#141: 5 Secrets Successful Bloggers Know to Grow Their Blogs

Here are the 5 secrets successful bloggers know to grow their blogs.

Given that David and I have grown successful businesses (Catch My Party, MiloTree, The Blogger Genius Podcast), I work closely with bloggers in our MiloTree Coaching Group, and interview successful bloggers on this podcast, I get to see consistent patterns.

In this podcast, I share what I’m seeing work successfully right now for online entrepreneurs.

The word I use over and over again is “intentional.” The more intentional you can be about the choices you make, the better!

Listen to the episode to see how you can incorporate these tips into your own blog.

And please email me to tell me which secret resonates with you the most or you are struggling with the most. I’d love to hear from you!

Show Notes:

• MiloTree Pop-Up App
• Blogger Genius 4 Biggest Takeaways Email
• MiloTree BlogStart Service
• MiloTree 6 Week Coaching Group
• MiloTree Mastermind Facebook Group
• Episode #129: How Your Email List Is Like an ATM with Sarah Williams
• Catch My Party

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Intro 0:04
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius Podcast.

Get My Weekly Email with My 4 Biggest Takeaways from Each Podcast Episode

Jillian Leslie 0:16
Before I get started with today’s episode, I was wondering if you would like to get a weekly email from me, it comes on Sundays. And what I do is I talk about my most recent podcast episode and I identify the four biggest takeaways from that episode.

As I’ve said, it’s like a cheat sheet. And this way, you get to keep up with what is really happening in blogging and online business. If that sounds interesting to you, please head to bloggergenius.com and sign up. Super easy, bloggergenius.com.

For this episode, this is a special episode, we just finished our last coaching group and I’ve been thinking about what makes a successful blogger today. And I synthesized it down. And I wanted to share the patterns that I am seeing over and over again.

So, without further delay, here is my special solo episode.

The Unique Place I Sit in Online Business

I’m excited to do this episode because I feel like I sit in this unique position where I get to see our own businesses. So David and I, my husband and partner and I started Catch My Party in 2009.

It’s still growing and going strong. And then we’ve also started MiloTree. I’ve started The Blogger Genius Podcast; we have a variety of revenue streams. And we’ve been around for a while that I’ve been able to watch trends come and go.

Also, because of my podcast, I get to interview successful bloggers and online entrepreneurs, also industry experts to really hear what’s connecting right now for them.

And we do coaching, if you are interested in one of our coaching groups, head to milotree.com/group. Our new group is starting end of October.

And from working so closely with our groups, we show up live with them. And we roll up our sleeves and get really into their businesses. Some of them are incredibly successful, some of them are just starting out, some of them are struggling.

And I’ve been able to see what works. How people are growing successful businesses on the internet, how people are taking their blogs, and really figuring out how to make money from them.

Secret 1: Blog in a Very Specific Niche

I wanted to share my top five secrets for being a successful blogger today. And hopefully this will help you think about your business going forward. The first secret is that the bloggers who are successful know that they need to be in a very specific niche.

Back in the day, we can be generalists and blog about a whole host of topics today people are rewarded for being specialists, and knowing their audience, knowing their content, knowing what problems people are struggling with.

And coming up with solutions for those people, for their audience. Also, Google rewards you, if you are an expert, it’s called authority and you want to gain authority in your space. So, the narrower you are, really the better.

You can have this one on one relationship with your audience. Again, first secret is do not be afraid to niche down and actually go toward that. See what’s working and what’s connecting and build off of that content.

So that you can take a problem, let’s say that your audience is having and you can tackle it from a variety of different angles.

Secret 2: Sell Something to Your Audience

The second secret that I think successful bloggers know is that their job is ultimately to sell something to their audience. Bloggers a lot of times think, well, they’ll make their money via ads, or even sponsored content.

However, especially right now, ad rates have gone down. Sponsored content is great if you can get it. Brands though expect more from you than they did say five years ago. And those sponsored posts are hard to scale.

You’re always having to recreate them from the ground up. And what I have seen over and over again, is if somebody has a niche that they understand really well. They understand what their audience is struggling with.

And if they can create products that solve those issues for their audience, they can find a way to get what I call product market fit, which is your product solves a problem for your market, and people will buy it from you.

That’s when there are fireworks, that’s when things really start to grow. A lot of times bloggers think I’ll get to that later. Right now, I’m just doing affiliate sales. And working on growing my blog.

And I say, my recommendation is to push that forward to really think about what you can sell, whether that be a course, whether that be an e-book, whether that be some printables, whether that be a membership site.

Whether that be physical goods, really challenge yourself to think about what you could sell to your audience.

