7 Ways to Prep Your Blog for Seasonal Traffic

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Melanie ferguson — Episode 81 : Melanie Ferguson

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This week I’m so thrilled that we are getting into the fourth quarter and I want to share with you seven different ways that you can get your blog ready for all the traffic that you are about to get this fourth quarter.

7 Ways to Prep your Blog for Seasonal Traffic

You need to be ready to capitalize on all of the amazing traffic headed your blog’s way in the coming months. There are so many ways to do this, but today I want to share with you 7 ideas.

Listen in as I share with you all about:

Pinterest traffic
Optins
Gift Guides and more

In this episode, we cover:

7 Ways to prep your blog
Tips on how to attract brands
Ideas on ways to grow your email list

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Complete Transcript of this Episode

This week I’m so thrilled that we are getting into fourth quarter and I want to share with you seven different ways that you can get your blog ready for all the traffic that you are about to get this fourth quarter. So let me know if you are here for it too. You guys, I’m so excited it’s here.

Alright, so the first thing to take note of in the way of getting your blog ready for fourth quarter is gift guides. So this week is actually the week of the Amazon Prime Promotions. This is the time that you need to be getting your gift guides in order. If you don’t already have your gift guides in place, get started on them now. This can be anything as niche as gifts for the person who’s hard to buy. Gifts for two coffee lovers, collages, all the things. So just get started on your gift guides, get them in place and house them all in a special page on your blog. So maybe you want to create a shop your gift guides page where you put every single one of these and then if you are so inclined, you could also go further and make a specific post for each one. It just depends on what you have time for. So gift guides are gold and I want you to get started on them if you don’t already have them all in place right now. Make sure all the links work if you’re going to use older ones and have fun creating some newer ones, your audience will thank you and ultimately, so will your bank account.

Alright, number two. The second way to get your blog seasonally ready is to make sure that you have pins for every single post and that you are explaining within the post to your readers how to pin the pins for you. So this could be as simple as a little block that you add that’s a reusable block or a little tiny paragraph that just says simply the steps they need to do to pin your images. Just tell them how they need to hover over the image until the little red Pin, this button pops up and then to click it and add it to their favorite Pinterest board. This will probably really help a lot of your people because not only will they maybe need to know how to use Pins, but maybe it is just a good reminder that they should be pinning your content sticking to Pinterest.

You should be creating idea pins. These are those fast little video snippets or slideshows that give a little sneak peek into what your post is about. And you should be doing these at least three times a week. So Pinterest idea pins are not linkable yet. They will be linkable in the future, but for now they are actually increasing your impressions and your reach over on the platform because I really want people to do them. So create about three Idea Pins a week for your Pinterest account and then I want you to get really serious about promoting your Pinterest in all the places. So I think that we create our Pins, we stick them over there, we add them to our blog and we think we’re done. We’re like boom, done. But I really want you to take it a step further, especially as we get into the fourth quarter and add them to your stories.

Remind people to go to your Pinterest, remind them to favorite your boards and engage over there with your audience. So when you’re doing a story. A couple. I would say maybe three. Four. Five times a week in your stories. Send people to your seasonal boards. Maybe do a story where it’s your face and you’re talking and you’re saying. Hey you guys. I put some of my best ideas over here on my Halloween board. Or my Christmas board. Or my Thanksgiving board and I’m going to link it in the next slide so you guys can have a sneak peek and literally put a picture of the board in the next slide with a link straight to it. I think this is going to help people really dive into your Pinterest and get you some of that long term traffic that you’re looking for for your blog post. Alright, that was ideas one, two, three and four.

So we are on idea number five, which is to get your media kit nice and beefy. I know that right now most of the brands already have their media in place, but I want to tell you a little secret. I got one of my biggest brand collaborations in fourth quarter last year. So basically they had a little money left over at the end of the day and they said, hey, we’re looking somewhere to place this budget. Do you think that you can create some content for us. And so I’m telling you they are still out there and it is still available for you depending on the brand. So I want you to get your media kit ready and going and add brand testimonials. This could be something as simple as you received product in exchange for some content that you created for them. It does not have to be a paid collab to add a brand testimonial so you could say something. Melanie was great to work with, she was super easy and made it fun or her content was amazing. We would totally use her again and send that to the brand and just say hey, does this sound okay? I’m adding testimonials to my Media kit and I want to see if I have your permission to use this quote and that way they don’t have to think of what it is to say and you have done it for them and nine times out of ten they’re going to say sure, that is great, that’s no problem. And so you want to add these to your media kit so that you have that third party endorsement going on. Make sure to update your impressions and your reach over there for each platform on your media kit as well, so that you can, no pun intended, make a good impression to the brand. And I know right now it’s ramping up so your impressions should be pretty good and pretty hot and this is a great time and probably a really good number to add over there.

