Everything You Need to Know Before Starting a Blog

 

I started my blogging journey a little over a year ago and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you don’t actually have to make mistakes to learn what you should do. Every mistake that I’ve made in the blogosphere could have been avoided and saved me time, money, and countless headaches. So why am I telling you this? Well because I want you to learn from MY mistakes and make your life a little easier! Here are the blogging tips that I wish I knew when I started – for email marketing, Pinterest strategies, and website domains.

1. YOU NEED TO START BUILDING YOUR EMAIL LIST ASAP

This one is first because I truly believe that it’s the most important. Email marketing is the most impactful way to grow your blog following and business no matter how it evolves. Yes, it’s even more important than your Instagram! YOU own your email list and no one can take that away from you. Whereas platforms like Instagram and Youtube could go under tomorrow and you would have no way of reaching that audience in the event that something happened. I recently switched my mailing list to a new platform and I’m so in love with it! Your email subscribers tend to be the most loyal followers that WANT to hear from you! For every product launch, blog post, and business update they are there specifically FOR YOU! 

 

My Mistake: I didn’t take growing my list seriously until very recently (better late than never, right?) but realistically you can start growing your email list before you even have a website. I used Mailchimp for about a year because everyone said that was the best option – I spent countless hours getting frustrated with its clunkiness and less-than-great user experience when designing my emails. Enter my new email marketing BFF Flodesk – I’ve used Flodesk for about two months now and wow, I can’t believe I went from dreading every single email I made to being genuinely excited about designing my emails for my subscribers (+ my subscribers commenting on the designs and engaging more too!)

 

Flodesk is a women-owned company that makes email marketing easy and will up the production value of every email, sequence, and opt-in form on your blog. The templates are unmatched and they have a great support system to answer any and all questions you may have. The best part? Flodesk will never charge you more money for gaining more subscribers (yes, other platforms charge you MORE when your mailing list grows… looking at you, Mailchimp). It doesn’t matter if you have 5 subscribers or 50,000 – your rate never changes! If you’re interested in trying Flodesk for yourself here’s a free trial and 50% off for life!

2. PINTEREST IS THE #1 TOOL TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE

For years, I always thought of Pinterest as a social media platform where I could find recipes and dorm room inspiration back in the day. I was WRONG – Pinterest is a search engine like google but for images! People search Pinterest to find information and products in a variety of niches. Whether you’re a food blogger, a mommy blogger, or a travel blogger – your potential audience is already on Pinterest. If you’re a new(er) blogger, Google won’t rank your posts very high until you’ve already gained momentum and a high number of page views to your site BUT Pinterest will! 

 

 

How to use pinterest to drive traffic to your blog

There are two tools that I use regularly to get my images a high click rate on Pinterest: Tailwind and Canva. Tailwind is a web-based app that optimizes and schedules your pins. You can set the number of pins you would like to go out each day and Tailwind will schedule them to be released to your boards at the best times for your audience. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the time to be pinning all day, every day. Tailwind makes it so easy to sit down and schedule my pins for the week and be done! You can also join Tailwind Tribes which are groups in every niche where you can post your Pinterest pin graphics and other bloggers can post your pin to their boards and vice-versa!

Canva is a tool that I use to design not only my Pinterest Pins – but to design my E-books, Instagram Stories, Facebook graphics, Infographics and so much more. Canva is made specifically for designing graphics for social media and It’s saved me so much time. I aim to design 3-5 Pinterest Pins for each blog post to share on my Pinterest boards. Your Pinterest strategy is “do or die” for your blog growth and an important step to incorporate into your checklist to get more readers to your corner of the internet. 

 

3. YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS SHOULD MATCH YOUR WEBSITE DOMAIN

I know – controversial right? But hear me out, Assuming you already have your own custom website domain…when you’re reaching out to a brand, or a brand is reaching out to you which is more professional… a generic Gmail account OR an email for your website domain. It makes brands take you more seriously as a blogger and heightens how you present yourself to the world. So instead of my email being ciarabeo@gmail.com, my email is hello@ciarabeo.com – sounds more professional, right? I personally use G-Suite because I love the ease of Gmail and I can use my custom domain for $6 a month which is less than I spend on one cup of Peet’s coffee!! It’s a little thing that goes a long way when pitching and getting brand deals from brands you love.

Well, that’s all! I hope you learn from my mistakes and that implementing these blogging tips will help you in your blogging journey! Let me know what you think if you try any of these tips!


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