How I Doubled Last Year's Traffic to My Blog in Six Months

ONE DAY OR DAY ONE, YOU DECIDE

-UNKNOWN

I made a decision at the beginning of the year to track milestones and progress on Three Heel Clicks. I had no idea when I set goals at the beginning of the year that I would end up hitting those goals in June! I truly believe that creating SMART goals for your business instead of writing down hopes and dreams you have a better shot at attaining them. This article is written from my first hand experience to show you that anyone can achieve what they set out to do if they are willing to put in the work. I love that my job requires me to share ideas with all of you, but blogging and marketing hasn’t always had the best of resources. I’ve found over time that there are a few types of successful roles in this industry - influencers, network marketers and bloggers. While some do all three roles, many of us stick to one silo on the internet.

Begin with the end in mind

My goal as a blogger is to share my posts with you all on the internet. I love what I do every day. Sometimes I do feel uninspired or tired but after reviewing where I aim to be at the end of the year I am able to see the results and track progress throughout the year. Being that we are almost through July of 2019, I recommend sitting down for an hour with a pen and paper (I used Google Sheets to create a spreadsheet) to list where you want to improve. If you already have a blog in place here are a few things to make goals around:

• Total number of posts you want to create through the end of the year

• Total number of website hits you aim to get through the end of the year

• Total number of social media posts where you share your blog content

• Total number of unique visitors to your blog

My goal this year was to double last years number of unique visitors. That meant I needed to increase marketing efforts through social media so that I could share each post with a broader audience. Now when I publish a post, I immediately push a link to Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest. The more people who have access to your site and content, the more that will likely click on the link to view that content. It’s simply a numbers game.

Break your yearly goal into monthly activities

After I isolated that I wanted a larger number to hit my site, I then decided I needed to create more content and share that content on a monthly basis. I sought at the beginning of the year to create 250 blog posts and 10 YouTube videos. I divided that up by the total number of months and came up with an attainable number. Every month at the beginning of the month I take a look at last month and see if I am on target. If I need to post additional posts this month to hit my yearly number I add that in.

Know your audience

I began by using tools like Instagram for Business (it’s a free feature you can utilize to give you insights to your instagram posts, audience and presence). I built my website on Squarespace back in 2014 and haven’t looked back. They are an easy to use platform with modern templates and integrate with you social media accounts for easy posting. I looked into my posts that performed the best over time. I also looked at the posts that were the most popular over the past month and year to date. Knowing which content is the most popular allowed me to expand on these subjects. If my audience is clicking mostly on fitness or fashion posts, then it’s important for me to create more content in these categories. Knowing whether or not your social media following is male or female, what their age groups are and where they are located allows you to tailor your message to those groups. Knowing your audience is key to creating content that allows you to engage with them.

SMART Goals

Setting goals is important in all aspects of life, but are you setting proper goals. SMART goals are nothing new. They are a strategy for setting goals in sales and marketing roles. Let’s break down what a SMART goal entails - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound. Instead of writing a goal as, “I want to increase my website traffic." I would write the goal as, “ I aim to obtain 3,000 unique visitors during the 2019 calendar year.” By being specific to the number you want to increase your traffic to instead of just saying you want to increase to allows the goal to be measurable. You also have to place a time and date on it. A goal is not a goal without a time and date. The final piece of goal setting is to create goals that are attainable and realistic. It’s unrealistic for me to set a goal of 1 million unique visitors a month. Instead setting a goal around the number of posts I create is a much more attainable and realistic. By setting goals that are realistic and attainable you’ll be motivated to achieve them.

Creating milestones and business goals is important to stay on track in any line of work. Goals and milestones keep your business focused on what’s truly important. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with unlimited possibilities of where can spend spend your time, but if you have a plan then you can work that plan. If you would like to learn more about goal setting click the button below for information and I’ll send you a template and tracker for your goals!

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