In the world of blogging, it’s easy to get distracted or lose interest in your blog if it’s not getting enough traffic or making as much money as you like.
What most people don’t realize about blogging, is that it’s a very long journey before you actually start seeing big traffic and financial success.
With over 300 million blogs in the world today, that’s a lot of sites you are going to have to compete against while also standing out from the crowd.
Whether you are finding a lack of interest in your blog or simply can’t figure out how to bring in more traffic and revenue, I have some great methods and resources to help you along the way.
Some of the best ways to revive your interest and bring some life back into your blog only take a few hours to accomplish, and it can make a world of difference for how others perceive your blog, while also getting you motivated in the process.
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Excel Your Blog Growth with These 5 Actionable Tips!
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Creating a blog that stands high above the competition is all about putting in the time, work and effort where others don’t. Each of the five tips listed below are creative, effective and crucial steps to building the trust, authority and lifetime success of your site. I highly recommend you implement each of them, however, be sure to focus your efforts on just one at a time for best results.
1 – Create a New Logo for Your Site
The assumption that your blog’s success has a lot to do with it’s content is correct, however it also has a lot to do with your brand and how others see your blog.
Most bloggers will start out with a default or premium WordPress theme and leave their header as a simple text message. While this is effective, it could be so much better.
When I first launched my own blog back in 2007, I made sure to have a killer logo and toon mascot designed for the site. From the beginning this has made a huge difference for the overall branding of the site, and is a very recognized logo and brand today in the blogging and affiliate industry.
Over the years I’ve seen many other sites implement this same method, include Enstine Muki. If you compare his latest logo design and header against his previous designs, you would notice how his header with a drawing of himself gives a much better sense of who is writing the content, while also building a relationship with his audience. Would you rather see black and black text that says “Enstine Muki”, or a picture of the actual man behind the blog and it’s content?
At the same time, the color usage within Enstine’s logo and site is mostly blue, which is known as a color that emits trust and integrity among a few other things. To learn more about how psychology, colors and shapes play an part in the logo design and creation process, be sure to check out this article from Designhill. This is important, as you will want to have a logo for your brand that is well represented by the emotions it hits with your audience.
Whether you have a blog that is sitting there with a simple text header/logo, or have a logo in place that isn’t representing your brand well — creating a new or updated logo for your site is one of the best ways to bring new life to your site, while improving your branding and relationship with your audience.
2 – Optimize the Performance of Your Site
Optimization is the art of getting something to be perfect. In reference to making your web site perfect, you would also want to make the experience for your audience as great as possible.
Such optimization methods on your site can include:
- Super fast loading times (https:My recommended Super web fast hosting)
- Having a responsive site design
- Minimize distractions and focus on content
- Effectively breaking apart content to make it easy to read
- Make it easy for users to navigate through your site
- Provide real value in your content and stay away from fluff
While the optimization process of your site can be quite complex, if you focus on each of these tasks one at a time it can be much more effective.
Two infographics that can help you with this process are highlighted below:
- Blog Post Optimization – An article and infographic from Hubspot on how to properly format and break apart content within your blog.
- Landing Page Optimization – When focusing on affiliate marketing or lead generation, this infographic from AdsBridge provides very useful and actionable tips.
The optimization of your site is something that will constantly change over time as your blog continues to grow and develop. No matter what direction your blog takes in the future, always have site performance and experience a top consideration.
3 – Create a White Board Instruction Video
When someone comes to your web site or blog for the first time, do they know exactly what they are looking for or why they are there in the first place?
More often then not, this question relates more to services and businesses than most generic blogs — but an explainer video can do wonders for nearly any blog, web site or brand. After all, it’s always about providing as much value as possible and relating with your audience.
Explainer videos are one of the most effective ways to instantly engage with your audience and tell them exactly what you offer and how they should proceed. You can see an example of my explainer video for Blogging.org below, and all of the steps taken to create it here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_-7tKFn9UY]
The reason why explainer videos are great, is that you can basically show a 30-second video clip to your audience… or provide them with 2,000 words to read. Which do you think they will prefer? Video of course!