The number six way to get your blog seasonally ready for the holidays is to promote your seasonal content. All those blog posts you work so hard on over to relevant Facebook groups. I have an amazing tool that I use for this that I will link in the show notes. It’s called MeetEdgar. My affiliate link is Southern Crushed@home.com, Meet Edgar and you can schedule these things out if you are the admin of your own group. If not, be on purpose. Once a week, make sure that you have the Facebook groups that you’re allowed to post in in a spreadsheet where all you have to do is hit the link, share your post, hit the link, share your post and I want you to go over there and share your best seasonal content in relevant Facebook groups. That way you can get additional traffic that you would not have gotten otherwise. Now if you are so inclined, you can create your own group. I’ve created several new groups as of recently for that specific purpose. So I have content on my blog that is in specific categories like Recipes and Crafts and Stencils and Buffalo Check and Christmas. I’ve made groups for all of these things, including my latest I think was Bow Making Obsessed. So I will link all of my free groups in the show notes so that you guys can check them out and see what I’m talking about. But I’ve put them there on purpose. And it is to add my own blog content for increased traffic. This is helping me get several thousand extra views every single day over to my blog. So keep that in your back pocket. Promote, promote, promote the seasonal posts in your relevant Facebook groups.

All right, last but not least, the 7th way to get your blog ready for this fourth quarter is to create a seasonal opt in. So this is going to be something that is sweet and juicy and just must have that your people are going to opt in to your email list to get access to. And I don’t want you to create anything new except for the form that they fill out to get access to it. So what I mean by that is find some posts on your blog that all have something in common that you could bundle and come up with something, some cute name. So I did this with seven bows. I took seven bow posts that I have over on my blog, plus a treetopper, and called it the Holiday Easy Bow Making Bundle. Right? And so they are going to get access to all of these different tutorials on how to make bows and think outside the box. This could be recipes, a cookbook, this could be any of your posts that kind of have a ringing theme to them all together and make sense. And then, so they’ll opt in. And this is going to give them access on a PDF form to each of those blog posts. And you may be asking yourself, well, why do they want access to something that’s already over on my blog? Well, let me just tell you something, sweetheart.

I don’t mean to be the one to break the ice, but people aren’t just waking up every day to go hunt your blog down for all the content that you have to offer. And they will opt in for organized content, putting it all in one place. And I would say to even go one step further and take those ads off of those posts, not everywhere, but just the in content body ads. I would go ahead and just make it a really clean, easy user experience for a short while for them. So on those posts, there will still be ads over in my sidebar and then the banners and the sticky ads, but not all those pop up ads and not all the in body ads so that they can actually read the content and feel like it was created special for them. And then I go to each of those for that one. It was seven bows. And I’m going to beef up those posts, not like necessarily make them longer, but definitely check them and make sure that they have something for sale. Maybe it’s a printable, a tutorial, or maybe it’s a link to something affiliate that they can purchase, but definitely fill and beef up those posts to make the most for their time on there with you. Now, this is a great idea that you can even monetize say you want to actually charge for this bundle. You certainly could. Maybe you want to say $7, maybe you want to pay 17, maybe 27, I don’t know. You know your readers better than you as to what they would be as far as their interest level for these ideas. But if you like, you can just use it as a way to get people to opt in to your email list. And sometimes that is more valuable than anything, especially if you’re just getting ramped up.

Now listen, you guys, this is the seven ideas. There are so many more ways to get your blog ready. I want to make sure that your landing page on the front is ready. All of your posts that are seasonal for that holiday are ready. So just do a quick search of your blog. Find all of your Halloween posts. I only have a few, but still I want to make sure those are in place and good to go because, I mean, here we are, we’re on the cusp of Halloween. Make sure all of your Thanksgiving post, your fall, your Christmas, all of those things are ready, because it’s coming, you guys.

So we had gift guides. We said, explain how to pin your pins, do three idea pins a week, send people to your seasonal boards in your stories, add brand testimonials, and pump up your impressions on your media kit. Do promote seasonal content to relevant Facebook groups or start your own Facebook groups. And then number seven was create the seasonal opt in or bundle for your readers to subscribe to and get yourself an email list going.

So I hope this is helpful for you guys. I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, stay creative.