Seven Basic Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic in Thirty Minutes

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Boosting blog trafficYou’ve written a blog post that you’re proud of. You’ve read, re-read, edited, re-edited and then edited again once after you’ve inevitably discovered lots of mistakes that were missed. You’ve created a pinnable picture and included all your social media links.

Then the little-one starts to cry. Dinner needs to be made. The laundry needs to be hung out to dry. In my world, papers need to be marked.

For those of us that want our blogs to be seen, but have busy schedules, children, jobs and homes to maintain, we often find it difficult to promote ourselves to the biggest possible audience. Time is always our biggest barrier and in the blogging world it is highly unlikely that a post will receive lots of views simply by pressing the publish button.

When researching this post, I found lots of blogs that were offering lots of advice that I didn’t understand, and quite frankly, don’t have the time to research at the minute. I am not a professional blogger – I consider myself to be more of a hobbyist. I don’t have hundreds of thousands of readers. Like most, I don’t have lots of informative tips about SEO (which is probably why I don’t have hundreds of thousands of readers). However, I’ve been trying out little experiments over the last few weeks that focus on short bursts of promotion, allowing myself just thirty minutes at a time to complete different tasks. It has proven to be effective both in my increase of stats and of my ability to complete chores and marking, and spend some time with The Bloke (who has repeatedly complained about the amount of time I spend on here). So, for those of you who write for pleasure and therapy, like me, here are seven basic and hopefully less confusing ideas of what you can do in just thirty minutes – you don’t need to do all of them in one go, but some of these at a time will help.

1. Schedule your posts during your peak traffic times

I know that my highest traffic usually happens at the weekend, so I publish my favourite posts usually then If I really want a post to be seen, I will share it at about 6.00pm on a Sunday. Schedule your posts in advance to coincide with your peak traffic points throughout the week.

Time taken: a minute

2. Twitter

I click the Twitter button at the bottom of my post and add relevant hashtags and retweet accounts. @FemaleBloggerRT and @UKBlog_RT and particularly useful and effective. I also try and retweet posts from other bloggers – it is more likely that they will return the favour at a later point.

Time taken: Two minutes

3. Facebook

I upload a link to my blog Facebook page, and if it is relevant I will share it on my personal Facebook page, including people that I know will find the post interesting. I don’t use any hashtags on Facebook – they are often frowned upon and this may put others off reading your posts.

Time taken: Two minutes

4. Pinterest

Using the Pinterest app, I upload a link to my post and put it in a relevant board, ensuring that keywords are used in the title and description. As I have already created a pinnable pic, it takes very little time to add. I then take a minute to repin relevant posts from other bloggers.

Time taken: Two minutes

5. Visit other blogs via bloglovin’

I follow my favourite blogs on there because it saves lots of time searching for them individually. I only follow a few hundred to allow myself enough time to devote to them – I wouldn’t be able to keep track of more than that.

Time taken: Ten minutes (visiting one or two blogs at a time)

6. Include links to relevant previous posts

Depending on the time of year, I find that my topics happen in cycles or I may do a follow-up to a particularly popular post. Including links to a previous post may encourage readers to click on a link to find out more.

Time taken: Two minutes

7. Reply to emails and comments

This is the most important aspect of maintaining and increasing a readership. If someone has taken the time to leave a comment, they deserve a response, even if it is just to say thank you. I have lost readers by not responding to comments in the past.

Time taken: This will depend on the amount of comments you receive. Sometimes I take the entire thirty minutes on this alone. However, replying to an email should only take a few minutes.

Want further advice on how to increase your blog traffic? Click here

What about you guys? Do you have any quick tips for increasing traffic to your blog?

