Magazine editor Deidra Romero recently launched a new blog, Parenting Upstream, which speaks to Millennials who are parents. This interview is a rare opportunity to discuss the nuts and bolts of a blog launch right at the front end of the process. Romero shares why it was important to develop the site’s brand identity, how she ramped up for the blog’s launch, what she learned through trial and error with giveaways and paid traffic, and her tips to get more traffic out of Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.
Q&A: ‘Parenting UPSTREAM’ EDITOR DEIDRA ROMERO
031: What does it take to launch a major blog? – with Deidra Romero
There are two ways to approach creating a blog: The first is built around a person (such as an author’s personal blog); the second type is built around a topic, much like an online magazine that speaks to a group of readers drawn together by shared interests. When launching a magazine-style blog, what are the essentials in establishing it, growing a fan base of subscribers, and gaining traction? In this episode of DIY Author, Chris Well talks with magazine editor and freelance writer Deidra Romero. She developed her brand-new blog Parenting Upstream from scratch–and walks you through detail after detail of her pre-launch sequence, all the promotions she did, how social media figured into the blog’s initial reach, and what actionable advice she would give to any new blogger about putting out the best content that people will engage with. If you’re considering a blog, this is a “must listen.”
The importance of branding your blog.
What are the steps in creating a brand identity for a magazine-style blog? Deidra Romero shares with Chris that the branding piece of the puzzle was important for her in establishing her own sense of purpose and identity as a blogger. Find out more as she dives into all the details on this episode.
Monetizing a blog isn’t easy–but it can be done.
When Deidra Romero began developing her ideas for a new blog, she didn’t think about making money from it at first. But she soon discovered that all the effort she put in would be rewarded if she focused on a few effective monetization approaches. In this episode she shares what she’s learned about monetization, the various avenues she’s discovered, and how she’s going about establishing the “expert status” that will enable her to offer her own products for the readers of her blog. If you’re interested in making money from a blog, you’ve got to hear what she’s learned.
There are so many social media platforms out there–which ones should you be concerned about?
If your head is spinning from all the different social media platforms available, you’re not alone. It’s hard to know which ones are worth your time. That’s one reason this episode of DIY Author will be so helpful to you: Deidra Romero has used several of the platforms, conducting experiments as she set up her blog. She offers detailed tips for dominating a variety of platforms–including practical advice for marketing through Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram–so you can make an informed choice about where and how you want to spend your social media energy! Listen in to find out what worked, what didn’t, and what tricks Deidra learned to make her social media presence more effective!
Do you have clear goals for your social media?
Deidra Romero has tried lots of things on social media to promote her blog, Parenting Upstream. Through all her efforts she’s found one thing to be true: “Any interaction with people is a win.” It’s not always about getting new subscribers to an email list or more “likes” on a given social media platform. It’s about the people. Getting to know them and letting them get to know you.That’s putting the “social” back into social media, and Deidra’s doing a great job at it. Listen to this interview to hear how she’s approaching social media and the effects it’s having, on this episode of DIY Author.
OUTLINE OF THIS EPISODE
● [0:54] Welcome & introduction
● [1:38] Deidra’s reasons for launching a new blog, “Parenting Upstream.”
● [3:55] The “pre-launch” list Deidra prepared for her blog.
● [4:45] The importance of branding your blog.
● [5:30] How Deidra approached her blog more like a “magazine.”
● [7:26] Did she start with a blog first or a topic first?
● [9:32] How authenticity impacts good blogging and how Deidra learned it from other bloggers.
● [10:37] The things Deidra learned from other blogs and magazines.
● [14:49] The “spokes in the wheel” of monetization that Deidra has moved toward.
● [17:44] The launch strategies Deidra used that worked.
● [24:30] A “secret weapon” used to get more followers on Instagram.
● [27:00] When and why Deidra stopped using her personal Facebook page.
● [30:00] How non-writers were featured on Deidra’s blog and the reach they’ve had.
● [33:30] How Buzz Sumo was helpful to Deidra for discovering good topics for her posts.
● [35:25] Deidra’s “guest blogging” dream.
● [37:31] How Deidra’s book giveaways worked and didn’t work.
● [39:38] Facebook Ads, how Deidra used them, and what she learned.
● [47:00] The value of Pinterest and how Deidra used it.
● [49:00] Why any interaction with others is a win.