Secret 3: Test Fast, Test Often, and Test Cheaply

And this leads to my third secret that I think successful bloggers know, and that is to test often test fast, fail fast, assume most of your tests are not necessarily going to work. And that’s okay. You want to be up at bat over and over again.

So is there a way for you to test a product idea with your audience, and this is where B-minus work comes in. If you are spending long periods of time on product development, that’s really risky.

Because I think you want to be testing and looking for this connection with your audience. And the best way to get there is to try stuff. It sounds easy, but it’s not. And sometimes it can be demoralizing when your tests don’t work.

But assume that the more times you can be putting stuff out there. And the faster you can do it, the better.

Secret 4: Grow Your Email List and Use it to Build Relationships and Sell Solutions

Then the fourth thing I think bloggers understand is the power of their email list. We’re all told grow your list, grow your list, but a lot of times, people come to me and they go, Why? Why am I growing my list? I’m posting on social media isn’t that enough?

Or I’m growing my list, but kind of in the background, and I’m not really using it. If you think about your business as a sales funnel, at the top of the funnel is where it’s really, really wide. And then it narrows down. Top of the funnel is your content.

You want to get your content out there; you want lots of people to see it. Top of the funnel is social media, you’re posting on social media, hoping lots of people see it.

But it’s really emails where you start to develop this deeper relationship with your audience. So, let’s say you have a post, you write a post, you put a Pin on Pinterest, somebody clicks over, because they’ve got a problem, you’ve got a solution.

And there’s a very shallow relationship there. But if you can get that person onto your list so that they get to know you and hear how you are special. Hear how you know the solution to their problem.

That’s where you get to, again, make this connection, a one on one connection rather than a one to many connections. And because secret number two is that this person, this blogger knows they want to be selling. The best way to sell is through email.

It is by far, who was it? Sarah Williams, who was a guest on my podcast talked about how her email list is like an ATM, she can turn it on by sending email, and money shows up. And it’s because of this intimacy, and you have access to somebody’s inbox.

That’s where the power lives. I highly recommend you give care to your email list, providing your audience solutions and a connection and asking them to be emailing you back because this is also a great way to learn about your audience.

What exactly are they struggling with so you know, what you can offer them as solutions and that you can then go monetize those solutions.

Secret 5: Use Your Google Analytics to Make Informed Decisions About What Content to Create

My fifth secret that bloggers who are successful know is to use their analytics to make choices about content creation. If you have not set up Google Analytics, I highly recommend you do that.

And in your analytics, you can see what pieces of content are connecting with your audience. And that’s how you can figure out what niche you’re in. Because you can start to build off of that content.

And you can see what your audience likes from you. What Google likes from you. You can see where that audience is coming from. So, for example, if your audience is coming from Pinterest, definitely be pinning a lot and doubling down on Pinterest.

If you have Google Search Console also set up, I highly recommend you do that as well. Google Search Console shows you how Google sees your site and what keywords Google thinks you’re an expert in.

And you can target those keywords, which I highly recommend you do. But what successful bloggers know is to build off of what’s already working for them and to use their analytics as a way to make informed choices.

Secret 6: BONUS Don’t call yourself a blogger.

And that is not to call yourself a blogger. I think that’s too limiting. You are an online entrepreneur, and you are not a content creator. But I would call you a content marketer. And I say this and people their eyes go wide.

But every single one of your blog posts, I recommend you think about it as a sales page, not just as content. And what I mean by that is it has a goal attached to it.

So, this piece of content, either is set up to get people to sign up for your list, to buy your product, to click through to other posts on your blog. So, it grows your traffic to grow your social media.

But every blog post needs a meta goal that you’ve identified and that you’ve put in place to grow your business.

5 Secrets Successful Bloggers Know to Grow Their Blogs

Please Email Me Which Secret Resonates With You the Most

Okay, so here’s my ask, now that you finished listening to this episode, please email me at jillian@milotree.com. And let me know which of these six secrets really resonates with you. Say there’s one that you’re implementing and you’re killing it, I want to hear it.

If there’s one that you’re struggling with, please let me know that. And if there’s one that you want me to go deeper into really explain, maybe do a podcast episode about it. Please let me know that too. It doesn’t have to be a long email.

But I’d like to know where you are in your business. And if you’ve not signed up for my newsletter, to get my four biggest takeaways from every podcast episode, please head to bloggergenius.com. I would really love to get to know you better.

And I’ll see you here again next week.

You’ve given me such a gift. So please head to BloggerGenius.com to sign up, we can get to know each other.

And I will see you here again next week.

Imagine a world where growing your social media followers and email list was easy…

If you are looking for ways to grow your community whether that be email whether that be social media, right now head to Milotree.com install the MiloTree app on your blog and it will do the work for you. Let it do the heavy lifting for you.

Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week.

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