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!

Rookie Tips on Visual Content Marketing

Welcome back! On my last post, I mentioned Design Feed and that I would write about visual content creation. This is a great forum to take your images and make some great branding pictures for posts.
This post will talk about visual content, from why it is important to how to create it with some great resources. Any info you could ever want, just follow Donna Moritz on Twitter (@sociallysorted). She is an award winning guru in this field.
I am a stats person; stats don't lie.  I say that often. Especially in football ( I am a huge Peyton Manning fan and draw stats like a gun to anyone who has anything negative to say).You can find info graphics anywhere on the conversion rate of tweets with images attached.  For instance:

"People don’t engage equally with every tweet. Research by Media Blog, which analyzed the content of over 2 million tweets sent by thousands of users over the course of a month, shows that adding a photo URL to your tweet can boost retweets by an impressive 35%."- The Social Media Examiner, by Patricia Redsicker.

That is a big jump from a random, run of the mill post. Thus the pint of this post. Get visual!
I love this one I created for my mom blog, The Trials of the Trendy Mom:

Clean and attractive. They have options for all the social media platforms ensuring you have an image that fits the platform in question.  Styles, colors, etc.  I can't say enough about this site. 

Eye-catching images are a must in order to be heard through the millions of users out there.  You have to stand apart. I also use PicMonkey to add some depth and imagination, like this one here:

The next thing I learned early on was where to get images at zero cost to me because I am broke (three kids and a move where I haven't found a job yet) and can't afford to buy stock images.  There is a ton of places, but you have to know where to look.  This is why TWITTER WORKS! I actually read these articles and learn how to make these blogs come to life. People are paying attention. I actually got my fist celebrity follow last week and I about lost my mind!

Here are where I get my free images. This is a whole thing I had to look into, but I READ an article on Twitter about it...problem solved.

UNSPLASH

www.unsplash.com

PICJUMBO

www.picjumbo.com

I read this great blog post by Carly Stec (@carlystec). called, "17 of the Best Free Stock Photo Sites". This was a complete game changer for me.  I could now look like a big dog with cool images for my blog. There are others on the list that are amazing, but those two are my main two.  I use them almost every day.

Top social media influencers are paying attention.  They are engaging and I am building relationships with these people that are so good at this.  IT truly helps to get your name out there through such trusted sources. Why wouldn't you want to do the same? So many people get discouraged. I did. Right after I started. All it takes is actually doing some of these things and you will see the ball start to roll and the next thing...you're off and running!

I have been learning something new with growth hacking at least once a week.  I plan on sharing what I find with you in this journey. So if you are a Twitter newbie, pay attention.  I am researching all of these marketing nuggets looking for internet gold. I can save you oodles of time...just follow along.