● [50:24] Deidra’s goals for her launch and how she did.
● [53:53] The blog posting frequency and how it impacts her reach.
● [56:23] Loop giveaways… a strategy for increasing Instagram followers.
● [59:53] Actionable advice for starting a blog.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
ParentingUpstream.com – Deidra’s blog
Instagram.com
CrowdFireApp.com
BuzzSumo.com
CoSchedule.com
BuzzFeed.com
Pinterest.com
Seth Godin
Donald Miller
27 Royalty Free Stock Image Sites
RELATED LINKS:
Blogging: 12 Tips For a More Successful Author’s Blog
16 Blog Post Ideas for Novelists that will Engage the Right Audience
Guest writing for DIY Author
TRANSCRIPT FOR DIY AUTHOR EPISODE 31 (edited for clarity)
Chris Well: Deidra Romero has just launched a new website, Parenting Upstream–which, at the time of this conversation, was launched six weeks ago. You had several interesting strategies to set it up and build an audience. Let’s start with the point where you said, “I’m going to do this.”
Deidra Romero: About a year ago, I was outgrowing my personal blog–it was an online portfolio, too. One day, I was looking at my data and realized I had, you know, 5000 views on my blog–and that was just from posting it on my personal Facebook page.
Finally, I got to a point where I felt like my career demanded a new blog–something that kind of carved out my niche. My old blog was evolving into a parenting blog, which led me to, ‘If I’m going to do a parenting blog, I just need to do a parenting blog and brand it like that.’ I knew that’s what I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be for Millennials because I see how Millennials are parenting differently. That’s something I wanted to capture on the blog.
So I had the idea like a year ago. Then about four months ago, I was like, “ I need to do this now.” Walking through the process of creating the new blog was really eye opening, for me.
Chris Well: So there was about three-and-a-half months of pre-launch?
Deidra Romero: Yeah, so I did a lot. This was first site I’ve self-hosted, so I had to research what host I was going to use. I knew I wanted to use WordPress.
I walked through a branding process before I started the blog. I didn’t even know what I wanted it to be about–I wanted it to be about parenting, and I wanted it to be for Millennials, but I didn’t know anything beyond that.
Luckily my husband works in branding and marketing. We had several conversations and he led me through his branding process he takes clients through.
But for people who aren’t married to branding experts, there are lots of great resources and books you can read to get you through that branding process. I definitely recommend that for anybody who’s going to start a blog. I was shocked at how much I was lacking in my preparation until I walked through that branding process.
And I carved out a one-sentence mission statement and worked from there.
Chris Well: Technically this is a blog, but your editorial strategy seems closer to that of a magazine. Do you think of it that way?
Deidra Romero: I do. If I sit down and write about like all my experiences about parenting from this philosophical, pie-in-the-sky motherhood island where I live, it’s not going to benefit a lot of people. So, I needed other voices on the blog. And I knew I needed a really practical component to the blog.
Most of the pieces I write are narratives about how parenthood clashes with culture, and how different it looks than it did twenty years ago, and how Millennials specifically are parenting differently. So, a lot of my pieces take like this almost sociological perspective, looking at how parents interact with culture.
But I also needed a practical component for the blog so that people would use it as a resource—how-to lists, the trouble-shooting lists, meal planning tips, how to get stuff done when your kids are at home, how to be more productive. Pieces like that are easily pinned on Pinterest, people want to share on Facebook, things like that are really going to add value to readers.
I wanted it to be like a cultural timepiece. You know, a snapshot of how Millennials are just now entering parenthood and we cause a lot of fuss. I just knew we were going to do things differently and we are–and that’s what I wanted to capture on the blog.
Chris Well: As you were doing your prep, did you do any market research? Did you study other magazines? Did you study other blogs in this category?
Deidra Romero: Yeah. Well, there aren’t a lot of other blogs in this category–there are motherhood blogs, and then there are fatherhood blogs. I wanted this to be a gender-friendly place on the web.
I felt like most motherhood blogs don’t acknowledge the fact that more dads are staying home than ever before, and more moms are working outside the home, more moms are in corporate level positions. They don’t really capture that essence of what’s happening in culture today with parenthood, which is a more equal labor division between moms and dads. So, gender rules is a big, thing I talk a lot about on Parenting Upstream. So that’s how I wanted Parenting Upstream to be different. I didn’t just want it to be a motherhood blog.
