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If you’re new to blogging, like I am, you may be struggling with growing your followers across social media platforms. When I started blogging I knew Pinterest engagement was critical. So many bloggers are focused on Pinterest and have made Pinterest their full-time job that I knew figuring out Pinterest was a key to blog success. Since I have loved Pinterest forever, I was excited about the possibility of Pinning full time- how great would that be?! It would be like getting paid to watch HGTV! What I didn’t consider was that Pinterest wouldn’t be the only platform I would need to embrace, or that Facebook could be about so much more than sharing your latest accomplishment and family vacation. I clued in pretty quickly that Facebook has a lot to offer bloggers, and it goes way beyond having a Facebook page for your blog.
Facebook Groups link you to hundreds and thousands of bloggers who, like you and me, are working diligently to get the quality content they have created to as many people as possible. These groups are a tremendous resource that have helped grow my following on Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram. While my Pinterest followers have been steadily growing since Day 1, my Facebook and Instagram have been seriously lacking. In the past few days I have joined a couple more groups and my followers have increased nicely- I’ve quadrupled my Facebook followers and my Instagram is 10 times what it was at the beginning of the week. Are these numbers now huge? No, not at all. But no one’s were right off the bat, it’s a process and by participating in a few more Facebook Groups this week my reach is growing and growing each day.
So I thought, “if participating in 4-5 groups has this result, what would participating in 10, 15, 20 more groups do?” If the thought of participating in 20+ groups sounds nuts, you’re right, it does sound nuts. But think about it- if you’re like me you’ve spent hours and hours, (often 16-18 hours in a single day!!) creating content. You have all of this amazing content that you’ve created and you’re only reaching a small percentage of people who would be interested in it.
So this week I made a decision: I cut back from three blog posts a week to two. (I have over 100 posts on my blog that launched April 1st, 2018, so I have plenty of content to cut back to twice a week.) This has freed up a little time each week, but if each post takes 2-3 hours to compile x 4-5 fewer posts each month I am saving 8-15 hours a month, without sacrificing anything because the reward is going to outweigh the benefit of an additional post each week. I can now spend those hours promoting my blog and really focusing on getting the 2 posts I publish each week in front of a larger audience.
I stumbled into the groups I belong to by watching a couple webinars and signing up for email lists from a few high profile bloggers, so I had not yet looked at Facebook itself to see what was out there. Well, yesterday I did and let me tell you, there are A LOT of Facebook groups! I truly believe that we bloggers are in this together and bloggers helping bloggers is the way for everyone to reach their goals. Some groups have promos, such as “share the link to your latest Pin and then Pin 5 others’ links” or “share your Instagram account and follow 5 others,” while others are strictly blogging support groups that offer tips and answer questions.
Of course, joining the groups that encourage promotion will increase your reach, but so do the blog support groups because you get to know people and start forming meaningful relationships with like-minded people who are working towards the same things you are working towards. If your blog is niche-specific you will probably be able to find a group dedicated to your exact niche, such as “Cats with Blogs,” for people with cats who blog. Yes, that group exists, which is why you should be able to find anyyyyyy niche you are in because it’s out there! Also, I have two dogs and they do absolutely nothing productive. Perhaps I should get a cat!
Since I spent hours compiling this list, and I am all about bloggers helping bloggers, I wanted to share it with you! These are in no particular order and are a variety of groups: some promotional, some support, some are a combination of promo + support, some are niche, some are for Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
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