I was lucky enough to interview the ever-popular Annie who blogs over at Mammasaurus and manages LoveAllBlogs.com. She’s given us a sneak peak insider to the secrets of her blogging success, as well as telling us who’s hot!
Can you tell us something about your blogging journey. Where you blog etc;
I blog at Mammasaurus.co.uk and LoveAllBlogs.com mainly. I’ve been blogging for 3 years and seen a massive change in the whole blogging world over the last 18 months especially!
What were your original plans for your blog(s) and why did you start blogging?
I started blogging after seeing a family friend in Australia start – I thought it looked like it might be a bit of fun!
Approximately how many visitors and followers do you get to your blog?
I don’t know is the honest answer – I made a decision a couple of years ago not to check my stats and be a slave to them. I makes things a lot easier 🙂
What are your favorite social media tools to increase user engagement?
Twitter and Instagram I love, Pinterest I use a lot but I’m not loving Facebook much anymore – they’ve killed it with their Promoted Posts feature.
Google + is my essential – I’m finding posts shared on G+ coming up more and more on first pages of Google searches, even before the original articles on blogs – G+ is the one I’d recommend everyone uses to share posts – even if they aren’t interacting with people!
How do you make money on your blog? Are you using affiliate marketing tools?
I make a bit of money through judging competitions, hosting giveaways and the odd nofollow linked sponsored post. I don’t do the whole Pay Per Click or affiliated shizzle, it’s really not my bag. For some people their blog needs to bring them an income, it’s all personal to every blogger – I’m in a lucky position where I don’t need to make any money from my blog, so I can pick and choose and space promotional content out.
What is the most important thing that beginner bloggers should understand about SEO and PR?
I didn’t bother with SEO for 2 years and even now it’s not something I really factor in. I tag my images, I try and give descriptive but engaging titles and that’s enough for me. I could super-SEO up my blog but for me that would suck the enjoyment out of the blogging process. I think most important thing from me would be ‘don’t work for nothing’. I see so many people getting approaches where their payment will be ‘some great content for your blog’. Ultimately the PR is getting pad, the company they are working for are getting paid – value yourself!
What tips would you give new bloggers to help them start out on a path to success?
Read other blogs before you start out, get a feel for whats ‘out there’ and you might discover a niche that not many others are covering. Look into your blog name wisely – things to check are: is the name available on social media channels too – maybe Twitter for example, as it’s really handy to have your ‘brand’ covered everywhere.
Google the name you have in mind – I’ve seen it happen over the past couple of years – a new blog starts up with a name incredibly close to that of an existing blog, innocently, and then the established blogger get’s upset. Etiquette apart, there’s not much point in picking a name really similar to another established blog as it might make googling and searching for your own blog hard work – the established blog will likely be the result that typing on your name will find!
What is the one thing you wish you knew when you started to saved time and energy?
That you don’t need to be active on every social media channel – better to do one well than 6 poorly!
If you would start all over again, what things would you have done differently?
Chosen a better name – I really hate the name Mammasaurus!!!
What tips can you give bloggers to drive traffic to a new blog?
I would say it depends on what they blog about. If you are blogging about something that people will find practical and useful and you do it in an attractive manner then people will eventually find you. Share on Pinterest and G+ especially. Better to do one or 2 social media accounts well than try and run round mastering them all. To get started, find blogs of a similar genre to yours and get commenting and reading – it’s a community and being active in the community will boost you a lot.
If you are blogging about your family then the community aspect is key. You love you family – but there are thousands of parenting blogs out there and unless you have something really unique and well pitched you need to immerse yourself in the blogging community as they’ll be your biggest chunk of readers on the whole.
Join bloggin communities – I’d advise joining as many as you can, trying them all out and finding the one that you like to spend time on the most and then become active in that community – a great place to find bloggers of all genres !
What are your three favourite blogs to read? What makes those blogs special?
– Capture by Lucy for amazing photography and inspiration.– Dorky mum to relax me, beautiful writing that’s never preachy or ranting.
– Actually Mummy as she was the first blogger I ever spoke to and we are now firm friends for life!