So, I did look at motherhood blogs, lots of motherhood blogs. One of my favorite motherhood bloggers, her name is Glennon Doyle Melton, she’s written a New York Times bestseller and her blog is called Momastery and she blogs in such an authentic and candid way and has a huge following.
We’re very different in a lot of things–I mean, we’re not at all the same–but I did look at some of the ways she blogs. And I’d looked at other blogs I admired and I thought, “What are they doing here that I can take away?”
Scary Mommy is a popular motherhood blog. I took notes about what topics they were covering because a lot of their things go viral.
I did a lot of market research and looked at other motherhood blogs that were popular and said, “Okay, how is Parenting Upstream going to be the same, and how are we going to be different?”
I haven’t really found another blog out there I could actually copy. What’s that phrase? ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ So, I didn’t find a blog I could actually like steal from. But I guess that’s a good thing.
Chris Well: Did you study at all blogs or magazines that were not your category? Did you find anything useful from them?
Deidra Romero: I did. When I started blogging about seven years ago, I referenced Michael Hyatt’s blog a lot. Like it was a huge resource for me when I was first getting into blogging because he talks a lot about blogging ins and outs of it and basics. So for a long time I’ve been a student of his.
And then, someone who’s kind of newer on the blogging scene who’s made a big fuss is Jeff Goins. He has grown a huge blog in the last three years out of nothing. His blog is massive—hundreds of thousands of subscribers. He has so many great resources on his blog about blogging basics, ins and outs, how to write things that go viral–great stuff.
Also, I found this website named Authority Hacker. So it’s these guys, Gael Breton and Mark Webster–they have this website, they have a great Facebook page, and a podcast. The first post I ever read of theirs was an interview with 23 top bloggers and it told their income–the breakdown of how they monetized their blogs.
That post really shifted my paradigm. Before, I was just concerned about getting readers. But when I started realizing a blog in itself can be a great asset, then I started looking into affiliate programs and ad networks and exploring what products I have to offer.
I feel like I’m still learning exactly what my audience wants–I’m gauging that from which Facebook posts do well and which blog posts do well. I’m getting that more streamlined, figuring out what people want.
For me, cracking that code of what people are actually going to read on the blog, has been a journey. And I’m still figuring that out a bit.
Chris Well: Talking about the different ways to monetize a blog–that brings up an interesting point, which has come up on the show with other guests, that it’s not necessarily just you make the money from the writing itself, it’s the business you build around the writing.
Deidra Romero: Yeah. One option is to do seminars or webinars or tutorial videos and to sell those. The only problem is that to do this you have to position yourself as an expert.
One blogger I saw recently had a four-part webinar about how to cut your grocery bill to $100 a week. She’s just a mom, and this is what she’s good at, so she’s developed this curriculum to teach other people how to do that.
I haven’t figured out what that thing is that I can teach other people. I’m searching for that thing.
But I feel awkward positioning myself as an expert on anything–the tagline of Parenting Upstream is, “Where moms and dads come to grow up,” and that’s how it feels to me. None of us are doing this right. We’re not doing it perfect. I mean, we’re probably doing a good job–but none of us are doing it perfectly. And these are our stories, and this is how we’re trying to do it better, or trying to parent differently in a unique time in history and culture.
Chris Well: In your pre-launch phase, you had several interesting ideas about building an audience that included social media, giveaways, and paid advertising. What can you share that worked?
Deidra Romero: As part of my launch, I put together one big strategy. One component was social media–I set up a Facebook page, and I set up a Pinterest account for Parenting Upstream, and I just loaded those boards.
I emailed potential guest bloggers—people I felt like had something to say about parenting, I emailed all of these people and said, “Hey, I would love it if you’d guest blog for me!” And I reached out to bloggers I admired and I said, “Hey, I’m launching this blog, I wanted to know if you could like give me a wink and a nod on launch day.” That was a big part of putting together my launch plan–taking risks and going and asking people. They call it “the big ask,” and that’s what I was doing. I put myself out there asking people who I had no business asking if they would be interested in helping me.
And some did say, “yes.” I got several people to say “yes” who I wasn’t expecting to say, “yes.” That was part of it, is like getting people onboard, telling people what you’re doing and getting guest bloggers signed up.
