8 Ways To Grow Your Blog Without Spending Any Money

In honor of 8 years (!!!) of Keep Calm and Chiffon, I can’t help but think back to the early days of my blog. I was so excited to create my own digital world and welcome people into it, that is assuming they could find me in a sea of hard-hitters like BryanBoy, Rumi Neely, and Jane Aldridge. I started my blog the same year I created an Instagram account and thinking back on that time it was so much about capturing things in the moment. Blog posts were shot, written and edited in the same day, which made for more frequent posts, less thinking, and more “let’s just go for it.”

I am forever grateful for that time but I know that now for a lot of people who want to start blogs it’s because they see it a business—and I completely get that. But how can you start a business with no money? Get crafty AF. Here are eight ways to grow your blog without spending a dime that will help educate you and get you in the best position to have people visiting your site in no time.

Learn about SEO

I know you’re probably like “why is she starting with the most boring thing??” And yes, SEO (search engine optimization) can be tedious but it is so important and I’m here to tell you I waited way too long to focus on it. I’m currently enrolled in Stupid Simple SEO and it is a deep dive into all of the things that I should have done to my site ages ago. I definitely have a good understanding of SEO and even created a free tip sheet of my best SEO tips that I saw seriously improve my blog that you can download here but I’m getting into the more technical nitty-gritty of SEO for blogs now and I’m learning a lot. Take my advice: get it right from the beginning. Start out as a niche website and show Google that you’re an expert in one particular topic to start growing even with no domain authority.

Dive in to Pinterest

Okay and if you are really not into SEO I will tell you to focus on Pinterest. Pinterest is the number one social channel that drives traffic to my blog, above Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and anything else. I love Pinterest because it is a visual search engine that has allowed me to discover tons of cool blogs that I otherwise may not have found. If you want to learn how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your website, check out this YouTube video I created.

Take free online courses

Listen, there are a lot of people who create paid courses and products out there that will promise awesome results, and some of them really deliver (I can do a whole separate blog post about this) but there are so many great FREE resources out there about starting a blog. I found this blog post that rounds up six free trainings for beginners that you should definitely check out before you feel the need to buy a paid program.

Listen to podcasts abut blogging

Podcasts are a gold mine of great information and if all you have to do is sit through a Stitch Fix ad here and there, it’s definitely worth it. I rounded up a few of my favorite podcasts in this blog post and another one I would recommend is Amy Porterfield’s Online Marketing Made Easy.

Outfit details:

Dress: Cushnie for Target, Necklace: Aureum Collective, Shoes: Naked Feet Shoes

Get link backs to your site

I know this is sort of related to SEO but I wanted to stress the importance of back links! This is where you get a link back to your website from another website. If I reference something in a blog post as I did above I’ll often give you a link to it so you can easily navigate to that site from my blog post. Sometimes I share links to other blogs, interesting articles I’m reading, etc. Getting your blog linked on other websites can help increase your domain authority and have Google rank you higher on search. Sign up for sites like HARO to get quoted in national publications or learn more about how to pitch yourself to digital publications to get more blog traffic.

Automate sharing content to socials

I talk a little bit about my workflow with Later in this blog post, but I think there is so much power in automating parts of your business. Once you write your blog posts schedule them to post to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and then create an Instagram post where you mention the blog post in the caption and encourage people to check it out. If you have the swipe up feature you can link to it in your stories as well.

Join blogging Facebook groups and look for opportunities

Another great way to get exposure and back links is to look for opportunities for guest posts. Sometimes bloggers get overwhelmed and ask people to contribute guest posts to their site and opportunities like that are often shared in blogging Facebook groups. A few I like: Blogging, Unscripted, Boss Girl Bloggers, That Pitch Life, rewardStyle Bloggers.

Optimize your link in bio on Instagram

If you don’t have your swipe up feature on Instagram yet, make sure that your link in bio is optimized so if you mention a new blog post people can find it from your link in bio. I personally made a page on my website that is just a list of links for my link in bio so people can use it as a directory to quickly find what they’re looking for when they stumble onto my page and I include a call to action of “free resources” for them to click on and check out.

I hope you found these tips helpful and if you have any other questions about starting a blog you can email me at hello@austentosone.com or DM me on Instagram! Here’s to another great year of Keep Calm and Chiffon and thank you so much for reading!

yours,

Austen