Today marks the end of Week 1 of 52 Weeks to a Better Business. Sarah and I are so excited to see many talented people already signed up to be a part of this crazy, fun, challenging journey!
The first challenge was as follows:
We all know that creating stellar content isn't enough. You have to get the word out about your blog or business! Managing your shop or writing for your blog can easily eat up all of your time. So this week, we challenge you to find just one new audience where you can share your best work!
A few ways to gain a new audience:
- Find a great craft show, and apply to sell there! (Sarah shared some great tips on finding the perfect fit for you.)
- Find a large blog that's the perfect fit for your content. Eventually, the goal is to submit a guest post there, but we'll tackle the process of writing and submitting a guest post in a later week. For now, you goal is to find that blog, and start building a relationship with the blogger.
- Find a group of similar business owners or bloggers and collaborate together. Perhaps you can start hosting a link party or create a new Etsy team with a very specific purpose.
How do you build those relationships?
Here are a few suggestions:
- Leave a thoughtful comment on every post.
- Share, Pin, and Retweet their content to your followers.
- Send them an encouraging email to tell them how much you appreciated a piece of content they wrote – and how it applied to you specifically.
- Notice a typo or broken link on their site? Help them out by kindly pointing it out in a super friendly way 🙂
Feeling lost on how to find the right blogs to start relationship-building? A few tips:
- Check your own Pinterest account for ideas! Chances are, your style is very well represented there. Some of the content you've already pinned may come from blogs that are a perfect match for you!
- Alltop.com is a great tool for finding top blogs in a certain niche. Start general (for example, our friend Dorit sells handmade camera straps, so she would just type in photography) then from there, you can narrow your field to fashion or pets. Each result is a top blog, and it will list several of their recent posts. It's so easy to get a quick feel for which blog might fit your vibe.
- Google is a GREAT way to find the most popular blogs! You can search for boho photography blogs and pull up some really great results. Find just one that is still active, has a large presence, and fits the bill.
To wrap things up, your challenge this week:
Find just 1 new audience that you can leverage for your blog or products. That's it. Just 1. (This should take you an hour or less to do!)
Then, either apply to that craft show, or start building that relationship online.
That's it! Easy-peasy. You're one step closer to GROWING!
Update on our Progress for this Week's Challenge
(You didn't think we were going to leave you all alone on this, did you?! Nope, we're doing the challenges too!)
There is a really popular, influential blogger that we've been trying to reach out to. We've asked her to come on the show, but unfortunately, we haven't received a response yet. No worries! Sarah and I have been reading all of her posts and leaving thoughtful comments. We've been sharing her stuff on our Facebook page when relevant too. We also know that she'll be releasing a new book in the future, so when that release date gets closer, we'll send her another invite for her to come promote the book on our show. (That's another helpful hint. Influential people in your niche are way more likely to say yes to something if there's a big benefit for them too!)
Not only that, but we've had the opportunity this week to connect with the members of our Etsy team in a new way. For those of you who don't know, Etsy has recently changed its front page and taken a featured treasury out of the mix. Treasury-making teams have been a staple of Etsy for years and were always a great way to get more traffic and customers for your shop. With this curveball, Sarah and I suggested a new strategy to our Etsy team that involves banding together to take Pinterest by storm! We haven't been at it long enough to know if the strategy will work, but if it does, you can bet we'll be telling you all about it! Again, teaming up with others to help promote each others' work in some way in such a GREAT way to reach a new audience. I know that our Pinterest strategy would be really hard to execute if we weren't including all of the fabulous members on our team.
One more way we're connecting to a new audience… ALL OF YOU!!! We've been amazed at all of the new people who are signing up to be part of this movement. We also asked and listened when you told us you wanted a private facebook group to hold each other accountable, ask questions, give support, and so much more!
DONE!
What about you? How did you reach out to a new audience this week? Let us know in the comments! We'd be thrilled to hear from you!
~ Beth Anne and Sarah