Unfortunately, you can’t simply write a blog and expect readers to find it. However, there are many things you can do to help attract an audience and get those pageviews!
Here are seven that I’ve found to work well:
1. Share on Facebook
Each social media platform has its own unique quirks. For Facebook, hopefully you’ve created a page (as opposed to your personal profile) for your blog where you can share your work. This is imperative because otherwise you can’t tag other pages (like destinations or brands) or have them tag you in their shares. And you definitely want to tag destinations and brands who are included in your piece! You never know when they might share your work with their own audience or reach out to work together.
Share on Facebook early and often, with a different caption each time. You can share immediately after publishing and one to two more times over the next week on your page. You could also share once on your personal profile. If your story is evergreen, use a scheduler (use the scheduling ability within Facebook or apps like Hootsuite or Buffer) to share your post again at regular intervals in the future such as once every month or two.
2. Share on Instagram
Instagram is different from Facebook because you can’t share a clickable link anywhere except your bio. People often use apps like Later or Linktree to turn that link into a clickable version of their Instagram. However, don’t count on getting major traffic from Instagram to your blog, especially before you hit 10,000 followers and get the “swipe up” feature in Instagram Stories.
Instagram is important as a blogger because it’s often where you get the most engagement with your audience; the platform allows you to develop a relationship with them as well as brands and destinations. Share a photo from your new blog post and ask your audience a question related to the topic of the blog. You’ll get more out of engaging them on Instagram than trying to send them to a link, although you may get a few views from directing them to the link in your bio.
3. Share on Twitter
If you’re on Twitter (which I don’t think is absolutely necessary as a travel blogger), I would schedule at least three to five tweets teasing your blog post and linking over to it. If you want to ensure folks see it, you’ll need to tweet multiple times. Make sure you’re switching up your message each time you share the link.
4. Share on Pinterest
Pinterest might seem like just another social medial platform for sharing, but it really works more like a search engine (i.e., Google). That means it’s asimportant, if not moreimportant, than posting on social media.
You can make pretty pins through an easy drag-and-drop app like Canva, or you can just pin each photo from your post.
5. Link in previous posts
Have you written about something related to your current topic previously? For example, maybe you blogged about the best restaurants in Vail and then you blogged later about the best hikes in Eagle County. There’s a good chance if people are interested in one, they’ll be interested in the other.
You’ll want to link to each blog in the other blog to help people find all your valuable information and also to keep them on your site longer. Google’s algorithm likes when people spend more time on your site, so it also benefits your search results rank.
6. Share with brands and destinations
If you mention a brand or destination in your blog, you should share it with them (assuming it’s a positive mention). Even if you didn’t work with them directly on the trip, this is a great way to start building a relationship so you can work together in the future.
7. Participate in sharing threads in Facebook groups
One of the best ways to get traffic to your blog is by participating in share threads in Facebook groups. There are Facebook groups for virtually every kind of travel (solo, female, adventure, cruising, etc.), and most of them have threads you can participate in to share your new blog posts. This is a great way to meet new friends interested in travel and get some traffic for your new blog posts.
In the beginning, it can feel like you’re blogging into a void and no one is reading your work, but if you follow these steps, you’ll start to see your traffic grow. Just be patient and consistent with both your blogging and the steps above.