How to Grow your Blog Platform: Supercharge your Stats

I still remember the first time I saw the numbers. It was an article entitled "How Big Should a Writer's Platform Be?" by agent and social media expert Amanda Luedeke. She wrote:

"The cold, hard truth is that solid author platforms come in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
If you have a website or blog, your monthly unique visitor count should be at least 30,000.
If you have a Twitter account, your followers should be pushing 5,000.
If you have a Facebook page, your followers should be pushing 5,000."

In his post, "7 ways agents measure social media", Thomas Umstattd ups the ante even further with the statement, "Agents and editors really want to see Facebook pages with 10,000+ fans." 

Wow. I remember looking up from my computer screen, equally intimidated and stirred with an odd kind of excitement. I had no social media following whatsoever at the time, but having those numbers in front of me felt strangely motivating.

Up until then, social media had been a mystery to me, something I had little interest in. But suddenly I felt a new clarity. Those numbers looked near impossible from my vantage point, but they were a goal. Something to shoot for. No more stumbling around blindly, frittering away time on social media and wondering in an abstract sort of way if an editor would give my paltry efforts the nod of approval.

Now I knew. I knew the actual stats that an editor or agent would find impressive in a proposal.

I also knew it must be possible, because those figures came from real people.

Today I'll be giving you a list of actionable tips you can use to supercharge your stats.


1. Incent people to follow you
One of the quickest ways I saw growth in my stats is by using Rafflecopter giveaways - you know the ones where you can get extra entries by following your host on Twitter, Facebook, etcetera? Well, they work. Supercharge your growth by partnering with other bloggers to run a giveaway. Not only are you able to offer a more enticing prize when you pool your resources, but the giveaway gets promoted across a series of other blogs, thus multiplying the total number of entrants and followers. Which leads me to my next point...

2. Partner up
Partnerships are the quickest way to grow. Partner with other bloggers to run link parties and blog hops. If you host a link party with a small group of other bloggers, whoever links up at the party is required to follow each of the hosts. It's a great way of cross-sharing your followers and gaining new ones. You could also agree to feature each other on your blogs, with links to follow on social media - it helps each of you to grow your numbers together.

3. Grow your Twitter following
The most organic way to grow your following is to consistently share great tweets that people retweet. This, however, can take a long time before you get anywhere. If you want to give yourself a starting boost, here's the method I used: follow a set number of people each week (I went for 100) and then use the app JustUnfollow to unfollow those who don't follow you back.

Why should you unfollow? Your ratio of how many people you follow to how many are following you says something to anyone checking out your profile. Like it or not, it gives them an impression of whether you're worth following. If you're following 600 people but only 180 follow you back, most people will assume there's a reason for that, and they'll pass you over too. Of course, there'll be some people you want to follow regardless of whether they return the favour, such as "big-name" authors, celebrities or anyone whose content you take a particular interest in. The app allows you to "whitelist" those people so they don't constantly show up on your non-followers list.

A great place to start is to find a blogger in your niche and then follow their followers. You can just work your way through their list. Although a percentage will never follow you back, many will, and if you're consistent you'll begin to see your numbers rise steadily over time.

3. Pinterest Power
Using Pinterest effectively is a whole blog series in itself. 90% of my blog traffic comes via Pinterest - its power as a traffic driver can't be overestimated. For today, I'll share my top tip: get yourself on some group boards, and start sharing your content on them. I have 3,000+ followers on Pinterest, which is respectable but nothing earth-shattering, but the combined following on all my group boards exceeds 500,000. That means even with my modest personal following, I can get my content in front of potentially half a million people each time I write a new post. Powerful, huh?

Try looking up the Pinterest profiles of some bloggers in your niche, and if they are on any group boards (distinguished by the little people icon in the top corner), click on the board and take a look at the header blurb. If they're accepting new contributors, they will usually have guidelines here on how you can apply to join - often it's as simple as leaving a comment on a pin or sending the board owner an email.

I hope these tips give you some practical ideas for increasing your follower numbers. I feel like I'm just skimming the surface of many of these, so any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

This wraps up my series on How to Grow your Blog Platform. 

If you missed any of it, you can find the rest of the posts here:

How to Grow your Blog Platform
Essentials for your Success
Guerilla Facebook Marketing

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia, where she mothers by day and transforms into a fearless blogger by night. Her popular creative home-making blog, A house full of sunshine, reaches over 150,000 readers a month. She's a Genesis finalist for women's fiction and is represented by Rachel Kent of Books & Such. Find her on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Pinterest.

