How I Grew My Following

I have been mom blogging for a few months.  It has some momentum, but not all that I had hoped. This is a very saturated niche.  My main goal is two fold. I have a product I will be launching in the fall.  I am also writing a book and I have seen some trends erupting since I started.
I am going to talk to you all about what I am learning and that you have to actually read what is on Twitter if you want to succeed. I have been an operations and PR manager for years, so I figured I could do the same for myself.  It is a lot of work, but if your message is worth reading they will follow... kind of the Field of Dreams philosophy to blogging.

My head is spinning from the different formats for blogging for twitter promotion and all of the trends and opinions. 

What I did read consistently from twitter content experts like Sam Hurley or Donna Moritz is that you have to try what works.  I read content, not just share it without learning from it. There is a massive amount of research that goes into this and I have implemented some of these big time Twitter and visual content experts ideas. I now use words like, "content marketing" and "visual marketing" in a much bigger capacity and understanding then when I outsourced people to handle social media for the company I worked for.

All of this new information included a blog that helped me learn about an app to see what was going on with my Twitter, and another for scheduling and posting ideas. These plus more ideas can be found over at Post Planner.  Diana Adams, (@adamsconsulting) has a great blog and information and how to get started.This is what helped get me when I got serious. She wrote about Crowdfire and Hoot Suite so I got those.  I cleaned up my twitter as she suggested. That's where I saw some information about Donna Moritz (@sociallysorted)  and where she wrote an article with some pages I could not live without.  The main one I would suggest is Design Feed. I take my images (I will get to that in my next post) and make great visuals.  Donna is the visual content guru. It has become part of my twitter religion.  Click here for her AMAZING article on her top 50 ideas in visual content. I use this article weekly and lots of the resources she noted as well. And if you engage her as Same Hurley said to do, she responds! Twitter is about engagement, the little guys and big dogs alike all engage.  It is what makes social media marketing so powerful.

I have now increased my presence on Twitter, gained more followers in 36 hours than I did in a week, so something they are doing is working. People are engaging.  I know because I am proof.  I can do this! I doubled my followers in a week and now average about 20-30 a day.  I used to average only about 75-100 a week if I was lucky.  I am hoping that with the launch of this new blog on growth hacking, I can help others as well as continue my own growth.  I just crested the 2000 follower peak and I was stunned!

I will leave you with this for inspiration.  Sam Hurley is the man. I mean he is renowned and respected in the social media marketing field especially SEO and growth hacking. The social media influencer that I have to follow.  Listen and do as he does. Not kidding, it works.  I started engaging with people as he mentioned in an article and after a couple of times he liked and now replies with regularity.  I sent him a DM about what he thought about my mom blog not getting much interaction, but my posts on growth, content strategy and visuals were blowing up. I had no expectations that I would hear back. I thought, this guy is huge, it will be some automated reply. Very shortly after getting the guts to hit "send", not only did I get a reply, I got a decent sized message about what he really thought I should do.  The answer...you're reading it.  I am starting a new blog to see what works with the growth tips since that seems to be the sweet spot on Twitter for me right now.

I basically am a nobody; I have two published motivational articles that you can find on my website here, but I hope with this blog and my coming product,you all will find me worth reading. I am pretty proud of what I have accomplished.  I hope that this will give others the courage to start blogging on something meaningful as well.  We all have a voice worth hearing.

Cheers to growth!