Instagram Rules: The Essential Guide to Building Brands, Business and Community

Posted on November 14, 2020 by suzie81speaks

This post contains affiliate links, which means I receive a small amount of money if you make a purchase from any of the Amazon links included.

As with most areas of social media, I was seemingly behind the rest of the world in realising the power of Instagram as a marketing tool. I’ve actually had an Instagram account since 2015, back in the days when (at least, from my perspective) the platform was primarily a place to share some nice photos, add a snazzy filter and throw in a few hashtags. I’ve had moments over the years where I have made attempts to do something with my Instagram, but it was easy to become disheartened when I didn’t see immediate results. If I’m honest, after a while I paid it little attention. Continue reading →

Creating a Manual Pinning Strategy on Pinterest

Posted on September 8, 2019 by suzie81speaks

Disclosure: some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission should you click through and make a purchase.

One of my big blogging regrets is the number of years that I avoided using Pinterest to help bring referrals to my posts. Pinterest is my favourite part of my daily checklist and is now the primary resource of traffic referrals, bringing in tens of thousands of views with minimal effort. I’ve even been able to expand this further and incorporate it into my Social Media Management Services – growing and developing the Pinterest accounts of others.

This is nothing in comparison to Pinterest Queen Elena Peters, who has harnessed the power of Pinterest to gain over 100,000 views a month, grow her followers in her first year alone on Pinterest from 0 to 12,000 (she now has over 23,000) and increasing her impressions to almost 3 million a month. In her first year she was able to reach one million total views on her blog and quit her job to blog full-time, continuing to earn a steady income from ads due to the high volume of traffic that Pinterest sends her every single month!

I’ve learned a lot from both her blog and in discussions with her about what she does, and now she can help you too! Continue reading →

Boost Your Blog and Social Media with my Management Services and Advertising Opportunities!!

Posted on November 15, 2018 by suzie81speaks

Want to boost your blog, engagement, subscribers and stats for 2019? I offer lots of different opportunities for fellow bloggers and authors to gain that extra promotion as we are preparing for the start of the new blogging year.

Social Media Management – Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook
Blog of the Day opportunities
Hour Blog Consultation Slots
Canva images for your blog posts – created for any area of social media

Stats

At the time of publishing, Suzie Speaks has received over 1,000,000 views. Here are my readership stats:

WordPress: 11,000 +
Twitter: 8,900
Facebook: 800 +
Pinterest: 9200 +

Of all of the blogging regrets that I have, my lack of knowledge when developing my blog and hesitation when setting up my social media accounts are the biggest. Why? Continue reading →

Despondency – The Daily Blogging Battle

Posted on November 8, 2018 by suzie81speaks

The last few weeks have been pretty amazing, particularly with the once-in-a-lifetime experiences that The Bloke and I have participated in for his birthday. I’ve also had quite a buzz from blogging every day over the last week, rediscovering my enjoyment of simply writing things down and interacting with the community. I spent hours putting together a large and detailed post yesterday, sent it out across my social media, replied to my comments and then settled in for the evening. I always get a huge sense of satisfaction when I’ve done large post – those are the ones that are often evergreen and bring in the most amount of views over a long period of time. Continue reading →

One. Million. Views.

Posted on March 17, 2018 by suzie81speaks

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Holy crap.

Just under five years ago (April 2013), I came home from work after a particularly bad day, created a WordPress account and hastily wrote a very short introductory post entitled ‘Stuff.’

I have a lot of stuff. When I first moved down to Birmingham to start my degree everything that I owned could be fit into the back of a Ford Escort. Now, almost twelve years later, I own everything I have except the shell of the house that I live in. This blog is an attempt to sort out the stuff that I have surrounded myself with for years… And I’m not just referring to the physical objects that are in the house…

And that’s exactly what this blog helped me to do… sort my stuff out. It has been the biggest influence in almost every aspect of life, allowing me to change my career path, discover new goals and talents, experience places and things that I could have only dreamed of in my previous existence, understand myself better, calm my demons, re-establish estranged relationships and has introduced me to some of the most inspiring, creative and incredible people from all over the world both online and in person that I would never have have the privilege to get to know otherwise. Instead of filling my house with half-finished journals, it has been my online diary and record of the unbelievable highs and struggles of my life: getting engaged and married to The Bloke, welcoming The Squidge (my niece) into the world, watching as the important people in my life get married and have children, quitting my teaching job, travel, food, reviews, hosting workshops, winning the Best Overall Blog at the Annual Bloggers Bash in London…

I only told one friend when I first started writing – I showed her one of my posts during a meal at a pizza restaurant after I’d gained about 10 followers while my heart was beating out of my chest, and after she gave me a positive reaction and boosted my confidence we had a conversation about what I could achieve with it.

