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Investments Worth Making For Your Blog

March 20, 2015 | 24 Comments

Investing in your blog sounds like a major commitment. It’s like the big jump between hobby blogging, and professional blogging. You might have already invested some money into your blog, whether through buying ads on other blogs or boosting your design a bit, but what else is there? What else could possibly be worth more of your money?

As a college student, I am by no means in a place to be throwing a ton of money into my blog, even if I reallyreallyreally want that super fancy Pinterest scheduler that everyone keeps raving about. I think that’s a big reason people spend money on their blog; they see other bloggers investing in something, and feel like if they don’t follow along, they’ll be a “lesser than” blog. Well that’s totally and completely not true! I’ve done my best to find every way to save money, while still presenting what I think to be a pretty dang awesome blog. However, there are a few investments that I believe are worth making, but fortunately, not all of these even cost money! Just a bit of your time and effort if you’re ready to take that step.

1. A Custom Domain

This was one of the first investments I made in my blog, and oh my gosh does it make a difference. Having a custom domain immediately presents a sense of professionalism (not that subdomain blogs can’t be professional, it’s really just the look!). It also ties together the branding of a blog, and prevents another blog from copying your name as easily. That said, if you’re using a .blogspot or other free hosting blog, check to make sure someone doesn’t already have a blog with your name as a custom domain, because if you ever decide to make this investment, you’ll be forced to change the name you’ve spent so long growing! I’d say if you’re looking to make only a small investment in your blog, this would be the one to make. I bought my first domain through GoDaddy, but I’ve since decided to drop them and purchase my domain directly through my hosting service, which is my next topic!

2. A Self-Hosted Blog

Choosing to switch to a self-hosted blog can be a surprisingly emotional, stressful, and exciting process. You can’t just decide to do it, and 5 minutes later have one. Boy do I wish. It’s a long and strenuous process, but it is absolutely worth it. I ran my blog through Blogger for almost a year, and I never had any issues, so this isn’t something you should feel pressured to do unless you know you want to grow your blog immensely. I knew that I wanted to keep this blog going for a long time, and I also wanted ownership of my content, so switching to self-hosted WordPress was the perfect choice for me. I’m currently hosting my blog with Bluehost, and haven’t had any issues with them!

3. A Beautiful, Unique Design

I say “beautiful” because there can be many interpretations of good design. Some people may say simple and clean, others may say personal and full of character. I do believe that it’s worth investing either some time or money in a beautiful design though, simply because it makes your blog stand out from the rest. Using a pre-made design is great for a while, but as you grow your blog’s brand, you should find a design that’s your own so readers know what blog they’re reading as soon as they visit. There are a few ways you can go at this, and because I’m cheap/don’t have a job/enjoy coding, I decided to teach myself how to design blogs and created this one on my own! If coding isn’t your thing (don’t feel intimidated, you’ll make a designer’s day if this is you), look into hiring a designer to create something special and unique. This will require a bit of research, because depending on your price range, there may only be a few designers that work for you. If you choose to go this route, try not to be too cheap, because there is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into designing a blog. It can be somewhat offensive to ask a designer to give you a discount or change up their packages just so you can save a few bucks, because you’re not paying a business, you’re paying a person just like you!

4. A Cohesive Brand

Similar to your blog design, having consistent branding will do wonders for your blog. This includes your logo, colors, graphics, social media, and pretty much everything people see that is connected to your blog. As you start to connect all of these together and promote your brand, readers will begin recognizing certain design aspects or names as being part of your blog, which is a huge accomplishment! I always thought that the logo was the most important part of creating this cohesive brand, but I realized that the only place my logo really appears is on my blog itself. What my readers are repeatedly seeing is my graphics, which is why I’ve decided to invest more time in creating a consistent graphic style than invest money in a logo design. If you just can’t seem to come up with a great media template or logo design, lots of designers have a brand design packages that would be perfect for you!

5. Social Media Presence

Creating a name for yourself on social media can be a huge task. It takes a lot of time and effort to get people to recognize your name and face, but having that social media following will help your blog immensely! Now when I say social media following, I don’t mean having 5,000 followers that you got from a giveaway who don’t actually want to read your blog. While that number is great for showing to sponsor companies, it really won’t do much for promoting your blog. I would rather have 200 followers who read my blog on a weekly basis and enjoy my content than thousands who scroll past my posts. Time is going to be your biggest investment here, but if you don’t have much of that, there are a few paid options that will help too, like pin/tweet schedulers that do all the posting work for you. If you choose this option though, try to spend at least a few minutes a day on your social media accounts connecting with your followers and posting personal things, rather than just feeding them post promotions all day long. I’ve made a few posts about this topic, with tips for growing your blog with Twitter and tracking the presence you’ve created, and I created a group Pinterest board last week to help you find new readers as well!

What investments have you made in your blog? Are there any that you couldn’t live without?

Reader Survey Results

February 26, 2015 | 10 Comments

Before I jump into this post, I want to say thank you to everyone who participated in my survey! You have no idea how much your answers helped me in putting the final touches on this blog, and narrowing down my focus for the content I create. I loved all of the notes many of you left too, which just reminded me of how fantastic my readers are!

I asked a total of 15 questions, but rather than talking about all of the answers I received, I want to focus on a few key questions that gave me the most interesting results. And just for clarification, the survey itself was made before I switched my blog name to The Blogging Brew, so I’ll be subbing it in to make things simpler!

What blogging platform do you use?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen at least ten of my favorite bloggers make the switch from Blogger to WordPress, and if it wasn’t the trend last year, it definitely is now. These results were about the percentages I expected, which I’m actually happy to see because it means I can continue posting Blogger tutorials knowing I have an audience for them.

Where do you hear about new posts on The Blogging Brew from?

While I had a feeling Bloglovin’ and Pinterest would be up there, I didn’t expect direct URL’s to be such a popular choice. I had a lot of readers tell me that they usually visit my site on their own accord, which was crazy to hear! I’m not sure why I was so surprised though, because there are a good chunk of blogs that I do the same for. Twitter ended up at the bottom of this list, so I plan on putting more focus into promoting on that platform and connecting with my followers.

How long have you been reading The Blogging Brew for?

I started my blog less than a year ago, so I didn’t have much room to work with for this question, but that did allow me to be more specific in my answer choices. It looks like I have a diverse group of readers, as the results ended up fairly even across the board. I loved seeing that almost a quarter of my readers have stuck with me for such a large period of my blog’s journey! It’s also great to note that another quarter of my readers are relatively new, which will hopefully set me up for continuous growth.

Which types of topics do you enjoy reading?

These were probably the best results I received, because they reassured me in the path I’m heading on with this blog. Almost everyone selected “blog tutorials” or “blogging tips”, and a lot of the extra comments I received touched on those as well. I guess The Blogging Brew was a good choice! One thing I didn’t expect to see was the large percentage of readers who selected “personal posts”. I’ve always felt like I struggle to create that type of content, so I thought it would be towards the bottom, but it ended up second overall! Because of that, I’m making an effort to create more personal content and let my readers get to know me more outside of my typical blogging tutorials.

How old are you?

I’m not going to lie, for basically the entirety of my blogging career, I’ve felt like a child amidst a community of moms and soon-to-be moms. I normally don’t think twice about it, until I make a post about my first year college and see my favorite bloggers debuting posts about their toddler’s birthday. That said, I was kind of shocked to see that so many of my readers are in my age group! That just made me realize that I need to connect more with my followers through outlets other than the Facebook communities I’m in, because there are a ton of you out there who I just don’t know about yet!

Do you own a business?

This was kind of a wild card question thrown in out of pure curiosity. With my plans to start a business later this year, I was interested in seeing how much of my audience has delved into that field, and it looks like y’all are loving the entrepreneurial life! Over 30% of you already own a business, and over half said that you’re either interested in starting one or are in the process of making one. It makes me so happy knowing how many of you are tapping into the creative business world, and I can’t wait to join in!

Keep an eye out for a post next week on creating your own reader survey and getting the results you want!

6 Tips For Growing Your Blog With Twitter

February 4, 2015 | No Comments

I’d say Twitter was the last social network I really got into, and I still don’t use it very often. I kept seeing posts from other bloggers about their success with it though, so a few weeks ago I decided to start investing more time into promoting my content through it. I won’t say I’m entirely in love yet, but that’s mainly because I’m super impatient when it comes to waiting for results. I just want to get a thousand new followers and 50 retweets and have people tagging me and all that jazz, and I think a lot of bloggers can relate to that feeling! I have picked up a few pointers along the way though, and I can definitely tell that they’re making a difference in my Twitter stats.

USE IMAGES

This is something I didn’t pick up on at all until, well, yesterday (see it here). I’m not sure why it took me so long, considering this is something I tell every blogger when it comes to making a great post. It’s been shown that tweets with images receive more interactions (like retweets and favorites), which of course is what we’re going for! The minimum size to have your full image shown is 440 x 220 pixels, but I made my image slightly larger (880 x 440 pixels). Just be sure to keep the main content at the center so it shows up correctly!

ENGAGE

Like any form of social media, engagement plays a huge factor in becoming a well-known user. By engagement, I mean tweeting at other members, tagging them in tweets (#FollowFriday?), retweeting their content, and just interacting with others in general. I love retweeting my blog friends when the tweet about a new post, because it gets their content in front of more eyes and connects them to new people. Engaging also gets your name around to more users, which could lead to more followers for you!

SHARE CONTENT FROM OTHER BLOGGERS

This goes along with engagement, but rather than just retweeting what another blogger already said, try being more organic and tweet about their content yourself! It can make someone’s day if they see a tweet about a positive reaction to their post. If I find a post I absolutely love, I’ll grab the link for it and tweet about what I liked in the content. Don’t forget to tag the author—extra engagement points!

JOIN GROUP CHATS

The first group chat I participated in was with @FireworkPeople. It was so energetic and positive and I met a ton of new people! Group chats are basically scheduled times when the host will tweet about something, or ask questions to their followers, and anyone that’s available at that time can just join in on the conversation! They’re super casual, and oftentimes everyone will follow each other afterwards.

SCHEDULE YOUR TWEETS

I know there are quite a few tweet schedulers out there, but I’ve been using Buffer for a while now and I don’t think I’ll be switching anytime soon! Most schedulers work about the same though. You make tweets beforehand (hours or days) and schedule the exact time for them to be posted. When I make a new post, I schedule 3 or 4 tweets about it for the next day scattered between 7am and 7pm. Then I don’t have to worry about forgetting till after dinner!

TWEET FOR YOURSELF

While scheduling is fantastic for the busy blogger, you should avoid using it for everything you tweet. If your dash is filled with links to your blog posts and that’s it, people will get annoyed and unfollow you. No one likes over advertisement, especially on their Twitter feed! Do include those scattered scheduled tweets, but tweet organically throughout the day as well. Your followers want to get to know you, not just your blog!

Btw, you should definitely follow me on Twitter.

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