Blogging and social media are two things that I love and spend a great amount of time doing. My blog is going to start producing more posts on how to improve your own blog and social media accounts. If you are just starting out as a blogger I hope to teach you a lot and that you will learn a lot from my blog. If you are a more experienced blogger I still hope that you will learn things from my blog and that regardless of whether you are a blogger or not I hope you will get to know my blog and be a part of this blogging community.

I am excited to share with you all that I am refocusing my blog. I realized that I was trying to write about too  many topics which was leaving my blog a confusing place to write for and I’m sure confusing to read at times. So I started thinking about what I liked reading about and what I really wanted to make posts about. The most important thing when picking a blog topic is to really care about and be passionate about the topic.

It makes it a lot easier to write blog posts about. So of all the topics I was writing about blogging and all that goes along with it was what I loved and enjoyed the most. So if you are just starting out that is step one. To find a topic that you care about and blog about that. I have some good posts over the years on all sorts of different topics but I’m really excited to see what happens when I focus my blog down.

1. make a plan for your blog

I think this is so important. I wish I knew how important when I started my blog but it has taken me a few years to get here. Now I’m seeing that with a plan in place things are so much easier and real growth is possible. I have really started planning in 2015 and it has been  the best year so far for my blog and I have been able to really see what has worked.

Also it shows you what doesn’t work when you have a plan in place. I started trying to plan out the rest of 2015 for my blog and in doing that really started to see a lot of issues with having so many different blog focuses. I’m glad that in doing my planning I saw an issue and could take the steps to correct it.

So if you blog or run any kind of business start working on a plan. It doesn’t have to be complicated to start. Just an idea of what you wan to accomplish, the time frame you want to get things done and the steps you want to take are a great place to start.

2. Do some research

This is my personal favorite of the steps. I love doing research and learning new things. With blogging in particular their is a never ending amount of information to learn. So start finding some to learn. There are blog posts to read, videos to watch and books to read.

I wrote a review of one of my favorite blogging books ever in this post. I have learned so much from this book and after trying out many of her tips really saw growth in my blog. It is my number one recommend although there are lots of great books out there.

3.  Start being more consistent

I think this is really so important. It is so true though. You need to be consistent. When you blog and how often you blog are up to you but you need to figure out what works and then stick to that.

Some bloggers write once a week, some three times a week and some daily. It’s not really the amount that’s important. Their are successful bloggers at all levels. What is important is that your followers no what to expect from you. You can’t blog three times a week for a few weeks and then disappear for a month. If your followers are use to getting new content and then it stops. They might not stick around for you to come back.

4.  Get more Social

This is so important to your growth as a blogger to be social. This means a lot of things, the point is that you want people to get to know you and interact with them. On your blog, other blogs,  on social media and everywhere else you can.

A big part of this means commenting. It will help people to find your blog and by seeing your comment on other blogs it might get new people to click over. Also responding to the comments left on your blog. I’m not great at this one but it’s one of my works in progress. I do it just not as much as I should.

I also spend a lot of time on social media. There is a lot to learn when it comes to social media but getting good at a couple of the many platforms is a great way to get your blog out there and get people to find you. Check out my Social Media Posts to get lots of tips on how to figure out some of these platforms.

Remember if you want to grow your blog it’s about finding real followers and readers. So build relationships with people. That way you can get them to keep coming back.

5.  Start figuring out SEO

This is another area where I’m glad to say I’m starting to see improvement in. I’ve just started to get the basics of SEO down but for the first two years of blogging I knew nothing about it. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically it’s how people will find your blog through searching for keywords.

When you start doing it better more people will find your blog. That’s because when your posts have proper SEO they will come up in the first page or two of search results, instead of page 11 because who’s really going to go through ten other pages of results to get to your post? No one. I use the Yoast SEO Plugin which is really helpful.

Now that I’m better with SEO and have started seeing results from it I’m working on putting together a post that will share what I’ve learned. So if you haven’t already, sign up for my newsletter

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