You can find me on Twitter and Tumblr @suzie81blog and don’t forget to check out my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/suzie81speaks and my Pinterest page http://www.pinterest.com/suzie81speaks

I AM ALSO NOW ON INSTAGRAM! Check out my photographs and visit me over at my new Instagram page http://www.instagram.com/suzie81speaks

88 thoughts on “Seven Basic Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic in Thirty Minutes”

  2. i’ve only recently discovered how nice Pinterest is, cause my readers wanted me to create a board for my A to Z Lowdown on blogging posts. I’ve done so. Now I’ve found that Pinterest has many other nice uses for blogging. 🙂 I’ve yet to discover how to use it as a tool for traffic. 🙂

    • I think the key is more about the image that you create and the keywords… I started using it properly only a week ago and have had several hundred views so far from others repinning my posts…

  4. Thank you for taking the time to write this for us! I find that creating a regular schedule helps as well. If your readers know when to expect a post, they seem more likely to drop by.
    Unfortunately, and because I don’t have a blog on wordpress.ORG or a business plan on .com, I can’t install Google Analytics and therefore can only make educated guesses as to when my highest traffic is. If you have any useful alternatives, I’d be very grateful! 🙂

      • I definitely agree and I use them. Still, I find they lack precision in terms of exact times people visit so scheduling a post seems difficult when you don’t know when your followers are “online”. Unless I am missing something?

      • I can see what you mean – I think it’s because I’m a stats obsessive and I check them several times a day. I’ve also noticed that my views and comments go up at a much quicker rate at certain points in the week…

      • I see… Going back to reason number one, I have never tried posting on the weekend. For some obscure reason, I have decided on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and stuck to it. Your post is making me question that decision – I might switch things a little… 😉

      • My highest traffic is definitely at the weekends because fewer people are at work – posting late in the afternoon also means that others have got chance to be awake!

  6. This is excellent! I actually hadn’t thought of linking to past posts – seems so obvious when you say it. I always assume that my peak time is on the weekdays, but I must do a little bit of research and see if that is actually the case. Thanks for a great post!

    • Thanks Cathy! There are more likely to be people around at the weekends which is why I post then mostly – I have more time to devote to comments too!

  9. Excellent advice. I can’t seem to pinpoint a high traffic time, my readers seem to show up all over the place so I just have to take a chance.
    Of course, #SundayBlogShare is a high traffic time for bloggers that participate, so that one’s easy, thanks again, Suzie.
    I’ll pass this along so others can benefit from your great advice as well. 🙂
    Hope this week is being kind to you so far. 🙂

  10. Goodness…..I love Bloglovin’ and I spluttered on my tea when you said you only follow a few hundred on it. I follow 25 and I don’t get round them all often enough. I’m feeling deflated! Maybe that’s why I only have one follower on Bloglovin’… 😦 Oh well, another list of tips for my wall.

    • Oh no – I wasn’t meaning to make anyone feel deflated! I don’t follow several hundred on bloglovin, just my favourites. Perhaps I should reword that!

  11. Thanks for helpful hints and tips Suzie. I have WP connected to my Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in and Google+ accounts so that every post is pushed to each social media account. I am working on getting my Facebook following up so that it is inline with my Twitter following. So far I don’t see a lot of clicks coming in from Twitter, so I am changing my focus to Facebook. Next I will work on Pinterest. 🙂

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  15. You always have so many words of blogging wisdom 🙂 I regularly find myself taking notes!

  16. Suzie, thanks for your encouragement. I have tried some of your ideas, with mixed results:

    #1 posting during peak traffic: I don’t know if I get traffic because of my new posts, or if the new posts just happen to get caught in traffic that would be there anyway. Weekends seem best for me, so I post on late Friday night.

    #2 & #3 social media: I have Twitter and Facebook for my blog but get very few referrals from there. It’s kind of a bummer to have a Tweet re-tweeted or a Facebook post “liked” many times but hardly anyone actually clicked on the article they are retweeting/liking. I still keep at it though, because as you point out it takes very little time to promote this way and it does help others out when I pass along articles I enjoyed.

    #7 reply to all comments: This is an easy one to accommodate. For better or worse, I have not reached a point where I get so many devoted fans reaching out to me that I just can’t reply to them all. So yes, everyone, for now, gets a personal reply.

    I do have one idea that is not on your list and has been very successful for me:

    Post a link to a specific article on forums/websites relevant to the topic your article is about. For example, if you write an article about your fishing trip, post the link on fishing/outdoors forums. You have to be careful to not violate any rules against spamming/self promotion, but when done right, this tactic results in a lot of page hits. Reddit is good for this too, but again, respect others’ space and follow the rules.