Also I wanted to do some giveaways during launch month. So, I was able to do the book giveaway and the Etsy shop giveaway.
I decided upfront I was going to put $100 into Facebook ads. On launch day, I did a week-long campaign, and then a couple here and there during that month.
Instagram can be tricky for bloggers, because you can’t post a link with your post. You have one link spot with Instagram–and that’s in your profile. So every time you reference a link, you have to reference your profile and say, “The link’s in the profile.” If you post two different links on two days in a row, someone who sees your post from yesterday is going to go to the wrong link.
But I found a workaround. I saw another blogger do this and thought it was genius: Create a static page on your blog–so, mine is ParentingUpstream/Instagram–and I update this Instagram feed essentially on ParentingUpstream.com. So, on my Instagram profile, I have the link ParentingUpstream.com/Instagram. It’s always there—I never need to change out the link.
Chris Well: So you have a master page that can include all the links you want?
Deidra Romero: Yes, it has all the pictures and all the links. So, research has shown Instagram has the highest action rate over Facebook and Twitter. Instagram users are more likely to click through to your post.
Chris Well: Really?
Deidra Romero: Percentage-wise. You may have 30 followers on Instagram, but you’re going to get a higher percentage of click-thrus than from Facebook and Twitter. This is because it’s all image.
I also think Facebook is saturated with links. It’s not like that on Instagram–since it’s harder to post links, you’re not called to action with every single post you read on Instagram. So, the one post you read that you are called to action on, you’re more likely to click through.
So, I’ve been able to leverage Instagram really well. I have a lot of friends who are only on Instagram. They’re not on Facebook and they’re not on Twitter. They’re moms and dads and they want to post pics of their kids and Instagram is such a friendly place for parents.
I’ve actually been able to grow my Instagram following quite a bit by using this little secret weapon called Crowdfire. You can go through and see who follows this other blogger I like–you can follow all their people, then the next day you login and see which ones followed and which ones didn’t . Then you can unfollow all the people who didn’t follow back. I’m getting like a 20-30 percent follow-back rate.
So if I follow a hundred people from so-and-so’s blog on Instagram, about 20 or 30 of them are going to follow me back on Instagram and I’ll keep them and I’m going to unfollow all those other 70 people that did not follow me. Unless I think they’re really interesting and then I continue to follow them.
I’ve built relationships with followers I’ve gained that way—I see them post things on their Instagram and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so interesting.” And I’ll comment or I’ll like it and then I’ll get interaction back from them. And that’s been authentic. I’ve enjoyed that component of it.
I know some people have a problem with that strategy–the following-unfollowing just to get followers back.
Chris Well: It’s about doing it correctly, with the right intentions–and not in a spammy way. If you’re using the tool to make new friends, that’s good.
Deidra Romero: That’s very true. Sometimes somebody will follow me on Twitter and I’ll be like, “That looks so interesting. I’m going to follow them back.” Then I go on Crowdfire a week later, and I’ll be like, “Oh my gosh, they unfollowed me like a week after I started following them.”
If somebody follows you, I think you should follow them back. To be courteous.
Chris Well: Right.
Deidra Romero: So, when I launched my Facebook page, I wanted to stop using my personal page to post. On the blog, I’m posting multiple times a week–I hate inundating all my personal friends and family with just blog stuff.
Chris Well: Right.
Deidra Romero: So I had some pretty big reaches. I had one post, I had two posts in one week, I think it was the third or fourth week of launch, that went crazy for me. I mean, that’s like where the bulk of my traffic came from that first month was from those two posts.
One of them was about miscarriage. A friend who’s had several miscarriages started a nonprofit to help women cope with miscarriage–so, in the post she talked about how to talk to people after a miscarriage. When you have friends who go through miscarriage, you don’t know how to talk to them about it.
That post went crazy. The post got just under a thousand shares.
A few days later I published this post, it was another friend I have–these are not writing people, okay? They’re not writers, I reached out to them because I knew they had interesting stories to tell. So, these aren’t people with their own blogs and all that stuff.
This other girl I reached out to, she and her husband are white and they’ve adopted two African-American kids. And she posted on her Facebook page her response to this Confederate flag controversy that was going on a few weeks ago.
I thought her insight was so valuable. So I asked, “Can I turn this into a blog post?” And she said, “I’d be honored.” So I turned it into a blog post–edited it, added a headline, and gave her a bio at the end.
