I get asked all the time about how people can best help me or another friend, as a blogger, so I thought that you might find it helpful to hear what I say to them.
First off, thank you for wanting to support your blogging friends! Most people start blogging because they feel that they have something worth sharing, because they are hoping to make money, or because they just need a hobby. For those of us who are hoping to make money, blogging can mean the difference between staying at home with our kids or not.
While the majority of our traffic comes from people other than our family and friends (it might surprise you that we get traffic from all over the world!), you do have an important role in supporting your blogging friends. Here are 6 simple ways you can help your friend out.
1. Leave thoughtful comments.
This can happen on their actual blog, or even on social media. If you comment on your friend’s blog, you’re telling Google and other search engines that this content was relevant and engaging. This causes those search engines to be more likely to share the content with the next person.
If you leave a genuine comment on social media, this causes the algorithms to favor your friend’s post and share it with more people. On Facebook this is especially important. Did you know that for most bloggers with 10,000 followers on Facebook, less than 1,000 people see their posts? Due to the algorithms Facebook now employs, it can be ridiculously hard for us bloggers to get our content out to the people who chose to follow our page. By interacting with our posts on social media, you’re helping Facebook see that this post is important and ought to be shown to more people.
2. Share their content.
This can be as simple as pinning your friend’s posts. You can share via Facebook, Twitter, Yummly, or pretty much any way you can think. This will not only make your friend’s day, but it will help get their content out to new viewers who may decide to become fans!
3. Like posts on Facebook.
This is basically the same as leaving comments for causing Facebook to view the content as important. But did you know that a simple like is counted as less important than a heart, or a wow? Because it takes you a moment longer to interact with a Facebook post using one of the emojis, Facebook has decided that it must have been more important than to warrant a simple like. So, when possible, use a heart, wow, or angry or sad face (when appropriate!).
4. Make their recipes.
If your friend is a food blogger, you will make their day if you tell them that you tried and loved one of their recipes. Despite the fact that many of us do this blogging thing to make money, our real heart is for helping people, and we love to know that our content has helped you in some way!
5. Share ideas with them.
You’ve heard of writer’s block before, right? Well the same thing happens to bloggers. Not only do we have to write up each post, but we’ve also got to dream up the idea, craft or cook it, photograph it, edit pictures, etc. There are times when we can just burn out on ideas.
Not only giving us ideas, but being willing to share the things you’ve made can be very supportive! My sister occasionally tells me when she’s making a new meal and lets me come over and photograph it. If you’re an amazing crafter, ask your blogging friend if she’d like to take pictures of your craft for a blog post. If you love cooking, ask your friend if he’d like to come by at dinner time and take pictures of your signature dish sometime!
6. Check out their ads.
Now I’m going to tell you right off the bat that any blogger who has ads on their site is not allowed to ask you to click on their ads. And I’m not encouraging you to go clicking every ad every time you’re on their blog. Not only would that be dishonest, but it could actually result in their losing ad revenue.
However, if your blogging friends have ads, and you happen to notice that the ad seems interesting, they may make money from your ad clicks.
In the same vein, if you are planning to purchase something online, ask your friend if they have an affiliate link for that brand (there are blog affiliate programs for nearly any online shop, including Zulily, Dayspring, Shutterfly, etc). If you purchase through my Amazon affiliate link, your prices remain the same, but I get a small percentage for referring you. That’s a great way to support your blogging friends, and it’s super simple for you!
I hope that these ideas for how to support your blogging friends have been helpful. Thank you for having a heart for wanting to help your friends!
Luv this 🙂 Cute and simple and so true. Just starting out these tips help! Thanks so much 🙂 and have a great day!
These are some great ways to help blogger friends. I believe that sharing their posts works better as compared to other options. After all–sharing is caring!
Seren, I think you’re definitely right! However, I’ll take all the love I can get! lol. It seems like interaction (especially on social media) is getting harder to get.