It’s Day 4 of Small Steps to Grow Your Blog. So far we have checked our stats, stalked some blogs, and left some comments that said “Come check out my blog!” Right? Right! Well, mostly right.
Hopefully you left a genuine comment on another blog about THEIR post. Because that’s what YOU would want on YOUR blog in the comments section. We are learning blog etiquette! I’m also not trying to encourage fake or self-serving interactions. Yes, we want to grow. But remember that growth is not just about numbers—those numbers are PEOPLE. (See Day 1 and my nifty graphic.) So we are genuinely engaging with those people and hope growth will be a happy by-product rather than using people to get cash money and billions of hits. (Ps- if that’s your goal, this may be the wrong series for you.)
But if you check your stats, so far this might not be making ANY difference in your numbers. I hope it is and I hope it WILL. I’d love to hear at the end. (Want to talk share your experiences and ask questions? Join the Facebook group!)
Today we continue with the blog stalking by going one step further. Here is your homework:
A few things to consider as you share. First, it’s a good idea to like or follow that person as you go to share. Then you’ll want to tag them in your share so that they see it and your followers will see them and perhaps go follow. This puts you on that writer’s radar. Sometimes I will also leave a comment that says something like, “Great post! I pinned it!” (Pinterest is one of those where generally the shares are invisible so they won’t know. But even if you Tweet and tag them, a comment is always nice.
I learned a few things about Twitter this week from a great post by Randy Elrod. (Read it HERE.) As you do your social shares, if they are on Twitter, make sure there are 24 characters left when you Tweet. Why? One of two things happens when a blogger sees you have shared their post. The first is that they might Tweet back and say thanks. That’s nice! The other is that they might ReTweet YOUR Tweet. That means all of THEIR followers will see your Tweet. Now if they do NOT respond, don’t freak out. One issue is that notifications are different for people you don’t follow. So if I don’t follow you and you tag me, I won’t get a text or email about it. I will ONLY see it if I go to the little “connect” area of Twitter or in my “mentions” list in Twitter. Sometimes people forget to look.
As I said in the pretty box, try to find content that is meaningful to you and might also be meaningful to your readers. If you’re not finding posts you want to share, you might want to find a few new blogs to stalk!
Missed anything?
Day 1: How to Grow Your Blog
Day 2: Become a Blog Stalker
Day 3: Be a Commenting Fiend
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