How Can Bloggers Prepare for a Profitable Q4?

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As the fourth quarter (Q4) of the year approaches, bloggers are gearing up for one of the busiest and most lucrative times of the year. With major holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s on the horizon, it’s crucial to have a solid strategy in place.

In my recent episode of The Blogger Genius Podcast, I share thoughts and strategies on how bloggers can prepare for Q4. I break down actionable steps for how to thrive during this busy season.

Show Notes:

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Understanding the Importance of Q4

Q4 is a critical period for bloggers due to the increased online activity and consumer spending associated with the holidays. But success during this time isn’t about quick fixes or magical hacks. Instead, it’s about doubling down on fundamental strategies and focusing on genuine connections with your audience.

Key Questions to Guide Your Strategy

Here are my two essential questions that every blogger should consider:

• Where do I have the most impact and connection with your audience?
• Where are you making money now?

These questions are powerful in guiding your efforts and ensuring that you focus on what truly matters.

Identifying Your Impact and Connection Points

To determine where you have the most impact and connection with your audience, consider the following:

• Analyze Your Traffic Sources: Look at your analytics to see which platforms are driving the most traffic to your blog. Is it Pinterest, Google SEO, Instagram, or another platform?
• Engagement Metrics: Assess where your audience is most engaged. Which posts get the most comments, shares, and likes?
  Feedback and Interaction: Pay attention to where you receive the most feedback and interaction from your audience. This could be through blog comments, social media interactions, or email responses.

Understanding Your Revenue Streams

Next, identify where your revenue is currently coming from:

• Display Ads: Are display ads a significant source of income for you? If so, focus on driving more traffic to your blog.
• Affiliate Sales: If affiliate sales are a key revenue stream, consider creating more content that promotes your affiliate products.
  Product Sales: Whether you sell digital products, printables, or physical goods, ensure that your marketing efforts are aligned with promoting these items.

Doubling Down on What Works

I had a plant that thrived but eventually became overgrown and unmanageable. This metaphor illustrates the importance of cutting back on less effective strategies to nurture what is truly working. Here’s how you can apply this principle:

Focus on High-Impact Platforms

• Pinterest: If Pinterest is a major traffic driver for you, invest time in creating eye-catching pins and optimizing your boards.
• Google SEO: Ensure your blog posts are optimized for search engines. This includes using relevant keywords, optimizing meta descriptions, and building backlinks.
  Instagram: If Instagram is where you connect most with your audience, focus on creating engaging stories, reels, and posts that resonate with your followers.

Create High-Quality Content

In a world filled with AI-generated content and fleeting trends, I emphasize the value of genuine human connection. Focus on creating fewer, high-quality pieces of content that provide real value to your audience. This approach not only fosters deeper connections but also aligns with what search engines like Google are looking for.

Addressing Audience Pain Points

Get laser-focused on the specific pain points of your audience. Here’s how you can do this:

Conduct Audience Research

• Surveys and Polls: Use surveys and polls to gather insights into the challenges and needs of your audience.
• Social Media Listening: Pay attention to the conversations happening on social media. What are people talking about? What problems are they facing?
• Feedback Analysis: Review the feedback you’ve received from your audience. What common themes or issues emerge?

Create Solutions

Once you understand your audience’s pain points, create content and products that address these issues. For example, I share a story about a gluten-free baker who connected deeply with her audience by acknowledging their struggles and positioning her products as solutions.

Growing Your Email List

An effective email list remains one of the most powerful tools for monetization. I emphasize the importance of growing your email list and offers the following tips:

Create an Irresistible Freebie

• Identify Pain Points: Create a freebie that addresses a specific pain point of your audience. This could be a cheat sheet, e-book, or printable.
• Promote It Widely: Share your freebie across all your platforms, including your blog, social media, and email signature.

Nurture Your Subscribers

• Welcome Sequence: Set up an automated welcome sequence to introduce new subscribers to your brand and provide value from the start.
• Regular Communication: Send regular emails with valuable content, updates, and promotions to keep your audience engaged.

Taking a Holistic View of Your Business

The secret to business success lies in taking a holistic view of your business. Focus on what truly matters—authentic connections and solving real problems. By doing so, you can set yourself up for success in Q4 and beyond.

Consider Adding Digital Products

I suggest you consider the addition of digital products to your offerings. Digital products can provide a scalable source of income and offer value to your audience.

Seek Expert Guidance

To help navigate your next steps, I offers a free 20-minute strategy call. This can be an invaluable resource for gaining personalized advice and insights.

Conclusion

By focusing on genuine connections, understanding audience pain points, and nurturing effective strategies, you can position yourself for success in Q4 and lay the groundwork for long-term growth. Remember, the key to success lies not in a checklist of tasks but in taking a holistic view of your business and focusing on what truly matters.