How to Grow your Blog Platform: Essentials for your success

Note: This is Part Three in my series on growing your blog platform. You can catch up here on Part One: How to Grow Your blog platform and Part Two: Guerilla Facebook marketing tips.

You're setting up for a big concert, and your task is to erect the platform. You're impatient to get this show happening, so you get straight to work, stacking up bricks and building debris in random piles to create the supports. Some of your piles are lopsided, so you shore them up with a few old planks of wood you found lying around. A bit of gaff tape wound around the teetering supports, and your work is done. The skirt will cover all the ugly bits anyway, so who cares - right?

It seems ludicrous, doesn't it? And yet... when it comes to your blogging presence, have you ever been an impatient platform-builder? It's human nature to want the big pay-off for very little effort. We're too impatient to build a proper foundation, and then wonder why others seem to have more success than us.

Today, we're getting back to the basics of platform building. These are the essential tools you'll need to set your blog up for success and begin building a following.

Set your blog up for success

1. Create an opt-in incentive.
From day one, you should have a free product on offer when someone subscribes to your blog. Without an "email magnet" such as this, your blog is like a leaky boat - the traffic comes, and the traffic goes. Your product should be tailored to meet the felt need of your target demographic. It could be a resource list, a cheat sheet, a free printable, an e-book, a special report, or any number of other products. After a year of blogging, I'd amassed just 150 email subscribers. I offered a book to my followers and gained 1000 new subscribers in the space of three days. Incentives work!

2. Create a landing page.
This is the page on your blog that showcases your opt-in incentive. You can see mine here. You'll see why you need one soon.

3. Own your list.
Don't rely on Feedburner - your email list is your most valuable asset as a blogger, and you need to own it in case you ever need to migrate. Rumours have been floating around for a couple of years now that Google is going to shut down Feedburner altogether. I don't know about you, but I don't want my number one asset at the mercy of the capricious Google gods. I recommend Mailchimp, which is free until you reach 2000 subscribers. With this program you can set up an RSS feed to email campaign, so your blog posts will be delivered automatically to your followers. Once you have a solid list, your need to "hustle" in order to promote your blog will markedly decrease!

So you have the ground work in place... now how do you get the subscribers?

Get your name out there

1. Comment on blogs.
Find blogs that speak to your demographic and become a part of the community. When you comment regularly and contribute something valuable to the conversation, bloggers get to know who you are, and so do other readers. Quick tips:

• If the comment form includes a place to add your blog link, link back to your opt-in incentive landing page, rather than your home page.
• Create a system for commenting. You could bookmark a list of all the blogs you wish to hit in priority order, or try using a blog reader such as Bloglovin' or Feedly. Consistency is key.
• Comment on both big and small blogs. It could take a long time for a "big" blogger who gets lots of comments to notice your presence, but the traffic payoff could potentially be bigger. It's also worthwhile to connect with smaller bloggers and those at around your level. They'll appreciate the comments, and networking can lead to genuine friendships as well as opportunities to help each other grow.

2. Post in subject-specific forums.
I started out frequenting the online forum of a popular blog, and to this day have followers who "found" me there and still loyally read my blog. Once again, the golden rule is to contribute something worthwhile, and don't be a "me monster." Take the time to interact with and promote others, too.

3. Guest post.
It's the number one way to increase your exposure online. You're essentially leveraging your online presence by tapping into someone else's hard-earned audience. Find blogs that target your ideal demographic, and become an active commenter first. Once you've established yourself as a community member of substance, write a killer query offering to guest post on a topic of value, and follow through with a post that delivers the goods. Lastly, in the bio of your published piece, you guessed it - link back to your landing page.

4. Become a contributor.
The longer you network in blogging communities, the more opportunities will come across your path. Bloggers will sometimes put out an open call for new contributors (that's how I landed my first contributor spot for my DIY blog), or you could try pitching yourself as a possible contributor to a blog you've regularly interacted with or guest-posted for in the past.

5. Join up with linky parties.
I have a bookmarked folder of link parties for every day of the week. If I publish a post on a Monday, I jump into Monday's folder and link up at all the parties that go live that day. Link parties are a big thing for DIY and home bloggers such as myself, and can lead to special features and lots of click-back traffic. Whatever field you write in, there are likely linky parties relevant to you. If you can't find any, why not join forces with a group of like-minded bloggers and start your own? InLinkz is a great tool for this.


The task of building your blog platform can sometimes feel like filling a swimming pool with a drinking cup. For the longest time, it's going to seem like you're not getting anywhere at all. Just keep at it. Those drops of water all add up, as long as you stick to your strategy and don't give up.

Let's chat: Which of these ideas do you already use? How do you think you could you do them better? Are any of these strategies new to you?

