800 New Followers in 9 Days:3 New Growth Tips

Today I wanted to discuss some tools and people, that I have found that are not only helping me time wise; I have seen my number of followers per day double.  My numbers are increasing from 25-30 new followers a day, to around 50-60. I have to contribute this to the content that is being shared as well as help from retweets (STILL) by Sam Hurley, ranked #2 digital Marketer, SEO expert and social media influencer. Here are three tips to what I have been utilizing to experience my continued growth this week.

1.New Tip of The Week- Time Management
I have been using a trial of Drum Up, an app that schedules great content for you. I have a free trial, but I am just not in a place to blow money out the door right now, but I will say this, it is amazing for pre-scheduling your posts. Very efficient. I am also trying Feedly, which is pretty great too.  You can organize your topics and draw from those feeds whenever. I really like it.  I haven't upgraded to the paid format, again, trying to utilize all things free for us rookies and beginners out there who don't have the funds.  It is still a great way to share, and the articles get better engagement when they are shared in a more professional format. Other than the standby, retweet. There are several platforms out there. You just need to find what works for you.


2. Chrystie at Naptime Nation
I had a great webinar this week with Chrystie over at Naptime Nation (@Naptimenation). She has sold four blogs and is a huge success and she has great tips, groups and products.  Again, I wanted in on the package she had for sale, but I am just not there yet! Anyway, after the Q & A, I decided to make the jump and spend the money since it was one time for a year, and get my own domain.  She had turned me on to affiliate marketing, and she suggested that it was a better route to have your own domain in order to be successful at it. If you are new to the blogging scene, make sure you follow her and her advice...she knows her stuff. Chrystie has a great Facebook group for mom bloggers where we can share and follow and grow together; she really makes a difference. Her webinar last week was eye opening.

3. Get Your Own Domain
So that brings us to the big news...I have my own domain! Click here to get to it. I am officially "A Mom That Blogs". After talking to the best influencer I know, Sam Hurley, in a message, (if you haven't read my other blog post he is retweeting, he actually responds when you interact with him and has great tips all day long on his feed), I asked Sam what he thought about blog titles, like should I use my name; it is so important if you ever sell them so he advised a short snappy name, no personal name because it would never be bought.  I hope "A Mom That Blogs" covers everything enough.  Both my blogs are on the site as well as links to my published articles. I hope to start guest blogging soon.  When I started this journey back in April and May I had a hard earned 700 followers and as of today, I have over 2800. I crested 2000 followers on the 11th in that post. So in 9 days I have around 800 new followers.  All good ones, too.  This was all grown organically.

Again, all of this is achieved through reading what I find on twitter, getting some relationships built with some great influencers, and growing all by myself without paying anyone to do it for me.  I am on the Huffington Post now in regards to my mom blog, so check that out as well.

So this week I tried out time saving tips: Feedly is one that I will be sticking with.  Make sure you keep trying new things. We don't know what we can accomplish if we don't try! The one thing I will be trying new this week is that I will not be publishing any more new content.  I have read that it is about driving traffic to your site more than the articles you pump out. So I will be taking the next two weeks to do just that. I will be sharing that when next you hear from me!

Cheers to growth!

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!

3 Tips to Having Your Blog Heard Above All the Noise

I am taking a different turn in today's post.  I am a mom blogger as well as a growth hacking blogger. I am combining the two today. Since the success of one of my growth hacking posts, I decided that since I get a lot of questions from other mom bloggers who are not on Twitter and how to get started, I would talk about that. That is where I am getting the most attention. Even though as a mom blogger, that is the platform that just got me on The Huffington Post. I am super proud of that, but there is something I am finding in reading these blogs.

The one ingredient missing to make them stand out- it isn't there for a lot of them.  They are talking about things that most of us already know, or they are not providing input on anything to help moms out as a value.  That's okay for the most part. What I am doing is trying to get through the one piece of information that any blogger in any niche needs to know: you have to identify what your audience needs and cater to that. It is Blogging 101. You have to read on how to start one before you start; if you don't you will lose your audience before you ever can grow one. I read a ton of information daily. Did you know that 60% of people share links and never read it (Washington Post reporter, Caitlin Dewey @caitlindewey)? Then why are you on Twitter? If you are doing it for fun, then it really doesn't matter. Which is fine. Lots of people write as an outlet but don't care if anyone reads it or not and that is OKAY! However, if you are going to do the work and want it appreciated, then find a way to stand out in all the mom blog noise.  My mom blog niche is trials and errors of recipes and healthy living. Now I have read some funny mom blogs. Ones that resonate emotion through humor for instance, because they talked about something we can all relate to.  See- that we can all relate to. That is the kicker.  If I have learned one thing, if you say you are troubleshooting a certain problem, no matter the subject, make sure you do and provide helpful solutions. Otherwise your readers are let down and you might lose them or they may never follow you if you don't deliver on the promise in your title. You will read this all the time if you read these great twitter posts about content strategy.