    • I try to do this too. For example, on my music blog, if I post something that the nme site has a related article on I will leave a comment. I sometimes also leave the link to my post but sometimes I don’t as I think it looks spammy and if the reader is interested enough they will click on my profile anyway.

  17. Great tips! I do two little daily poats everyday on my blog. They only take a few minutes to write and I enjoy doing them and scheduling them and hopefully people enjoy the minute it takes them to read. I think, just think, that this attracts viewers who might then stay and have a look around and read more of my in depth posts. I think this works but what do you and others think of this?

  18. Hello Suzie,
    What a highly useful tips. Thank you for sharing. If I may, here based on my own experience to do blogging. For almost 5 month after I was starting blogging, I really had very low traffic. Then one of my best blog follower suggested me to did something to increase my traffic. Simple but quite hard to do related with the time we have. He said, visit other blog that we interested as often as we can. Read their posts. We like, follow them, put “like” and even give them comment. At the time I tried to did it and you know what, slowly but surely my blog traffic getting up. We’ll, beside your great and awesome tips, I thought treat other blog is very useful too to increase our blog traffic.

    Oops, to much already. Once again, thank you for great tips 🙂 Blessings to you.

  19. Excellent advice!

    Of course, you forgot my best trick…linking to a soccer website. Since soccer is so beloved, it gets me tens of thousands of hits as soccer fans try to stay awake during a scoreless tie. 😉

  21. I would add effective tagging as a good tip. A few good, relevant tags will bring a lot of random traffic from search engines. Also, if your post is topical share it to Reddit, Stumbleupon and Digg.

  22. Reblogged this on Afternoon of Sundries and commented:
    If you, like me, are a small time blogger (for whatever reason) who is supper busy and wouldn’t mind a few new followers…. I’m going to peek at my stats in between classes today to figure out my peak time. I always go to school and check around 2:45PM (last class of the day is over) at my stats, and my views have tripled from that morning. So when is my peak time?! I’m going to check that out, and maybe you should check this out too!

  24. Good tips – can’t disagree with any of them. I do think there’s a lot of value in demystifying the blogging process – simple tips are so often the most effective ones.

  28. I’ve been SO busy lately that I haven’t had time to really promote the stuff I’ve written. After this next bout of traveling I’ll be getting back in the swing of things on Twitter/FB (no Pinterest for me).

  32. Great tips, and I think I have to learn more about Pinterest to understand how it works.

    What do you think about using stats feature on WordPress to identify your most popular posts and then tweeting them out—a few at a time—on a regular basis to attract new readers to them?

  33. Some good advice as always Suzie. I seem to post on certain days (Friday and Tuesday due to commitments) but really need to look at the best times. Like others above I need to use Pinterest better. That’s next on the agenda.

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  36. Great tips!
    I’m particularly intrigued about the one about when to publish. It has NEVER occurred to me to play around with that.
    Did you implement all these changes at once, or one at a time?

    I’ve loved researching how to optimize social media, like you, based on blogging as a hobby, and no interest in spending 8 hours a day on promoting my posts! I’ve been working on a series called #StrategySaturday… Social Media promotion in 15 minutes a day.

    If you’re interested, check out OWNING FACEBOOK 😉
    http://misplacedbrit.com/social-media/strategy-saturday/how-to-develop-your-facebook-strategy/

  39. I just love the look of your blog, the content and especially this post. Thank you for the useful tips. I am going to try all of these out!

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  41. I sacrificed some small animals but it wasn’t especially effective and the mess was appalling. In all seriousness, this was instructive and the animals will appreciate a change in approach.

  42. I came across a social media resource for people in the health and wellbeing business just a few weeks ago, it has revolutionised my social media, and brought me sales in a round about way too, result result! Have come across another resource today which shows the peak time for tweets facebook etc depending on whether you are talking b2b or b2c. So glad that I found both. Also taking aprt in the AtoZChallenge in April so fingers crossed that will get me more traffic. Your tips help enormously too, all good on my social media front. Blessings Joy x

  43. I’m glad I gave into the temptation… Great post and I learned something new – I’d not thought previously about the time I ‘publish’ my posts – I’m going to change that with immediate effect so thanks!

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