Find the rest of the series here:

How to Grow your Blog Platform
Guerilla Facebook Marketing
Supercharge your Stats

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia, where she mothers by day and transforms into a fearless blogger by night. Her popular creative home-making blog, A house full of sunshine, reaches over 150,000 readers a month. She's a Genesis finalist for women's fiction and is represented by Rachel Kent of Books & Such. Find her on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Pinterest.

How to Grow your Blog Platform: Guerrilla Facebook marketing

I kicked off this series by sharing the story of how I started my personal blog from scratch one year ago and have since grown it to 150,000 page views a month. In my previous post, I shared some key fundamentals that you will need to put in place FIRST, before you do anything else:

• Identify your readership
• Invest time to study blogging
• Create shareable content

Those things are huge and can't be overstated. Why? Because:

• Until you know who you are writing for, your efforts will lack focus and clarity. 
• Until you're willing to invest time into studying a new area, you can't expect the same results as people who've put in the hard yards. It takes four years of study to get a university degree, and years of practice to master an instrument, but most people seem to think they can succeed at blogging without any applied learning whatsoever. The truth is, you can't expect a return in any area of life without an investment. And believe me - there is a LOT to learn. 
• Until you are consistently creating WOW content with a clear takeaway for the reader, your marketing efforts will fall flat. I've heard it said that good marketing only makes a bad product fail faster. Quality content is the cornerstone of everything else you do.

Need to get caught up on those points? You can read the first post here.

For the rest of this blogging series, I'll be focussing on the fourth point: 

Become your own best marketer.

You'll need to start by setting up social media accounts and linking them to your blog. If you're not promoting your blog for free on social media, you need to be. You should have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest account, and a Google+ account. There are others, but these are the ones I consider essential to your success.

Each of these areas is a whole study in itself, so I'm going to break it down for you step by step.

Keep this in mind: in the early days, you're going to have to hustle. You'll spend a lot of time working strategically to grow your following and promote your posts to that following. This is what I think of as Phase One of blogging: the guerrilla tactics that anyone can use, if you have the patience and determination to apply them. It's a hard slog, and there are no quick pay-offs here. You have to do your time to see the results. 

Let's start by talking about Facebook.

So you have a brand new page to promote your blog. How do you get people to "like" it so they see what you post?

1. Put out the welcome mat.

Create an inviting cover banner that echoes the theme of your blog, and a bio that clearly states what the page is about. Get a couple of quality posts up there so people know what to expect from your page.

2. Invite your friends. Sounds obvious, but some people skip this step because they're too shy to ask. People get a LOT of requests to "like" a new page now, so also consider sending a personal message to all your friends explaining what you're doing and asking for their support.

3. Have a Facebook posting schedule, and stick to it. You need to consistently share quality content to grow your following - the sort of content that people "like", comment on, and share.

4. Join groups. 
To find groups in your interest area, type a descriptor into the search bar at the top of your personal Facebook profile. In the example below, I typed "Writers". A list will pop up. Click down the bottom where it says "See more results for 'Writers'".

When the next page pops up, select "Groups". From here, you can scroll through to find any groups marked as "Public", and if they seem relevant, you can join them. Ensure you read the guidelines carefully and adhere to them. If it's okay to share your blog posts, make sure you also take the time to "Like" and comment on others' posts as well. 

Some groups are also okay with you pasting your page URL into a status update, which will cause a "Like box" to pop up in the stream. If the group is relevant to what you're posting about, this is a great way to get some more likes for your page. 

5. Link prominently to your Facebook page from your blog. Display your social media icons at the top of your sidebar and at the bottom of every post. Install a Facebook "like" box widget in your sidebar so a casual visitor can easily like your page without leaving your site. Consider installing a Facebook like box pop-up to maximise conversions.

Increase your reach

Facebook has a complex algorithm that it uses to filter the content in your news feed. With all the friends you have and all the hundreds of pages you've liked, statistics indicate there are about 1500 status updates vying for a place in your news feed at any one time. No one has time to read that far, so in the interests of supplying the content users are most interested in, Facebook gives greater reach to pages that you have previously liked or commented on, and restricts the reach of those you don't interact with - because they are considered less relevant to you.

What does this mean for you? You could get frustrated that Facebook is cramping your reach so significantly. (Believe me, I have been there!) Or, you can work smarter to conquer that algorithm.

Some steps:

1.  Encourage interaction. 
Likes and comments on your post will significantly increase your reach. Ask questions and make sure you respond to anyone who comments. Let your friends know how helpful it is when they comment on your post - many times, they just don't know. Often the most basic rule of marketing is to simply ask for the result you want.