For example, if you are going to give me a headline about some type of mom advice, then give me like three to five really good tried and true tips so that even if they don't apply to me anymore, I might share because I still have friends with babies all the way up to college students for instance. Don't feed me generic information to just fill a post. It has to count. This is true for ANY TYPE OF BLOG or POST. Otherwise, your readers are not going to be interested. In growth hacking, what I have read works. This is one of the top things you will read consistently bu these major social media influencers. If you aren't sure what that even means, take a step back.  Google it.  Then come back to this post. Find problem, offer solution.  It really is that simple.

1. READ YOUR LINKS YOU ARE SHARING
Find useful information and share with your audience.  I know my audience mainly wants recipe information for healthy living and any other useful mom hacks I can find; I share bonus info to keep it from getting stale. If you read the links to articles on Twitter you will actually find awesome info...use it. Put your own spin on it. Develop it as your own, then give props to the one who wrote the article.  This is where I am learning still and developing the proper retweet. This is what blew my following up this past week which brings us to the second tip...

2. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA
As I mentioned in previous post on my other blog, The Growth Pixie, social media influencers suggest this because a. you can learn a lot from them on development, and b. they are more likely to retweet you if mentioned because it is a win/win situation when you do.
See below:

I did what he said. I interacted with him. Read his advice and tips. I retweeted and wrote about my experiences. Guess what happened????  This brings us to my final tip number 3:

3. HOW TO ORGANICALLY GROW YOUR NUMBERS
I grow my following organically by doing what this major influencer says on twitter.  Sam retweeted my article FOUR times. I got 284 new followers from the first retweet to the last.  Now some were coming in, but my largest hits were after he retweeted this blog post that he was mentioned in. Sam Hurley (https://twitter.com/Sam___Hurley) follows me, has over 134K followers and he retweeted little ole me. A virtual nobody trying to be heard.  You must check him out.  He has great advice on digital marketing, building your brand, SEO tips and more. MUCH MORE. In writing, this, I don't want Sam to think I am using him to get mentioned again. I was floored and squealed like a kid on Christmas morning when I saw he did the first time, but I am going to use it to back up what I have been saying: that if you do the work, it will pay off. Big time!!!!!
Another great person to follow is Paul Croubalian. He has over 12K followers and interacts with people as well. I retweeted a great piece he wrote and rewrote a caption for the tweet and he replied and loved it.  If someone tweets a great piece of info good enough to retweet, then not only retweet it, but reply to them abut what you liked abut the article. When you get a retweet by someone major, retweet again with a thank you.  It goes out again. Awesome, right? They appreciate it and it is good networking. This is how you build your brand.  It is one thing to blog and have people read it, but the word will get out more when you not only get retweets and people to read your posts, but major people share your insights.  That is the greatest gift of all in writing...to know you wrote something that mattered.

In summation, I got the largest amount of Twitter followers ever this past week; I averaged about 20 followers a day which for the week would be about 140 right? I got 284 for the same amount of days because I nurtured a relationship with a great guy who actually interacts with people.  Which may be small potatoes to most people but for me, right now, that is huge numbers.  I am doing all of this by myself, doing nothing but taking the advice of influencers that know what they are talking about. You must cultivate these relationships on Twitter if you are going to grow. I learn so much by just reading these articles.  I want to create a brand for myself, and help others through learning and sharing.
You have to read these posts these major influencers share on Twitter. They will help you from listing great free sites to help you from visuals, to content curation.  My next post will be the best tips I have found so far on sites for content and visuals.  Stay tuned and let's see where the growth goes.
I blog today not only as a growth hacker or mom blogger, but as a mom blogger using growth hacking.  Now that is becoming my win/win situation.

I set one goal a week on learning something new.  I find a new site that I can benefit from and utilize it.  That ensures I am growing using great hacks I find from these big leaders on Twitter. I challenge you to find one thing to learn this week; see what a difference the one new thing will do for you. I have found one this week that blew my mind and has helped my tweet management and saves me a ton of time. I will share that one plus more in my next post. These tools are not only free, but amazing tools to make your blog and branding the best it can be.