I posted it on the blog and it blew up–over 2000 shares and more than 6300 views.
I was really shocked by that, because these were not guest bloggers I initially pursued. These were not the guest bloggers I had gone after, these were people who had good stories to tell. The guest bloggers who I actually went after–who are writers, who have blogs of their own, and I asked them to blog–their blog posts did fine, but none of them blew up like I expected.
So, that was such a big learning curve for me was that the guest bloggers, even though they have platforms and they have followers and likes on Facebook, it didn’t translate to traffic on the blog post.
If you’re launching a blog and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I need to get big-name guest bloggers on here,” that’s not true. You just need to find interesting stories, things that are valuable, and that are current issues people are talking about.
One thing I do is look on Facebook and see what my friends are talking about. The ones that are mothers and fathers–what are they posting about, what are they talking about–and I take notes about what people want to talk about and what they want to read about.
Chris Well: How did your giveaways work out?
Deidra Romero: Okay, so the giveaways–I actually had a ton of traffic on the giveaway pages and on the giveaway posts, but not many people entered the giveaways.
Chris Well: Wait. They came to look at the giveaway, but they didn’t register?
Deidra Romero: They came to look–yes! The giveaway with the book–Surprised by Motherhood by Lisa-Jo Baker–the publisher tweeted about the contest. Lisa-Jo tweeted it out, too. She has like 20,000 Twitter followers.
I got a lot of views on my page–but not a ton of people entered. The people who did enter, my favorite part was sending them the congratulations email: “Hey, you won! That’s so awesome! Congratulations!”
People were so excited. And you know what they did? They went back and signed up for my newsletter and they’ve become brand enthusiasts. So, I’ve loved building relationships with these people who won these contests. And they’re happy about it too, so that’s good.
Chris Well: What did I have to do to sign up for the book?
Deidra Romero: I used Rafflecopter.
Chris Well: But you didn’t require them to join your list.
Deidra Romero: No, I didn’t because–this is where I took the cheap way out–you have to upgrade your Rafflecopter to get the viral sharing component of it and I did not upgrade. I did the free Rafflecopter. I quickly found myself spiraling with the blogging, with self-hosting and all that, spiraling into this really expensive blogging route and I just didn’t have the funds, didn’t want to put the funds in those places.
I told myself, “I’m going to spend $100 on Facebook ads. That’s what I’m going to do in this first month.” So on launch week I ran a seven-day campaign.
My big post that I launched with was about motherhood and it’s about how being a millennial mom is so different and why it’s still hard because like technology’s advanced, society’s advanced, so many things are not as hard as they used to be. Like transportation, you know like moving across the country. In 1900 it was a big deal to travel from Colorado to Florida, but now it’s not a big deal to take a road trip…you know what I’m saying.
So many things have gotten easier but motherhood doesn’t appear to have gotten easier. Like, what are the current challenges for mothers in this generation and what were the challenges for previous generations? That’s something I wanted to look at because so many times I’d find myself as a mom thinking like, “This should be easy. Like, I have a washing machine. I have a dishwasher. Like, I live in a great house with like four walls and a fenced-in backyard and I have carpet.”
Like, I have all of these modern technology, these advances people didn’t have in the 1900s. I always think about pioneer women and how hard motherhood must have been for them because like everybody slept in a one-room cabin, they didn’t have AC, they didn’t have heat, and their husbands like worked outside in the fields all day, and they had to literally cook everything that they ate.
I think motherhood must have been super hard for them. Like, how do you cook and clean and do all that work when you have kids to watch? And it baffles my mind how they did it. I was thinking about this–“Why is motherhood hard for me? Why am I complaining? What’s so hard about this? What’s so challenging about this?” That was my big opening blog launch post. So, this was the post I boosted. I boosted it for–
Chris Well: So “boost” meaning you put the link in your Facebook page as opposed to creating a separate ad.
Deidra Romero: Yeah, it was a post. I boosted it for $50 and I ran it for seven days. So $50 was my total budget–and the total paid reach was 9,471 people.
Okay, which is huge. That’s a big reach, but out of that, do you know how many clicks I got? I only got 332 clicks through to the post. So that is like…
Chris Well: Out of 9000?
Deidra Romero: Yes. So that sucks. Like that rate really sucks.
Chris Well: Okay.