2. Tag your friends in your post. This massively increases your post's visibility, as it will then show up in your friends' feed as well. Of course, don't be obnoxious about it - only tag people if they've previously indicated an interest in a particular subject, or it's something you're genuinely excited to share with certain friends, or if you've asked their permission in advance. Many of the biggest Facebook pages such as Ann Voskamp (author of "One thousand gifts"; 215,000+ page likes) have a circle of friends who she tags by turn in almost all her posts. She most likely asked those friends if they'd be willing to help her out in this manner.

It's not as simple tagging people from a Facebook page as it is on your personal profile, so if you're not sure how to do it, here's the steps:

Go to Settings -> Post attribution. Here, select "Post as yourself" instead of your page name. You're now in your personal profile mode and so have access to your friends' list. Go to the post -> Click on the image you shared to enlarge it -> Select "Tag Photo" -> Click on the image and type a friend's name to tag them.

3. Pay for Facebook ads

I won't go into this in detail, because it's not something I've personally used yet. My preference so far has been to grow my page organically, but I do plan to experiment with paid ads at some point. The biggest benefit of ads is that you can hone your target audience very accurately, in order to reach your ideal demographic. For instance, you can choose to target your ads toward people who've already liked a page similar to yours.

If you want in-depth training on this method, I'd recommend Amy Porterfield. I've done a couple of her webinars and found them detailed and helpful.

4. Network in blogging communities
As you get to know other bloggers and really work to develop relationships with them, chances are more opportunities to network will present themselves. You'll find all sorts of helpful blogging groups on Facebook - re-pinning groups, post sharing groups, round-up groups and more, all designed for bloggers to help each other grow. Many are private and you will only be able to find out about them if someone invites you. The more you put yourself out there and focus on developing relationships, the more opportunities will come your way.

If an opportunity doesn't present itself, why not start your own Facebook group? Gather a bunch of like-minded bloggers and start a daily thread where you all share a recent post. Then you can each comment on each others' posts and share them on social media.

That's it for today for your Guerrilla Facebook marketing tactics. 

I hope you've learned something new and helpful. Stay tuned - I have heaps more actionable tips to come in the weeks ahead.

Find the rest of the series here:
How to Grow your Blog Platform
Essentials for your Success
Supercharge your Stats

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia, where she mothers by day and transforms into a fearless blogger by night. Her popular creative home-making blog, A house full of sunshine, reaches over 150,000 readers a month. She's a Genesis finalist for women's fiction and is represented by Rachel Kent of Books & Such. Find her on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Pinterest.

How to Grow your Blog Platform

One year ago, I had no platform whatsoever. No blog, no social media following, nothing.

Tonight, I sat down to check the stats on my personal blog, A house full of sunshine, which is just shy of its one-year anniversary. The page-views are hitting 150,000 a month. I have 1500 subscribers, and 7000 followers on social media.

I'm not yet a published author (apart from a sparse handful of short stories.) I have no previous marketing experience.  I'm not a speaker or a columnist or a public personality.

I'm a stay-home Mum. I'm no more brilliant or talented than anyone else out there with an internet connection and a heartbeat.

So how the heck did this happen?

The answer is that very few things in life just happen. This is no exception.

I truly believe that success is something that can be taught, and it can be learned. I may not be the best out there in my field, but I do love to learn from people who are far better than I will ever be. And believe me, there are a lot of them. So please understand, when I share my success - it's not to brag. The grace of God has played a major role in getting me this far. And I'm no blogging or marketing genius, trust me... I'm just a good learner. 

The thing is, I'm pretty sure you are, too.

The writer's platform
"If you want to be a writer, you need a platform."

You've heard the line a thousand times.

We all know how important it is. We're told repeatedly how much harder it's becoming to land a book deal without a platform. Even if we do snag that contract, a lacklustre sales record could well ensure we don't get the same chance again. The author is in charge of her/ his own marketing like never before. The conventional advice? Get active on social media, and start a blog.

Up until a year ago, I resisted blogging. I'd seen too many authors jump onto the blog bandwagon, and pour hours into writing posts that would only be read by their mother and a handful of loyal friends. With three small kids at home, I didn't have time to blog. More specifically... I didn't have time to write a blog that would not be read. Time is our most valuable commodity, and if I was investing it, there had to be a ROI.

Also, I didn't have a clue what to blog about. I'm a novelist, for goodness' sake. I'm also a stay-home Mum, and the deepest thought in my head most days is how I'll manage to cook dinner, help with homework and distract a toddler from a tantrum simultaneously. What on earth could I talk about on a regular basis that strangers would actually want to read?

