Every single day more people are starting blogs, so it’s natural that a lot of people are struggling to really create some traction when growing their blog. In fact, that’s why so many people are talking about the right and wrong things to do for your blog, how to triple your traffic in a short amount of time as possible, and even how to start making money from your blog regardless of how long you’ve been writing.
However, you could be posting the best blog posts every single week with some awesome high-value content, you could be sharing it all the time on social media, building relationships with other bloggers, and taking course after course to learn how to get better at blogging, social media, and anything else and still not be seeing any serious growth with your blog.
That’s because if you’re so busy doing all of those things, you might be missing the big things that can seriously hold you back from growing your blog the way you really want to. Today I wanted to share three big reasons your blog growth might not be growing and exactly how you can start taking action to fix them.
You’re doing what everyone else does
It’s easy to see what everyone else is doing on their blogs and having success and assuming that you have to (or should) do the same thing if you want to be successful. However, that’s just not the case. Just because someone else was successful writing sponsored posts or creating courses doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll also be successful if you do the same thing. You may have an audience that’s not interested in those things, or you may just not enjoy it as much as other people do.
Aside from the fact that it might not be right for your brand, you do yourself and brand a disservice by doing what everyone else does because you’re not giving yourself room to figure out what you’re truly great at. Not only that, but it’s even harder to stand out in this crowded blogging community when you’re writing content that everyone else has written in the same ways.
How to fix it
Instead of focusing so much on what other people are doing, try to stay focused on what you enjoy and where you want your blog and brand to go. I know it’s incredibly hard to not be influenced by all of the ideas everyone else has, but it’s important to ask yourself if that idea you have or action you’re taking is helping you move forward your big goals that you’re trying to achieve. If it does, go for it. If it doesn’t, it’s time to shelf that idea or action, and start working on something else.
If you’re really struggling with comparison and being heavily influenced by others, another great way to help with this is to limit the amount of content from the people triggering these feelings for you. Sometimes it’s better to unfollow a person who makes you feel like you have to be running your blog or business a certain way than let their influence take over how you do things.
[clickToTweet tweet=”If you’re focusing on doing what everyone else does, it’s going to be hard to grow your blog” quote=”If you’re focusing on doing what everyone else does, it’s going to be hard to grow your blog”]
You’re crowdsourcing every decision
I see this all. the. time. (which is why I wrote a post about it earlier this year), and I cringe every single time. Blogging is usually a solo project, and it can be so hard to make decisions about your brand all by yourself. Things are a lot easier when you can bounce your ideas and decisions off of other people who understand a bit better than our families can at times. In fact, even I bounce most of my ideas off of my best friend and my mastermind group.
However, the tricky part comes in when you’re crowdsourcing opinions and feedback for every single decision, and when you’re doing so in places like massive Facebook groups that you’re in. It may sound like I’m just being a Negative Nancy, but the problem with this is that you’re asking for advice for your brand from people who may or may not have ever read a single blog post of yours, people who may have never heard of you, people who likely have different tastes in things than you. That means that you’re letting people who don’t really know your brand be the deciding factor on what you do next. I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely not how I want to be running my blog and brand.
How to fix it
Instead of turning to those big Facebook groups you’re in the next time you have an idea, check in with your closest blog / business friends and ask for their advice. This is so much better for you in the long run because they’re familiar with what you do, what you’re good at, and your long term goals. It’s also great because they can help encourage you if you’ve had an idea that’s out of your comfort zone.
It can be hard to tune in and see how you really feel about your idea, but that’s a great alternative to asking 10k+ people on Facebook. Try meditating for a few minutes to see if your inner voice speaks to you about what you should do. Sit down and really ask yourself how you feel, and at the end of the day just trust your instincts when making the decision. Again, I know this is hard to do, especially if you’re not fully confident in your decisions, but the more you practice trusting yourself, the better you’ll get!
[clickToTweet tweet=”Struggling to grow your blog? These three things might be holding you back!” quote=”Struggling to grow your blog? These three things might be holding you back!”]
Your blog design is limiting
When you’re just starting your blog, it can be intimidating to invest in working 1:1 with a designer to create something totally custom for your site. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with waiting a few months to a year to get a totally custom design, but that doesn’t mean that you want to use a blog design that isn’t helping you work toward accomplishing your goals. However, that’s what I see a lot of people doing.
On the other hand there are a lot of people who work with a designer to create something that looks good and has a lot of features, but they don’t take the time to make sure their site has the right features and will grow with them. That means you may have a blog design that’s perfect for 6 months to a year, but after that you have to pay more to get more features and make your design help take your brand to the next level.
How to fix it
Instead of getting a new design at every stage of your journey, it’s better to work with a designer or get a theme that will help you work toward your goals from day one, and not have to worry about upgrading all the time. In fact, if you take some time to make sure your design works for your blog strategy you’ll end up saving a lot of time and frustration in the long run.
When you’re working on getting a new blog design, you want to make sure that it’s easy to navigate for your audience and that your key elements (like your email opt-in forms, services, etc) are easy to find so that you can easily lead your audience to those places around your site. It’s also important that you can easily customize things so that as your blog grows and your goals change you can easily swap out calls to action, photos, and adjust things like colors or fonts if you need to.
If you’re in the market for a new design, I’ve got something for you!
If you need a new design that works for your goals and will help you grow your blog + brand without a ton of extra work, Coded Creative Themes is exactly what you need! This is a passion project I launched with Krista, and over the past couple of months we’ve been creating simple, beautiful, and effective themes that will help do the hard work of growing your blog + business for you. We have 3 tiers of themes, all with easily customizable fonts and colors, they’re mobile responsive, and you can upload your own logo!