Deidra Romero: So that probably means people didn’t like the post, like they saw the title and they just thought they didn’t wanna read it. I got 26 post likes and I got only 6 page likes out of that boost. So it got 12 shares, 7 comments and 34 likes, okay, and it was boosted for a week for 50 bucks. So, I felt like that didn’t do as well as I wanted it to and I think I chose to boost the wrong post, honestly.
Well then Father’s Day rolled around—-this is a good experiment I did–I boosted this fatherhood post titled “News Flash: Your Husband’s Not an Idiot.” It’s about how in pop culture it’s funny to make the husband and the dad out to be an idiot–you know, that “silly dad” approach that’s so unfair to dads.
So, I boosted this post on the Thursday before Father’s Day.I boosted it for 20 bucks and it sucked. It did not do good at all. It got not even 2000 post reach. If you do the math between my $50 post and my $20 post, this did not do well. So it got almost 2000 post reach, 19 link clicks–okay, so that sucked. I ran it for one day.
I was talking to my husband about it, and he said I should rewrite the headline and boost it for the same amount and see what happens. We’re still in Father’s Day weekend, okay? I boosted this one on Friday. Same exact link, I changed the name of the post as it appears on Facebook–I didn’t change the actual name of the post–I only changed it the way that the link appears on Facebook.
Now, instead of, “News Flash: Your Husband’s Not an Idiot,” I changed it to, “Three Reasons Why Your Husband is Not an Idiot.” It got double the post reach–4000 paid reach, for the same amount of money, and it got 136 clicks through. It did double what the other post did. Same amount of money, back-to-back days, same post, different title.
Chris Well: So both titles are still on your page?
Deidra Romero: Both titles, yeah. If you scroll through, yeah.
Chris Well: Okay.
Deidra Romero: So, before you boost a post, you need to make sure it’s a great headline. One tool I use to test headlines is through CoSchedule–they have a headline analyzer you can use free online.
I use this for every single post now, because I’ve learned how valuable the headline is. You type in the headline and it will rate it, and tell you what’s good about it, what’s bad about it. You can keep trying headlines until you find one with a high score—and that’s the one you can go with.
Chris Well: What about your Pinterest strategy?
Deidra Romero: Pinterest is something I’m getting into now, and realizing the value of it. One thing I discovered was Rich Pins-–you have to submit an application. A Rich Pin means anytime somebody posts something from your website it looks better. The pin pulls all your SEO information into the pin. It has a little official thing at the bottom that says, “Posted from Parenting Upstream.”
So you go in and they have some code that you put in on your page, you put that code in and then you like do something and they approve it, and they say, “Yeah, you’ve been approved for Rich Pins.” So then when you go and post things from your page, your pins look so much better than the pins you post from a regular page.
So I didn’t know about Rich Pins, that was something I learned about. I’m finding my stuff isn’t getting pinned a ton from Facebook, so I still am not getting like, if I look at my acquisitions on Google Analytics, social media is 78-percent of my acquisitions and, if I break it down and look at each one and see which one’s getting the most traffic, it’s definitely Facebook has gotten the most, and then it’s Twitter, and then it’s Pinterest.
I don’t think they use Instagram on here because I’m getting traffic from Instagram, but it’s not popping up as one of my social networks.
Chris Well: So in terms of your data, you don’t know whether Pinterest or Instagram is doing better?
Deidra Romero: Right. Yeah. Because I’m not seeing any Instagram data–I’m seeing people hit my Instagram page. Like the traffic on my Instagram page on my actual blog is high, so I don’t think they’re showing acquisitions from Instagram.
Pinterest is still low on acquisitions. But where Pinterest is helpful is it gives me lots of content to post on my Facebook page or to Tweet about–and that drives people to my pages.
Whenever you’re on social media, be authentic about it. Don’t be fake. Try to make as many connections as you can through all social media venues, because I do think that adds exposure. It does pay off.
Chris Well: When you launched you had certain goals for traffic…
Deidra Romero: Yeah, okay. So I wrote down goals before I ever launched and for my launch day on the 16th, on June 16, my target traffic was I wanted to have 2000 views. That was what I wanted views, not visitors, just views. That’s what I care about, I know some people care about unique visitors, I care about…
Chris Well: 2000 views, you mean total or a day or a month?
