Photo credit: Solis Images, Shutterstock
Welcome back everyone, I have to say I am now on the countdown to Easter and looking forward to some quality time with the children. I am actually going away for the long weekend and leaving the laptop behind, and hoping to leave the phone switched off as much as possible.
I know this is a scary thought for those of us who spend far too many hours glued to our screens and social media channels but it doesn?t have to be, in fact there a few things you can do in advance to plan for these blogging breaks ? why not make your social media channels who?ve spent a long time building up do some of the work for you?
You can schedule your Facebook and Twitter posts in advance ? I?ve recently been experimenting with a few ways of doing this after asking for recommendations from my fellow bloggers, of course as with all apps etc. etc some work better for others and you need to play around to figure out which you prefer. Some of these in no particular order include: Hootsuite, Buffer, Social Oomph & Buffer Gram ? there are lots more available too. By scheduling your posts in advance it can save you hours per week ? hands up who goes onto Facebook or Twitter to share a post and gets lost procrastinating for hours at a time. You can also schedule tweets for your older posts and your competitions which you may be running.
Once you have scheduled your blog posts, scheduled your social media posts you can then look into ways of sharing these further afield so that the traffic still flows on your break.
Stumble Upon is great for finding new content and can be a fantastic way of driving traffic to your posts, Karen explains how it has doubled her views since she has been using it and talks you through setting up an account and using it.
Pinterest is another great traffic builder, who?d have thought a few years ago that you could pin more than just pretty pictures ? Jessica explains how you are able to grow your blog with Pinterest and Joanne talks about Rich Pins ? these are pins from your website which get extra promotion.
Instagram has become a popular platform for bloggers recently, noted as not only a way of showing off family pictures but a way of extending the blogging platform and a way to tell a story. Aby has a great post about how to rapidly grow your IG account after interviewing Nathan Chan and Becky also has a post on growing your following.
There are other ways to increase your reach ? Joanne talks about how she increased her Facebook reach in a week, while Jenny has Twitter tips for bloggers and Lucy will talk you through ways to grow your blog.
It is important to take some time out, I am looking forward to mine and remember your blog will still be there on your return and of course you work on building your social media presence on your return ready for the next break!
Don?t forget to tweet or email me ([email protected]) if you have a topic you would like to see covered in these posts.
About Clare Nicholas
Clare is a former NNEB trained Nanny and former Nanny/Babysitting Agency owner, she has now slowed down a little to spend as much time with her own family as possible, a WAHM with two whirlwinds Emmy & Harry. When they aren’t climbing the walls and trashing the house they like to spend as much time outdoors as possible filling their time with adventure, dog walks, days out and always finding the biggest and muddiest of puddles – when exhaustion finally hits the kids Clare shares those adventures over on her blog.