“You could get a million views!” I remember her saying, and I laughed at the prospect.

And today, that’s exactly what happened – this little piece of the internet had it’s MILLIONTH VIEW…

Unbelievable.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read, share, tweet, pin, advise, support… I couldn’t have done it without you!

Here’s to the next million!

Boost Your Blog and Social Media Using My Management Services!

Posted on January 29, 2018 by suzie81speaks

Of all of the blogging regrets that I have, my lack of knowledge when developing my blog and hesitation when setting up my social media accounts are the biggest. Why?

Because my social media is now responsible for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of referrals of my total views.

The problem with social media is that, during the initial set-up in particular, it’s incredibly time consuming, even when using schedulers. Posting a blog post now doesn’t just involve pressing the publish button – I think about keywords, create a pinnable image for Pinterest and then pin it, tweet it using specific hashtags, stumble it, share it on Flipboard and then share it again into specific Facebook groups. I then use my BoardBooster Pinterest scheduler to incorporate my latest post. How, when and where I share it will depend on the specific day and time so that they get the maximum audience. Continue reading →

FOMO Bloggers: Why You’re Harming Your Own Blog

Posted on January 25, 2018 by suzie81speaks

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Ethel has written a post. It’s a great post and it’s receiving lots of positive feedback. Janey wants lots of positive feedback too. Janey copies the post, changes a few words around, adds in a few extra ideas and publishes it as her ‘brand new, completely original post’ in all of the 232 Facebook groups that she’s a member of. Nobody will notice, right?

In the last week I’ve read two articles that I immediately connected with. The first, a completely fabulous post by Kate Toon – 19 Things NOT to Do in a Facebook Group – which hilariously highlighted just some of the silliness that I witness daily, and the second by Elena Peters – What’s Up With the Fast Blogging? – a short set of thoughts on the misconceptions of overnight blogging success and the desperation of bloggers to achieve it. They’re both completely different posts, but they essentially focus on the same thing:

FOMO.

Fear Of Missing Out, an all-consuming desire to keep up with everyone else, to have what they have, to do what they’re doing. Continue reading →

How to Create, Join and Use Pinterest Group Boards

Posted on September 16, 2017 by suzie81speaks

Pinterest, despite all of the updates and changes that have been made over the last 9 months, is still a primary source of traffic to my blog. I took my time to join and develop my boards (and I wish I’d have done it sooner) but it remains my favourite way to share my posts and to access interesting posts that cover posts of lots of different topics.

One of the easiest ways of boosting my traffic has been the creation of my own board and joining those created by others.

Essentially, a blogging group board is like an ongoing link-up and sharing opportunity (and those of you who follow the blog regularly will know how much I like I good party). It works in the same way as all the other boards, but instead of just the creator sharing their pins, others are allowed to join the board and pin their own posts and posts from others that they have enjoyed. The more members and followers a board has, the more likely the pin will be seen and repinned elsewhere.

Each board is different, usually with specific rules depending on the creators preferences. Some are a free-for-all, ie. you can pin as many posts as you like, while some only allow one pin a day. Others ask that you share someone else’s post along with your own. Some are focused solely on a theme – blogging tips, DIY, recipes, crafts, beauty. Some have no theme at all, as long as they are blog posts. Continue reading →

Boost Your Twitter and Pinterest Stats with my Social Media Management

Posted on August 8, 2017 by suzie81speaks

Of all of the blogging regrets that I have, my hesitation when setting up my social media accounts is the biggest. Why?

Because my social media is now responsible for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of referrals of my total views.

How to Use Facebook Groups to Increase Your Blog Traffic

Posted on May 11, 2017 by suzie81speaks

Facebook groups are a brilliant source of information, community and traffic. They differ in purpose and each have different rules, but essentially they can all be used for the same things: to meet new bloggers, ask questions to the community and to promote your posts.

As with many things in the blogging world – it took me a long time to discover the power of blogging focused Facebook groups. I joined one, run by a close blog friend when it had just a few hundred members last year and a very small targeted sharing group, but didn’t actively participate in either. My Facebook traffic was low at the time – I’d had a post go viral with 100,000 views in my first year of blogging, but since that point I averaged between 5-20 views a day, depending on whether I published to my blog Facebook page. Continue reading →