 Welcome to the journey. Today we're going to talk about how to increase blog traffic with 13 proven tactics. Sam, do you know? Research shows that 61% of businesses say that their biggest challenge is generating more traffic and more leads. I didn't know that. So listen, if you don't want to fall into this group, here's what you want to do. You want to learn how to publicize your blog, and this is going to help you to generate more traffic, more customers, and spread more word of mouth. So to help you get started, we have 13 tips. Starting with promoting your blog on social media. I mean, what a great place, too. Oftentimes businesses, they're posting on social media, and eventually they kind of hit that writer's block, like, oh, what do I post today? We'll throw this into a calendar. Get a calendar, plan out your posts, and maybe even on a weekly basis, maybe on a monthly basis, choose to promote your blog in a creative way on Twitter, and Instagram, and Facebook. And while you're promoting this on social media, reach out to your friends and family. They are the best people to encourage to like, comment, and even share your posts. Because when they do those things, you're opening up into new networks whom you may never have had the opportunity to reach out to. Totally. Speaking of new networks of folks that maybe never heard of you before, I encourage you to do guest blogging as well. I know I do it on the GoDaddy team. Whenever we do a webinar with other partners out there in the marketing world, after we do the webinar, one of the things we do is like, hey, you know, this was a great webinar. We recorded it. We're gonna put it on our blog. Do you guys have a blog? And if that other company does, we're like, let's do a guest blog. So we'll have their blog that they did and put on our site, and vice versa. It's just another great way to get in front of new customers who've maybe never heard about you before. And collaboration is so much better than competition. Don't be afraid. There are people out there that want to join forces with you to actually promote each other. And really important for your blog when you are actually posting on there, and we're talking about social media, make sure you have an easy way for that traffic to share the blog posts to social media platforms to even help you get in front of more new customers and fans. So I have an example here. GoDaddy, our blog. This is an article that my teammate wrote recently, Caroline Barker. Shout out. Shout out to Caroline. And it's about, it's for Slons and it's about Instagram and like how to rejuvenate your Instagram for 2020, a very, very top of mind article. But notice here on the left-hand side, you can share it to tweet it on Twitter, you can share it to Facebook, et cetera. So it's as simple as this. I go and I click on Twitter and right away, it not only populates the link, but even shows the title there. And then I can add a caption too, like read this article. It was rad and super helpful, hashtag Instagram. So this is just another tip that I would have for every blog post that you do, make sure it's super easy for that traffic there to share it to social. And another little tip, something else that you can do, if you have a certain aha moment in your blog that you really want people to pay attention to, this is an advanced tip. You can actually make that small section tweetable or you can share it to Facebook and add that necessary widget so that people can add that. It's a great point, Sam. Another great point, find your niche, focus in on what it is that makes you unique and that's gonna also help influence your blog. So I wanna travel over here to one of my favorite clothing brands, Aviator Nation. And what I love about the blog, The Owner Page, she has a passion for the 70s. And not just the 70s, but the surf culture and this time period, as well as the fashion then and the music then. When you go to the blog, you get that sense of her story, her vibe, she even goes into the fashion, the music, the collection and in addition to some of the partnerships they have, like even with SoulCycle and Austin City Limits, yeah. And I know many people are saying, oh, I wanna be able to reach everyone. However, when you narrow your focus, you'll be able to find very enthusiastic brand ambassadors that'll be just eating up what you have to do. So narrow that focus, find that niche and you'll have those brand loyal brand ambassadors just coming to spread the word about you. Yes, send me a shirt. I'll rep it on the journey. And also, people like it when you keep it simple. So make sure your blog is simple in that, think about your audience. They wanna know exactly what they're getting themselves into when they come to your blog. So next tip is SEO. You don't wanna just write about everything and anything. You wanna think about what is your audience gonna be looking for? What are they gonna be searching for online? There's some ways of researching these keywords to make sure that you're writing with a purpose and these things that your audience is gonna be looking for, like, for instance, the Aviator Nation, maybe things related to 70s or disco, things that exactly, things that you know your loyal fans are gonna be looking for. Southern California. Tip number five, publish consistently. You have readers, viewers, anticipating what you're putting out there. I know for the journey, we post two to three times a week and that helps with retention. So you wanna make sure you're incentivizing people to come back. You don't wanna just go and post once and then totally ghost them. And they let