Deidra Romero: On that launch day. Because I kind of gauged this knowing what my regular blog, my other blog that I wasn’t doing anything with, kind of what kind of traffic it was getting and how big my social network was.
So I thought a good day would be 2000 views on this new blog. I knew people were going to be curious, I knew they were going to pop over, so that’s what I was hoping. So my actual was 2900 page views that first day.
On that first day, I wanted to get 100 Facebook likes on my new Facebook fan page and I got 212 Facebook likes and that was mostly from me inviting my friends, okay? Nothing fancy about that.
And then, for the end of week one, at the end of week one, I wanted to have 3000 page views and at the end of week one I actually had 7800 page views. And I wanted to have 500 Facebook followers. I still don’t have 500 Facebook followers. I’m close to hitting 400.
I’m finding getting Facebook “likes” so much harder than I anticipated. People feel like it’s a big commitment to “like” your Facebook page, so I’m trying to figure out, “How do I build relationships? How do I build credibility with people so they ‘like’ me on Facebook?”
Chris Well: The thing to keep in mind though with Facebook is that, with all those changes, a “like” almost doesn’t mean anything anymore. People aren’t going to see you in their news feed.
Deidra Romero: Right, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll see me on their news feed. It is a changing landscape and so trying to figure that out has been interesting.
On week two, my goal was 4000 page views and I had 9000 page views. After this I started seeing things pick up, my optimistic goal was to get 30,000 views in that first month.
So, I was lucky–I had two posts go crazy. The miscarriage post and the Confederate flag post. And those did, I mean, huge bulk of traffic, tons and tons of shares, but I did not reach that goal, sadly. So I’m at almost…to date I’ve had almost 21,000 page views, 12,666 sessions, 11,149 unique users.
It’s a great start, but it’s going to take a lot of work to continue. You can’t rest on your laurels with a blog–you really have to bust it, that’s what I’m learning. It’s like making interactions every single day, utilizing all your social media, and posting quality content. That’s what it comes down to.
Chris Well: How regularly are you putting new content on the site?
Deidra Romero: It’s mainly been twice a week. I’m sending out a weekly newsletter saying, “This is what we’re talking about this week on the blog.” So I do that after the second post has gone up.
But still Facebook is my biggest asset, that’s been the biggest thing to get viewers onto the page. One thing I’ve learned–I did a post recently that was top blogs, apps, and podcasts for parents, and then I reached out to all those people who I mentioned in the post—Tweeted at them, and then I Facebooked them, and Instagramed them and said, “Hey, you guys made my list.” And lots of those people retweeted for me.
That’s a way to get free press–to talk about resources you use, and then let those people know, “Hey, I talked about you in a good way.” Then it gets more traffic back to you. So I did that.
Another cool thing I’m seeing people do on Instagram, two things actually, is like there are lots of Instagram accounts that just repost…
Chris Well: Wait–repost from somewhere else or repost to somewhere else?
Deidra Romero: They just repost people’s posts on Instagram. So there’s one Instagram account, super popular, it’s called Crazy Jewish Mom and it’s hysterical–it is like these text conversations between this girl and her mom.
Well she has another Instagram account called Crazy Your Mom and all she does is repost screen shots of people’s text conversations with their mothers. It’s hysterical. It’s so, so funny.
There are lots of Instagram accounts that do these, and that’s free press. So if you could get on, you know, Crazy Your Mom Instagram account, get them to repost something you posted by tagging them in it, you’re going to get people to click through to your Instagram account. You’re going to get more followers like that.
So there are lots of accounts that do that, so you can leverage those. I have a friend who’s a blogger, there’s this one Instagram account called Mothers in Protest and all they do is post maternity pictures that other people have posted on their Instagram accounts. And so she got her, they reposted one of her maternity pictures on their Mothers in Protest, and they have thousands and thousands of followers, but that got her lots of exposure, you know.
So that’s one thing you can do. Another thing people are doing on Instagram are these loop giveaways which–do you know what a loop is?
Chris Well: No, I don’t.
Deidra Romero: Okay. So loop giveaway is like you get a team of people together, let’s say you’re all bloggers and you’re going to get this team together and one day you all go onto your Instagram accounts and you say, “Hey, I’m doing this loop giveaway with ten other bloggers. If you hover over this post, you’re going to see I tagged somebody in this post. Her name is Sheryl, she’s a great blogger, she writes about cooking, whatever. Click through to her page and like her page to enter and then click through to the next person in the loop and enter until you’ve followed everybody in the loop. Then you’re going to be entered into our contest. You’re going to win an iPad Mini or whatever.”
