You Don’t Need To Fail To Succeed as a Blogger
By: Elna Cain
Tags: Blogging Tips, Online Marketing, Marketing, Content Marketing, Brand Strategy

3. Build an Audience of Raving Fans

Out of all the steps I share in this article, building an audience of raving fans is the most important one. It can make or break your brand. If your audience doesn’t remember you, your blog, or what you stand for, how can they tell others about you or your blog?

Social chatter is a powerful marketing tool to grow your brand and eventually your income. I mentioned in my introduction that I’m not an influencer. I’m no Amy Porterfield or Mariah Coz. But, what I have — an audience that shares my YouTube videos, tells others in Facebook groups about my site, shows up to my IG Lives, or reads every word of my blog post (and comments on them) — is something I will never trade for the world.

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Thanks, Sonya! Creating an audience of raving fans takes time to cultivate. You build this fan base by having highly valuable and educational/motivational content, a welcome email series, and by how often you show up.

I run two businesses for my two main sites and I have to juggle both. That’s why I may have one Instagram profile and a Twitter profile for both my businesses. It’s too hard to create separate identities for my businesses and in the end, it has helped grow my brand. I’m now the mom with multiple sites and a professional writer!

So, let’s dive deeper into how to cultivate raving fans because I told you that this is the most important step and I want to help you achieve success with your blog.

1. Highly valuable, educational, and motivational content

That’s a mouthful!

To start this process you need to build trust. That’s it. If your audience trusts what you tell them they will become raving fans.

What are the steps to building trust? You must devote time to helping your audience and you can do this with your blog content easily. Instead of chasing that keyword to rank your blog, why not provide actual help to your audience? Over on Twins Mommy, I shared a resource post on where to find free stock photos. I was having a lot of problems finding feminine-looking free stock photos for my Twins Mommy blog. So I spent time on Pinterest and other sites finding these free places and created a highly resourceful listicle.

This post got shared on social media, obtained backlinks and tons of comments, which eventually helped the post rank in Google.

Screenshot by the author

And this process can be duplicated — which it has over the years.

Valuable blog content helps a reader go from point A to point B. It’s transformative content that educates and motivates a reader to take action. This is the best form of content to help bloggers earn the trust of their readers and ultimately make money from blogging. But the thing to remember here is that creating highly valuable and transformative content takes time to create.

The first year of my first blog didn’t have the best content. Sometimes I regurgitated what I was learning online, other times I tried to share personal stories in hopes of helping others. I wasn’t connecting the dots of what people were wanting to know and having my blog post be their answer. So, where do you find topics to help your audience? Use Facebook groups and read the comments of competitor sites. You can also go to Amazon and read comments of books in your niche. This can give you insight into what is lacking from that book, which can help you create content for your blog.

2. Nurturing your list with a welcome series

So, what happens when you actually get readers to your highly informational and educational content? You don’t want them to leave so the best thing to do is offer a lead magnet or free incentive to get them onto your list. And the best incentive is a within blog post guide.

For example, if you created a blog post on social media marketing tips your free guide could be the top social media marketing tools you need to crush your competition. This is called a content upgrade as this free incentive upgrades your blog post and it’s a powerful way to quickly grow your email list. Why? Because you can bet the people on that blog post want to know about that topic and if they see a related lead magnet they will bite.

Once a reader is on your list you should create a welcome series to help that reader:

Know who you are and your blog’s message

Where to find your online (social media)

Exclusive tips

Any products you may recommend or sell

One of the first email lists I signed up to was for Melyssa Griffin and to this day many years later I remember her email welcoming me into her hive and sharing with me her courses. This immediately made me think of her as an authority in her niche and made me trust her more with what she told me. I believed her.

This is what a welcome series can do for your blog and brand. You can opt for a 5 day or 7-day welcome series. This is a series of automated emails and each email has a specific CTA (call-to-action).

3. Showing up

Over the years I’ve been through many bloggers’ launch campaigns and I’ve noticed a pattern — after they spend almost every day nurturing their audience to get them to click that buy link, once the launch is over, the blogger disappears for months at a time. Now, don’t get me wrong, many of these launches are not evergreen and I can bet they make their entire year’s income with that one launch.

But, what about the thousands of people that didn’t buy at that time? What do you do for them? I’m sorry, but you have to continue to show up in some way or form. This might mean putting out a YouTube video every other week or just hopping into your Facebook group for a quick update or doing some Instagram Live sharing some tips.

When you do this, you will see brand ambassadors come out. I follow Masha Goins. She teaches mom entrepreneurs to grow and sell on IG. I had her do a Live in my FB group and I joined her FB group. She recently launched a six-week intensive IG program, but you know what? She continued to show up in her free FB group and she continued to update her Instagram stories.

She never left — I’m still going to her Lives and linking her posts and waiting until she opens up her program again. I feel this is the right way to do marketing because when you show up people remember you. In the internet world of thousands of blogs starting every day and hundreds of FB ads you see for marketing tools and courses, the way to compete with that is to just be present and available.