them know, hey, we have fresh content coming out Mondays and Wednesdays so people know when to expect it and then they get excited. They'll know to, okay, let me show up because I know every Monday and Wednesday, whatever works for you, but stick to it because you don't wanna lose those people that have already invested into being a reader or an audience member for your blog. All right, number six, turn readers into subscribers. I mean, you can't just sit back and hope they're gonna return to your blog or gosh, I really hope they see that social media post about it and they're gonna return. Get them on that email newsletter and that way you can send them a nice friendly reminder to one of your blog posts. And to make sure that they are on your email list, call to action, let them know, hey, subscribe here. You can add that at the bottom of your blog so they know what to do. Just a simple tell them, hey, enter in your email so you're notified when we have this coming out. And number seven, you wanna have the right cadence. We did talk about scheduling your content and having specific days for it to go out. At the same time, you wanna know how many times it's gonna be good for you. Two times could be good for others. Maybe once is for you, just play around with it. It's an experiment. And I mean, if you're, say, a salon, how often can you keep posting about how to dye your hair or what styles are in? By the way, Balayage, still very cool. So you wanna think about it. You don't wanna lose the quality in your posts and cadence is gonna help you to maintain quality. And plus people, they don't necessarily wanna see something from you every day. So take your time, figure out how much is enough. Just play around with it. Number eight, invite industry experts to guest blogs. So we talked about this very briefly earlier, like when we do our webinars with other industry experts. And what's really cool is they have an expertise outside of what we're doing at GoDaddy. And so they can come in, do a post, and that collaboration then allows us as a company to get in front of a new audience. And it's a great way for you to leverage their fans. They may not have known that you are offering the different types of content. So they become aware of you and then potentially become a new fan of yours. Yeah, and then you're already getting credibility, right? Because they're already fans of this guest blogger. So then you have this instilled trust. Number nine, balance your content and ads. I know for me when I go to a blog and there's a pop-up window, a little pesky pop-up window, it's distracting, it throws me off. And also if you get hit with more ads, I just want to leave, like the credibility goes down. It feels like spam, so I abort. All right, so for number 10, monitor your load time. 40% of people say that they'll leave a page if it hasn't loaded after three seconds. And you want to keep a close eye on this because you take pride in your blog and maybe you're adding things to it. And as you add things, you don't know how it's affecting the load time. So you want to keep an eye on this because you want your people to have a positive experience. So you could use tools like Google's PageSpeed to make sure that load time is still efficient. Number 11, make it easy for journalists to contact you. So this is really a cool way, not just journalists, but influencers to learn about you, collab with you, and then once again, what is that gonna help do? Drive traffic to your blog. A great place to do this, really beef up your About Us section. So let's go back over to my friends at AviatorNation and check out their About Business section. So here's where I know I learned the story about Paige, the founder and creative, the whole vision that she got about the California-based brand, and then you go into not only the story, which is beefed up, as they say, and the unique story, but there's great coffee and images that really embrace her vibe and the brand. One thing that I might advise Paige and I were to grab a cup of coffee or catch some waves, I'd say add video. I think she's super personable. I know she plays music, it'd be cool to see that. I know they do a great job on Instagram, but this is where you tell your unique story and then also you'll notice the partnerships that they have listed in here from South by Southwest to the X Games to Lollapalooza, and that's another great place where they're sharing their story, sharing their partnerships. So if when journalists or other influencers come across, they get an idea of like, oh yeah, this makes sense for us as ACL to collab with AviatorNation because look who they've partnered with in the past. So for tip number 12, replicate your success. Now it may take some time to actually find your cadence and get everything just right, but once you do, keep it that way. You've worked hard, so you just continue to go with what works. And finally, number 13, track which marketing efforts work best. So set some milestones weekly, monthly, quarterly, and work as hard as you can until you reach those milestones. Track it, reflect on it, and stay inspired. By tackling your niche, posting consistently. And building relationships with your readers, other journalists or influencers, you'll be sure fire on your way to getting more traffic to your blog. That's a wrap. This is The Journey. You just learned how to drive more traffic to your blog site. Be sure to comment below, like this video, and subscribe to our channel and ring the bell so you're notified when we have fresh new content coming out. This is The Journey. See you next time.