So the deal is they have to follow everybody in loop to enter to win and like a lot of Etsy shops do this, a lot of style and fashion bloggers do this, but they give away huge prizes like they give away iPads and, you know, $500 gift card to Target.
So I saw this happening a lot, I was entering some of these loop giveaways because I was curious about it, you know, and then you follow 30 new Etsy shops and you see all the clothes and stuff they’re selling and it becomes an obsession.
I was like I need to enter one of these loop giveaways. I have a friend who did it, she’s a lifestyle blogger, she said she entered this giveaway, it was like a $20 buy-in—so you pay, somebody posts it, one of the bloggers, you pay them, they purchase the whatever it is, the iPad or whatever, and then they make sure it gets delivered, okay? I was like, I need to get into one of these loop giveaways, so I’m on this Facebook page that’s local bloggers in Nashville so I asked them, “Hey, any of you guys interested in doing a loop giveaway?” So I’ve gotten a handful of them together. I want to get 10-15 together, so I haven’t gotten that many bloggers yet on it, but that’s in the future for me. I’m doing a loop giveaway, if I have to host it, I will. If I can get into somebody else’s, I’d love to.
But some of the ones you can buy into, they have a minimum Instagram followers–you need a minimum of 1000. I don’t have 1000 yet, so I’m working toward that point so I can enter these loop giveaways.
But it’s supposed to be super beneficial when you do enter these loop giveaways. You’re supposed to get tons of followers back from them.
Chris Well: So this is on Instagram?
Deidra Romero: Yeah. Instagram is like, you know, with every new social media that comes out like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, you need to figure out a new way to do a creative giveaway and so, for Instagram, like you can do a giveaway and say, “Hey, like click through here and enter to win on Rafflecopter” or you can do this loop technique that lots of people are using that pays off for them.
Because like some people…okay, so when I entered that loop it was 30 Etsy shops, I followed every one of those Etsy shops and over time I’ve stopped following some of them because I am not interested, but I’ve probably kept 10 of them and I still follow them and I like seeing what they post.
So, you know, it can generate authentic connections just by doing this little loop giveaway.
Chris Well: And I guess the reason that this model appeared on Instagram is because you can’t offer click-thrus?
Deidra Romero: Right, but you can, like you can click through to other people’s accounts if you’ve tagged somebody else in your post–you can click through.
Chris Well: Okay. That’s interesting.
Deidra Romero: Yeah, I know. It is interesting. It is. But people are so creative like, you know, tomorrow there will probably be some great new way to do giveaways on Instagram that never occurred to me, I’m sure.
Chris Well: For somebody who wants to start a blog or maybe relaunch their blog, what actionable advice do you offer somebody that they can do today or this week to move in that direction?
Deidra Romero: You should definitely walk through a branding process, figuring out exactly what you want your blog to be. You cannot circumvent that process of picking the right name, picking the right tagline, and aiming your blog at the right audience and knowing who you are.
That changes everything. It changed everything for me as far as the direction of my blog. And because I put that work in on branding the blog, it made me respect it in a way I didn’t respect it before. I put all this up-front work in it and now I really believe in it. I believe in Parenting Upstream and I believe in the specific message of it.
Seth Godin is a great resource. He writes tons of books about marketing and branding that are ingenious. He has this one book called Tribes I’m reading now and it’s all about how to develop your message and position yourself as a leader and, you know, how to get a following of people and how to craft your message so it’s specific to these people and it’s unique.
Donald Miller has this great Storyline conference he hosts that’s all about branding and about developing a life plan. Lots of people have done that with him and love it, you know.
One simple thing you can do is use quality photography on your page. This is what separates good blogs from mediocre blogs. Stop using free things you find on Google searches.
I mean, use free stock images—everything I use on my blog is free—but use quality. This article from Verve has 27 Royalty-Free Stock Images websites, and I use those. I don’t pay for stock images. That’s where I get all my photos from is from these free websites listed on that link. One of the most practical things you can do to make your blog look professional is use great photography.
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The post 031: How to Launch a New Blog – with Deidra Romero (Parenting Upstream) appeared first on DIY Author.