SO, YOU WANT TO START A BLOG?

 I love getting e-mails from my  readers, it always brightens my day. That being said, the e-mails I receive almost ALWAYS fall under the same three categories 1.) "will you pleeeasee do a guest post for me?" 2.) "will you promote my product/brand" and 3.) "how did you start your blog/how do you get traffic?" Receiving emails like these are quite flattering to be honest. To think that bloggers and readers look to me as a source of authority is hard for me to wrap my head around. I find myself constantly comparing myself to the big-time career bloggers like Emily, Blair and Jules, so it is neat to think that I have my own little following.

As for starting a blog, go for it! Just remember I have given you fair warning that it takes an inordinate amount of time. Some days hours upon hours in front of my computer screen. I would say "go ahead, try it," but I will also warn you it is extremely addicting and you may not be able to stop.

I generally think of blogging having two components, one being amazing content creation and the other being  marketing and spreading your content to build a follower base and buzz around your blog.  Today I am sharing with you five simple ways to improve your blog traffic:

1. Cover a few social media bases--it only takes a few minutes but publishing your post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn is well worth your while.

2. "Pin" your content. This will improve your traffic A LOT. I recently installed the Pinterest button to my toolbar. I simply click the toolbar and select the photos I want to pin while adding the link to the post--it works wonderfully and brings a lot of traffic to daily crush. Here is a link that explains how to add the pinterest button to your toolbar.

3. Let people know when you are blogging about them. Say you publish a post including an interior designer, take a few seconds to mention her on twitter along with the link. Hopefully he or she will see this and re-tweet it to their followers, directing more traffic to your site.

4. Chose a variety of blogs each day and COMMENT. Providing helpful, meaningful comments on other blogs can be a great way to generate traffic, develop relationships, build a following and add back links.

5. Run your URL through marketing grader. This tool is amazing. It happens to be created by the company I work for, but I have been using the tool for a while now. It measures your content creation, optimization and website promotion skills and gives you a score out of 100. Daily Crush only had a 50/100 in March but by making a several minor changes my score has increased by 18 points recently!

Do you have a blog? If so, what strategies do you use to increase traffic to your site?