Use paid advertising to experiment

 

1. Use paid advertising to experiment

While we’re all about growing your blog traffic as organically as possible, I can’t deny the power of paid advertising as a way to experiment and learn.

If you’re lucky, you may even dial in a paid acquisition process that’ll help increase your blog’s overall exposure and conversion rates.

When you have a particularly high-converting page that you want to promote, take advantage of a Facebook ads campaign, Pinterest promotion or Google AdWords to drive your target audience to that page and see which channels convert best.

8. Take advantage of Pinterest

Pinterest is very quickly becoming the secret weapon for bloggers looking to grow their blogs.

Often mistaken as a place for middle-aged housewives to share their latest recipes and DIY projects, once you look past its surface, you’ll be surprised at how powerful Pinterest can be to help grow your blog.

Pinterest outshines its other social media cousins in its ability to generate a higher ROI, with one study finding that marketing on Pinterest produces 380% greater sales than your average digital marketing campaign. As if that wasn’t enough, the average Pinterest post is also 100 more times sharable than your average tweet, and according to Tailwind, the average lifespan of a pin is at least one week, whereas content on Facebook lasts only 80 minutes.

Take advantage of Pinterest by creating eye-catching images of your blog posts, and share it to relevant boards and groups to grow your blog.

Just take a look at how social media marketer Kim Garst uses her Pinterest board to share her latest posts and grow her blog in such a visually appealing manner.

2. Drive more traffic from your email marketing

While most bloggers already aware of the power of email marketing and the importance of capping off marketing messages with a strong call-to-action, chances are, you’re still missing out on a prime piece of email real estate for driving traffic towards your blog.

Your email signature.

Forget about using your email signature as a basic means to share your quick contact information.

Instead, start utilizing your corporate email signature as a way to actively grow your blog and promote your latest content. Whether you’re emailing a client or a potential lead, including a link to your blog posts is a great way to spread your brand awareness and to show off your knowledge and expertise.

You can even take it a step further by creating a strong CTA for your best-performing (or highest-converting) content as a way to generate direct conversions.

For example, check out how the email signature above contains a CTA for recipients to join a free webinar—an activity that many bloggers employ in order to grow a blog.

10. Find the right websites to guest post on

One of the best ways to quickly grow your blog by improving your level of domain authority (and influence) is guest blogging on other people’s sites.

The best part about guest blogging is that it allows you to share your expertise with a pre-existing community of engaged readers, while simultaneously establishing your authority amongst your target audience.

Try thinking of your guest posts as sampler material for your own (more in-depth) blog content. By regularly publishing high-quality posts on a variety of other authoritative sites, you’ll be able to attract the attention of your target audience and have them craving more.

The key to effective guest blogging, though, is making sure you’re finding the right places to guest post. It won’t help much if you’re posting on sites that none of your target readers would ever think to visit—that’s not exactly helping to grow your blog.

Start by creating a list of sites that you know that your audience trusts, and see if you can get in touch with their editor. If you’re brand new to blogging, then start with other writers in the niche you blog about, that are a little more established—don’t immediately rush to inquire about writing for sites like Forbes, Inc and Entrepreneur.

It might take a while to get some traction and you’ll certainly have no shortage of rejections, but if you’re sending strong cold emails, taking the time to write a blog post outline that’s geared toward their readers, then as your network and portfolio grows, you’ll find that it gets easier and easier to write for bigger and better blogs.