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

• Master Email Tripwires: Convert Subscribers into Customer with Jillian Leslie
• Why Freebies Are the Secret Sauce to Email List Success with Jillian Leslie
• 5 Vital Tips for Growing a Successful Blog Now with Jillian Leslie

MiloTreeCart, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products

I also want to introduce you to the MiloTreeCart, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like fill-in-the-blank sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support. MiloTreeCart is currently available for a lifetime deal of $349 or three easy installments of $116.33.

Transcript #346: How Can Bloggers Prepare for a Profitable Q4 Season?

Jillian Leslie 00:00:04 Hello and welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I’m Jillian Leslie, founder of Milo. Try and catch my party and today I am flying solo to dive deep into something super important. Now that summer is winding down and the kids are heading back to school. And these are secrets to get your blog ready for Q4. So as a blogger myself, my mind is already racing ahead to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, and beyond that, I’m already thinking about New Year. New you. I’m bringing this up because I’m hoping that you are thinking this way too, because it is crucial to support your audience where they will be living over the next few months. Now, for many of us, Q4 is a prime time for making money. But let’s face it, with the world feeling a bit topsy turvy right now, I know many of you are feeling uncertain about which way to go, and that’s exactly why I’m sharing my secrets with you today. Now I can almost hear you thinking, Gillian, what magical tips and tricks do you have up your sleeve? But here’s the twist the secrets might not be what you’re expecting.

Jillian Leslie 00:01:21 I have recently done a bunch of episodes on hot topics like Instagram, SEO, email marketing, and as I’ve been diving deep into these subjects with my guests, I’ve started to see a pattern emerge. And when I see patterns emerge in online business, I have to share them. So are you ready for my big reveal? Here’s what I’m seeing. There are no real silver bullets, no magic hacks, no secret ones to wave. And let me be honest with you, I wish these silver bullets existed. Trust me, when I interview experts, I’m always fishing for them. I don’t know if you can hear me doing that, because wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a single trick that could instantly double your traffic? Or a secret Instagram hashtag that could gain you thousands of followers overnight? The truth is, I have been in this industry for a long time. I have seen countless trends come and go. I have tried my fair share of hacks and shortcuts. And you know what? They rarely, if ever, deliver on their promise.

Jillian Leslie 00:02:35 So what actually works? What are these real secrets I’m talking about? It all boils down to doubling down on the fundamentals. And there are two questions I’d like you to ask yourself. The first, where do I have the most impact and connection with my audience? And two, where am I making money now? These might sound simple, but they are powerful. And let’s dive into how these play out in real life by using my own businesses as examples for catch my Party. Our goal is traffic because our biggest sources of revenue are display ads, Etsy commissions, and printable sales. We attract the most visitors through Pinterest, Google SEO, and Instagram. So these are the things we focus on and we’ve gotten really good at that. For military, we make money through people signing up for our service. To achieve this, we have the most impact through this podcast, our email list and affiliate sales. When people recommend Milo Tree to their friends. So these are the things we focus on there. Now, while we love Pinterest for Catch My Party, Pinterest barely moves the needle for Milo Tree or this podcast, so we still pin our podcast content every week, but the returns pretty minimal.

Jillian Leslie 00:04:11 Could Pinterest become a traffic goldmine for military like it is for getting my party? Maybe if we really leaned into it, created a bunch of pins, optimized our descriptions, but because our strategies are working right now and we do not have infinite resources. And I have to say that again, nobody has infinite resources. So we keep our Pinterest account ticking along. But our real focus is on doubling down on podcast growth through strategies like guesting on other people’s podcasts. As a blogger today, you cannot do everything. You have to be laser focused on where you connect and where you make money, and everything else can wait. So I want to share a story, a real life story that I just thought of today Day as I was watering my plant. So I have this plant and it was thriving. It was lush and green and it was growing like crazy. And this might be similar to how your blog was growing over the last couple of years, especially, say, during the pandemic if you were a sourdough baker.

Jillian Leslie 00:05:24 But with my plant, it grew so much that its leaves got too heavy and the poor stalk started bending, and suddenly this thriving plant looked like a mess and started dying. What did I do? I had to cut it back and let me tell you, it was painful. But I did it trusting that it would grow back stronger. And you know what? It is growing back stronger. It’s filling in and I know it’ll be more beautiful than ever, because I won’t let it get out of control again. And this, my friends, is your business in a nutshell. Sometimes you need to cut back on the things that aren’t moving you forward and focus on what’s working and nurture those parts of your business intentionally? It might feel like you’re taking a step back, but you’re setting yourself up for more robust, sustainable growth. Now let’s talk about you. Maybe your Instagram is your sweet spot for connecting with your audience. If so, double down on it. Make it more personal. Keep reaching out to people.

