Yousaiditchewie.com

I launched my blog four months ago. Here's a few things I've learned so far.

1. If SEO is part of your growth strategy, make sure your site is registered with Google Search Console.

Seems really obvious right? I didn't realize I hadn't done this until month two. How much did it improve my site traffic? Nearly none, but what what it did for me was show me which of my articles were showing up in Google searches, and showed me the keywords people were searching. This is valuable feedback that helped me identify the type of content I should focus on. I'm seeing my impressions climb and climb. Now I need to focus on getting more clicks to my site.

2. Growing an audience with a blog takes time.

I did some preliminary research to see what search volume my key topics get, and it's not much. The market I'm trying to reach is musicians who want to make music as a full-time career who need to know how they can make it happen. Musicians are actually more interested in gear they can buy or a new song they can learn than they are interested in growing their audience and turning their fans into customers.

3. It's much easier solving a problem someone is aware of.

Right now, I'm struggling to resonate with my audience because I'm prescribing a solution to a problem they may or may not be aware of. Having been a full-time musician that is now a full-time software engineer, I know that there are ways musicians can build an audience and sell products to them online. But I'm fighting an uphill battle to get musicians to understand they don't have to be a software engineer to make it happen. There are basic internet marketing "growth levers" that anyone can pull if they apply some time, energy and intentionality into it.

All in all, I had low expectations in my blog, but I had to try it out to see if I could build an audience that would buy products from me. I haven't given up on this project just yet, but I have scaled down my energy and effort into it. I'm ironically starting to see growth with my email list and site impressions on Google, so I think I can start to see momentum if I can figure out what it takes to get clicks.

I launched my blog 1 month ago and had no idea what to expect. I'm still seeing the most lift in traffic coming from Instagram, but overall, really happy with my progress. Gotta start somewhere. I have about another month's worth of content planned, and I'm hoping I'll start to see the SEO benefits of releasing content weekly on a consistent basis. This is all part of a plan to build my audience and sell info products and music-related products to my audience.

I had the goal of launching a blog today along with an Instagram and twitter campaign, but I pivoted my strategy to meet my self-imposed deadline. I'm focusing on my
blog and gaining domain authority, and after it's been live for a while, I'll focus more on social media. For now, I'll continue to release content and build an email list.

I just set up a welcome email for new subscribers letting them know what to expect from my newsletter. I'm not sure if this is normal for people starting an email newsletter, but I'm doing it anyway. It lets them know they can expect weekly posts starting in January, so I guess I'm on the hook now ¯\(ツ)/¯