In addition to having an explainer video that you can place right on your site, you can also use YouTube as a source of new traffic and lead generation as well.
While creating a logo for your site and optimization are fairly cheap to accomplish, an explainer video may cost you a few hundred to even a couple thousand dollars depending on where and how you get it created — however, this doesn’t mean that you couldn’t do a short video of yourself talking to your audience for free and get the same value!
Video is an excellent way to bring your blog and content to life — it doesn’t matter how you to do it, just as long as you do!
4 – Start a Sponsored Blog Contest
Running a contest on your blog is a great way to get your audience to bring extra exposure and life back to your site.
Through the use of social media and WordPress plugins, it’s extremely easy to setup a blogging contest of your own. Many blog contests simply require their audience to do a simple social share, leave a comment or write a detailed post on their own blog to enter — all of these work wonders when setup correctly.
What’s even more exciting about running a blog contest of your own, is that you won’t need to put up any money for the prize either! With thousands of products, services and brands always wanting to get more exposure online, many of them will provide you with complimentary access or products that you can give away on your site.
A great example of how this process works can be seen on Enstine’s previous blog contest for BlogExpose. A submission process was setup for the contest, multiple prize sponsors were included and there was also plenty of readership engagement — all big positives for both this blog, it’s sponsors and audience.
One of the biggest benefits to running a blog contest is that it can expand way outside of just your blog audience when it starts to hit social medial. To learn more about how to effectively promote and scale your next contest through social media, check out how these top brands run Facebook contests online.
5 – Write an Authoritative Guide
The last actionable tip to bring life, excitement and even monetization to your blog, is to create a detailed authority guide that is better than anything else currently out there! Yes, that was quite a mouthful and something that is going to take a lot of work… but this one simple addition can result in thousands of new visitors, links and revenue dollars for your site in the coming months and years.
Most people fail to find success with blogging because they are simply focused on “blogging” — which in this example, is the idea of just publishing new content every day or so. Content is great, but with over 300 million blogs in the world today… I think we have enough!
By creating an extremely valuable post or detailed guide on whatever your blog focus or niche is, you can then become the authority in that space. At the same time, you can focus all of your advertising and backlink building efforts on just that one detailed guide (or post). This will allow your one mega article to grow and rank at a much faster pace.
The result? After several hours of work, Enstine can now continually offer his new site visitors something of value, while also growing his mailing list and brand in the process.
This model works extremely well and is something many other top bloggers are doing as well, especially Brian Dean of Backlinko.com.
Brian doesn’t blog often, but when he does, it’s super high quality content that people love!
Take some time to study his site and recent “SEO Campaign Case Study” article. All of the content is super heavy and rich in value, while also citing multiple references and real examples to follow. Perfect for anyone who wants to increase their organic traffic through social media and search.
Before writing a detailed post or guide for your site, take the time to see what’s already out there and make a plan for how you can do it better.
Once published, focus on your “content promotion” and not just your “content generation”.
Now it’s your turn!
This ended up being quite a read, but I hope it’s helped you gain some valuable tips and insights for how you can not only bring your blog back to life, but how you can also take it to that next level as well.
As a quick recap, here are the key elements you should be focusing on for your blog.
- Create a logo – Build your brand and relationship with your readers
- Optimization – Make every aspect of your blog experience awesome
- Create a Video – Whether its a personal video or explainer, your audience will love it
- Run a Blog Contest – Increase social activity and reward your site visitors
- Write an Authority Guide – Become the expert within your niche with high value content
The sad part here is that many of you will read this article and think about how great these concepts are — yet most won’t take any action.
Don’t fall into that 99% that never do anything with what they just learned.
Take action, improve your site and leave a comment below with what you are currently doing to improve your site today!
