How to Attract More Readers

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Automate Your Biggest Blogging Tasks WITHOUT Becoming a Robot.

Katy Widrick blogs about health and fitness at KatyWidrick.com, where she also offers tips and tricks for bloggers who want to make more money, get more readers, expand their reach and have more fun! With a focus on social media and search engine optimization, Katy also offers blog and social media consulting services for bloggers.

Attract More Readers, Make More Money and Get More Done…All While You’re Sleeping. 

Automation can be a dirty word in blogging. But it’s not all auto-DMs and “Dear http://blognamehere.com” pitches. Automation can be personal, highly customized and a step in your process that saves time, helps you bring in more readers and more money and makes it possible for you to focus on the big picture and not the tiny details that can bog us all down.

From email auto-responders to an editorial calendar that actually works, the latest tools and trends can help make all your blogging and business dreams come true! How? Learning how to use automatic processes and tools will keep your blog working for you while you are taking care of the rest of your business, family, and LIFE. All by identifying and embracing the technology that fits your needs, you can minimize the hands on work and oversight that sometimes seems to take control of the blogging lifestyle.

Do Less, But Achieve More. 

In order to do less work, bloggers must put together an organizational system that will keep the blogging working at all times and hours of the days and nights. Successful bloggers need email auto responders, canned email responses, editorial calendars, ready-to-go media kids, rate sheets, contract and accounting software, and social media scheduling tools.

Katy’s Top 10 Tools for What To Do:

  • Co-Scheudle is a paid plugin, $10 per month, and it allows you to schedule your blog posts plus schedule your posts on social media (any social media channel) whenever you want the post to go out. You can actually set it up so that you can schedule the same post several times over the course of a day, week, month, year, etc.
  • Yoast for SEO improves your site’s SEO on all needed aspects. While this WordPress SEO plugin goes the extra mile to take care of all the technical optimization, more on that below, it first and foremost helps you write better content. WordPress SEO forces you to choose a focus keyword when you’re writing your articles, and then makes sure you use that focus keyword everywhere.
  • Picmonkey and Canva: Excellent sites for intuitive graphic design and turning your normal pictures into extraordinary pictures. You can even design business cards, banners, etc. for your site.
  • Mailchimp: MailChimp helps you email the right people at the right time. Send automated emails based on customer behavior and preferences. Get started with pre-built Workflows or use built-in segmentation and targeting options to build custom rules. And get in-depth reporting on how each of your automated series is performing.
  • Tweetdeck/Hootsuite/Buffer: Social media posting sites and apps. Try them out and figure out which is best for you and your audience. Link your social media pages to the site/app and schedule all your posts for the day/week/month/etc.
  • IFTTT: If This Then That: The recipe for getting things to appear in multiple places. IFTT gives you creative control over the products and apps that you love.
  • OptiMonster, Mail Munch: For “Opt In” boxes on your website
  • iPhone apps: Work from your phone on the go! Some examples: WordPress/Tumblr/Squarespace, Google Analytics, Pinterest, Hootsuite/Tweetdeck/Twitter, Instagram, Evernote/Notes
  • QuickBooks, Fresh Books for accounting
  • Paid Ads: Facebook, Passionfruit, Pinterest, Google

VS–

What Not to Do

  • Don’t forget to monitor your social media postings so that they stay relevant.
  • Don’t automate responses, RTs, shares without reading and reviewing first.
  • Don’t automate across platforms blindly  (so don’t just post to Instagram and have that link to Twitter. Your message might not fit on Twitter, you may need different hashtags, etc.) Monitor–
    • tags
    • hashtags
    • character limits
    • photo sizes
    • excerpts
  • Don’t make it ALL ABOUT YOU (20/80 ratio–20% about you, 80% about other things). You become a more interesting person to follow. So on social media, be interesting. You’re already the authority and they know where to find your stuff.

Katy’s Final Thoughts:

  • Take help where you can get it.
  • Don’t be afraid to ask for advice and tips.
  • Audit your own use of time and skills.
  • Spend money to make money (or the equivalent).
  • Measure, measure, measure. (Don’t do things blindly. Sse your data, and don’t forget that not all tools help everyone.)

You can find Katy on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest

This post was captured by Steph from Strongfigure.com, who believes that everyone has the right to a strong, healthy body and mind. Train hard, eat well, read much, and enjoy life. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram!