It’s been a little quiet around here lately as I’ve been working behind the scenes to make this blog everything I want it to be. Here’s the thing, I’ve been blogging for years. The last year or two I’ve been really focusing on great, helpful content and for some reason my traffic just hasn’t caught up to where I’d assume it would be. So rather than spending time on new content I’ve been working on making my existing content work for me. Here are some of the steps I’m currently taking.

Amp Up Social Media Sharing (& Consistency!)

To be honest, I’ve been kind of half-assing social media since… forever. I pop in here and there, schedule some posts here and there, and am just generally super flaky because I “don’t have time” to deal with it. But what’s the point of spending lots of time and energy creating great posts when I’m not even sharing them with the people who are following me? Duh. So I’ve been working on my social media strategy which I’ll talk about in more depth in a future post.

Pinterest Optimization

My biggest source of traffic for a long time now has been Pinterest. You know the drill. The best images for getting noticed and repined on Pinterest are vertical images, etc. So I’ve been trying to go through my archives and really make my images for my Pinterest worthy posts more attractive.

Some of my tips for good pinterest graphics:

• Vertical images (1102 x 735 pixels is ideal) give you more real estate on the website
• Clear images – it should be obvious what the image is with just a one second glance
• White space – I’m not sure how true this is, but for me the images with a good amount of whitespace and aren’t too congested stand out to me
• Close Ups – If your image is of a DIY or food then close ups are easier to see (especially on a phone) and catch more attention

P.S. If you need help with this, I can design pinterest optimized graphics for you!

Removing “Bad” Posts

When I first started blogging I had no real vision of what I wanted to do with it. This was back in 2009 so I was 21 and just kind of used my blog as a journal. Because of that there are a lot of posts that are kind of pointless. While I still consider this a lifestyle blog, with an emphasis on creative entrepreneurship, there are plenty of rambling posts with broken images that can easily be deleted without any despair. Any lifestyle type posts about my home or son, for example, are more carefully curated and thought out than they were before and it’s much easier to read and, hopefully, more interesting too.

Link Everywhere (Within Your Website)

You want to make sure that the people reading your posts move along to any other posts that might interest them. So if you have 3 posts on Evernote (my fave!) then make sure to link within each of them so your reader knows that content exists and doesn’t head back to google for more information.

You should have links…

• on your sidebar
• within the text of your post
• related links at the end of your posts

Repurpose

Most of us have posts that are years old, but are still bring us a large portion of our traffic. Find a way to repurpose it with a new twist on the subject. Or you can break the post down into specifics and elaborate on the details in a couple different posts. One of my most popular posts was How to Sell on Instagram. I had no idea it would be so popular, but once I saw it was I did a Part 2 answering some questions from the comments of the original post. Shortly after that I even created a How to Sell on Instagram Ecourse that has made me several hundred dollars and continues to make me a few bucks here and there years later.

Make sure that if you have a lot of good content you’re not just letting it disappear into the archives! You work hard to create value for your readers, make sure they can find it. I’m sure there are other ways that you can make your existing content work for you that I haven’t thought of yet. I’d love to hear any ideas you might have for existing content.