Jillian Leslie 00:06:30 Pour your heart into it. But here’s the crucial part make sure you know how you’re making money from the platforms that work for you. Is your funnel actually functioning? Even SEO is a funnel. You create content, hope people click, and then you have ways to monetize that traffic. But instead of churning out post after post, create fewer pieces with more love. Aim for real connection. Think of your audience as actual people you want to help not just algorithm Fodder. I love what Rand Fishkin shared on my last episode. I will link to it in my show notes if you missed it. He got access to the leaked Google algorithm documents, and what Google said in the documents is they don’t care about random links to your blog out on the internet. They care about links to your blog that people are clicking on. So forget this idea of like, I need more links and focus on. I need links to content that provides genuine value. So remember, success comes from doubling down on a few key things and becoming exceptional at them.

Jillian Leslie 00:07:54 And start now because Q4 is right around the corner. So here they are again one focus on where you genuinely connect with real people and help them and double down on that. And to concentrate on how that connection translates to revenue. So if you take one thing from this episode, let it be those two points. Seriously. Pause right now and jot them down. In a world drowning in AI generated fluff, your humanity is your superpower. But remember, even superpowers need focus. So don’t spread yourself too thin. Nurture what works, prune what doesn’t, and watch your authentic business flourish. But I can’t end without tackling a question that I know is on many of your minds. What if you feel like nothing is working in your business right now? Maybe your traffic is taking a nosedive. Your social media posts are met with silence. Despite using all the right hashtags, or that book you poured your heart into just isn’t selling well. First, take a deep breath. We’ve all been there and there’s a way forward.

Jillian Leslie 00:09:03 So here’s my advice and it’s a game changer. Get laser focused on the specific pokey, painful problem you Yusof. Why? Because people will always pay to get out of pain. So I want to share a recent conversation that I had that illustrates this perfectly. I was chatting with a talented gluten free baker about expanding her business. She creates these gorgeous, mouthwatering, gluten free desserts. But when we dug into the real pain points of her audience, we uncovered something powerful. We realized that people don’t choose to go gluten free on a whim. It’s often a necessity for their health or a loved ones, and it’s a challenging journey filled with sacrifices like giving up favorite foods. And as we explored this, a whole new world of possibilities opened up for her business. You see, she wasn’t just selling desserts anymore. She could now say, I see you. I understand your struggles. I’m here to guide you through this journey. And yes, you can still enjoy delicious treats along the way. Now that is powerful.

Jillian Leslie 00:10:13 That’s connection. I challenge you to look at your own blog or business through this new lens. What’s the real underlying pain point you’re addressing? How can you deepen your connection with your audience by acknowledging their struggles and offering genuine solutions? Now let’s talk about a practical step you can take right away. And I’m going to say focus on growing your email list. It remains one of the most effective ways to connect with your audience and turn that connection into revenue. Remember, you only need 1000 true fans who spend $100 on your products and services every year, and you have made a $100,000. So how do you focus on your email list? Well, to kickstart your growth, you need an irresistible freebie, and I’ve got something to help you create just that, I am offering a new resource where I share three powerful AI prompts to help you draft a cheat sheet that will magnetize the very people who need what you offer. It is free. Grab it at military.com/freebie prompts. I’m saying it again military.com/freebie prompts. The great thing about this is you will have a freebie that is enticing in under ten minutes.

Jillian Leslie 00:11:49 Now, once you’ve created your freebie, please don’t be shy about it. Share it everywhere, but do it with intention. Reach out personally to individuals you know could benefit from it. Remember, if you can alleviate someone’s pain or solve a pressing problem, you’re not just making a sale, you are making a difference. And that’s what builds lasting business relationships. So as I wrap up, I want to leave you with this thought. The secret to business success isn’t about ticking off a checklist of tasks, which means up. I got a post on Pinterest, update a blog post for SEO, make that new reel. It’s about taking a step back and really seeing your business holistically. Do more by doing less. Focus on what truly moves the needle. Connect authentically. Solve real problems. This approach won’t just set you up for success in Q4. It’s the foundation for long term growth, especially now in the world of AI. And this is the secret I want to share with you. This is the one hack, the cheat, the silver bullet.

Jillian Leslie 00:12:58 So if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, especially if you’re considering adding digital products to your offerings, which I recommend, I would love to chat. So book a free 20 minute call with me. Just go to Military.com Amit, and you’ll get you’ll see my calendar. Pick a time, because I’d love to help strategize with you and help you come up with a path forward. I hope this episode has sparked some thoughts for you, and if you want to share what they are, please email me at Jillian at Military.com or DM me on Instagram at military, if you have a friend who you think would enjoy this episode, please share it. If you like the podcast, please review it on iTunes. I’d be so appreciative. Remember, in a world awash with AI generated content and fleeting trends, your unique perspective and genuine connection with your audience or your superpowers. So use them wisely. Focus on what truly matters and watch your business thrive. And I will see you here again next week.

Jillian Leslie 00:14:08 And good luck! Back to school.