottom of our toolbox. The way we find that silver bullet is by looking for it (also known as taking action).

In this case, you take action by actually communicating with your email list.

 

#5: Write Guest Posts

Every guest post you write gives you and your blog a little more exposure. If you write a guest post on a popular blog, your blog could get hundreds of extra visitors from that one guest post.

You would definitely get more credibility.

But what does that mean for blog traffic? The first thing is that a guest post on a popular blog is bound to get a lot of exposure. You also get to build a relationship with the guest blogger, and that guest blogger may decide to help you out someday (i.e. by promoting one of your products).

But there is an advanced way to get the best out of your guest post. Turn it into a series. The guest post acts as Part One and should end by leading readers to a specific blog post on your blog.

That specific blog post is Part Two of the guest post. If people loved Part One, they’ll enjoy Part Two.

That’s why Avengers is so successful and why The Dark Knight trilogy is the best trilogy on the planet.

The lessons we learn from multi-billion dollar businesses can greatly transform the way we blog.

 

#6: Have An Outreach Strategy In Place

This is the big one. The results can get quite incredible, but it also takes a massive amount of time to pull it off.

The concept of an outreach strategy is that when you publish a new blog post, you tell as many influential bloggers about it as possible.

All of these influential bloggers must be bloggers within your niche.

The masters of the outreach strategy are routinely telling dozens (if not hundreds) of other bloggers about their new blog posts.

A simple email with five or fewer sentences kindly encouraging the person to share your blog post will do the trick. It is critical that you say that sharing the blog post is optional and that you’ll continue reading the influential blogger’s content either way.

You don’t want to aggressively ask for the influential blogger to share your content. Influential bloggers get plenty of emails like that.

You want to take a more gentle approach similar to this email (from Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique):

To increase your chances of these people sharing your new blog posts, here are some actions you can take:

1. Share some of their content on social media first
2. Mention them with the @username so they can see you shared their content
3. Comment on their blog posts and try engaging with them on social media

The more action you take to build the relationship, the more likely these people will share your content.

Depending on how strong you build the relationship, some influential bloggers will feel obligated to share your blog post with their audience.

Especially if you mention the influential blogger within the blog post.

But it takes a lot of time to make it happen. If you have the time, then go for it. If not, here’s how you can open up more time.

 

#7: Outsource As Much Of The Work As Possible

I like to believe I am a full-time blogger and entrepreneur. The reality is that I am not. I am a full-time student which means, by definition, everything else is part-time.

Don’t tell that to the entrepreneur within me 🙂

It was hard to acknowledge that as of now, all of this is technically part-time. In the long-run, this acknowledgement helped me change the way I work on my business.

My junior year of high school taught me many lessons about work and life. The school workload was challenging. That workload decreased the amount of time I had left for my business.

In the end, my business remained intact and grew a little. I also got good grades so it was worth it.

But I learned a very important lesson about business that applies to all of us.

No matter how productive we are (or think we are), we can’t do it all alone.

When the workload got challenging and I was taking standardized tests, I only had time to do what I already knew how to do.

Grow my Twitter audience and write blog posts. I did other things, but those two activities probably took up 90% of the time I put towards my business that year.

I gained over 100,000 new Twitter followers and wrote dozens of blog posts. That work looks good on the surface, but there was no expansion.

I was just expanding on my current platforms without opening the doors to more possibilities.

I recognized this was due to a lack of time. So I made a big decision. I began outsourcing most of my work.

The days of scheduling tweets, manually growing my Twitter audience, sending pins, and creating pictures for this blog were over.

The days of Udemy, rediscovery, and affiliate marketing were beginning. My business began expanding in different directions.

All because I suddenly had more time available. And it makes sense, even for a part-timer.

The reason part-timers don’t have enough time to focus on their side work is because time is so short. However, if you outsource some of your workload, you buy back some of your time.

For the sake of argument, let’s say working full-time means working for 40 hours every week. As a part-time worker, you may only be able to work for 15 hours every week. That’s typically how much time I utilize for my business each week.

That’s why summer is my best season for getting stuff done.

Going back to the main point, there is a 25 hour/week deficit. What if, each week, you paid freelancers to do 25 hours of your business work. Then you do the other 15 hours of work on your own every week.

The sum is 40 hours per week. Outsourcing some of the work can turn you from a part-time worker to a full-time income. Even if you put in the same amount of time as a part-time worker.

Even if you are a full-time blogger, outsourcing will still open up a massive amount of time for you. You can’t do it alone. You need a team behind you.

 

#8: Make Your Blog Load Faster

Blog speed is one of the most underrated elements of a successful blog. Google pays attention to blog speed when determining how to rank your content.

Your blog’s speed also determines how long your visitors stick around. If your blog only takes 1-2 seconds to load, then visitors will stick around.

If, on the other hand, it takes your blog over 10 seconds to load, you will lose a large percentage of your fan base.

We are busy people who are becoming increasingly busy with the rise of new opportunities and workloads. Every second counts. For Amazon, each second is the difference between making and not making an extra $1.6 billion.

You can use a site speed test to determine how fast your blog is. I recommend QuickSprout because it lets you see…

• How long it takes for your blog to load
• What is slowing your blog down
• Other cool information

Once QuickSprout tells you what to do, the next step is to take action. Every action you take will make your blog load faster. Then your readers will stick around for a longer period of time.

 

#9: Look At The Data

When you get blog traffic, you get to see where that traffic is coming from. WordPress provides statistics that let you see your daily visitors, where the traffic is coming from, and which of your blog posts are receiving the most traffic.

Depending on how you interpret the data, you can discover what your audience wants, which source you get the most traffic from, and which sources of traffic you need to work on.

The way you interpret the data can impact the future of your blog’s growth. You can choose to focus on your strengths, address your weaknesses, or change what type of content appears on your blog.

The possibilities are endless, but you only discover the possibilities through exploration.

 

#10: Get People To Stick Around

Once you get a visitor on your blog, you want that visitor to stick around for as long as possible. You can get people to stick around with these following tactics:

• Write valuable, attention-grabbing content
• Include links to your older blog posts in your new ones
• Introduce your previous blog post at the beginning of each new blog post
• Include a teaser to your next blog post at the end of each new blog post
• Get your visitor to enter an email address

Alexa lets you discover how long your average visitor sticks around. You can also use it to see how long the average visitor on your favorite blog sticks around.

 

In Conclusion

Turbocharging your blog’s traffic requires a lot of work. It isn’t easy, but once you put in the work and see the fruits of your labor, you will be happy with the results.

The way to approach blog traffic is to focus on the following:

• Grow your platform
• Leverage other people’s platforms in a symbiotic relationship

Putting in the work is what makes it happen.

Which of these tips was your favorite? How do you increase your blog traffic? Sound off in the comments section below.