Fast-forward one year, and I have a thriving blog which continues to grow daily. The investment has been a massive amount of time, energy and late nights... but I'm seeing a return on that investment.

So, how did I get from Blog Zero to that sort of result in under a year?

Find the recipe on A house full of sunshine

1. Identify your readership, and write for them
How many writers do you know who blog about... writing? Writing blogs are wonderful (hello, Writer's Alley - how we love you!) but they reach a very defined niche: other writers.

What are you doing to reach your readers?

The turning point for me was when I took the time to identify my readership. I write inspirational women's fiction, so my readership is women... in particular, Christian women.

The question for me became, what do these women want? And what do I have to offer them?

See, your sweet spot as a blogger is the place where your interests and passions intersect with the felt needs of your reader. (Click to tweet this)

I'm an interior decorator, and before I had kids, I taught Creative Arts for elementary and high-school. You could say that creativity is my passion. I decided to blog about those interest areas. Decorating/ DIY/ kids is a thriving blogging sector. And it's an audience right in line with my target demographic.

Is that to say you need to start a DIY blog to see any sort of success? Absolutely not. If you blog about something you have no passion for, your lack of enthusiasm will show, and others won't get excited about it either. Besides, passion is the fuel that will keep you going through those lonely first months where you're seeing no progress and you feel like you're talking to yourself. (And believe me, I have been there.)

The good news is, whatever your passion, there is an audience out there who wants to read what you have to say. You just need to learn how to reach them.

See the tutorial on A house full of sunshine

2. Learn, learn, learn
Once I decided to start a blog, I committed myself to its success. I didn't want to waste my time on anything less. I became a sponge, absorbing as much information as I could from a range of sources. I read e-books on blogging, attended webinars, listened to podcasts, and subscribed to marketing blogs.

Here are some sources I've found helpful:

Platform by Michael Hyatt
How to Blog for Profit without Selling your Soul by Ruth Soukamp
Building a Framework by Abby Lawson


3. Create shareable content
The most widespread mistake I see people make with blogging is to treat it as an online journal of random thoughts and ramblings. If you're writing for yourself and your family, wonderful. But if you want to see growth, you have to broaden your perspective.

Ask yourself - why should someone share this post? What is the takeaway for the reader?

Until you learn how to create viral content - content that demands to be shared - you'll never break into the next level of blogging. And to do that, you have to meet a felt need of your reader, whether it be for entertainment, instruction, a new idea, inspiration, or something else altogether.

4. Become your own best marketer
Sid Kemp of Firepole Marketing suggests that at least 60% of your time in any creative industry should be spent marketing. I have certainly found this to be true of my blogging experience.

I know the whole idea of marketing rubs some people up the wrong way. It feels uncomfortable, even

See the project on A house full of sunshine

wrong. We're taught from childhood to be modest and not toot our own horn, so it's counterintuitive to us to self-promote.

I can honestly say now that I love marketing. I've developed a passion for it. And yet, it wasn't always that way. An example? I went for my first job at age 15. The store owner asked if I was good at maths. I was top of my class at the time, actually, but I'd been raised to never boast about my accomplishments, and I was sure it would sound like bragging if I mentioned it. So I ducked my head shyly and mumbled, "Ah, well. Not really..."

Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but I did learn a valuable lesson. The store owner needed to know that information, and I didn't give it to her. That was false modesty.

In the same way, there is an audience out there who wants and needs to connect with your words, and often, you are the biggest obstacle to that connection - because you are hiding behind a false idea of what modesty really is.

Hear this: your job is not to promote yourself. It's to find your audience. (Click to Tweet this)

Your job is to connect with the people who want to hear what you have to say. They're out there - you just need to put in the effort to find them. And unless you have a marketing department behind you, let's be absolutely clear - this job falls to you.

The thing that truly excites me? It's easier to make those connections than ever before in history. We live in a world where anyone with an internet connection and a bit of gumption can create a truly influential blog platform from absolutely nothing.

I'm living proof of that.

Want to learn more? I'm kicking off a series for the next few weeks on How to Grow your Blogging Platform. Follow along every second Wednesday for some concrete tips and strategies I've used to grow my blog from zero to 150K page-views a month.

Let's chat: Do you blog? Why or why not? How do you feel about marketing?

Find the rest of the series here:

Essentials for your Success
Guerilla Facebook Marketing
Supercharge your Stats

Karen Schravemade lives in Australia, where she mothers by day and transforms into a fearless blogger by night. Her popular creative home-making blog, A house full of sunshine, reaches over 150,000 readers a month. She's a Genesis finalist for women's fiction and is represented by Rachel Kent of Books & Such. Find her on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Pinterest.