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5 Facebook Groups To Help You Grow Your Business

Hands up if you spend 80% of your life browsing on, being updated by or locating a wifi signal for facebook? Okay maybe more like 90%..

That being said, where is everyone actually hanging out on there? And why for such long periods of time?

I can give at least one reason for the chunks of hours lost.

Facebook groups.

If you didn't know by now, every blogger and entrepreneur seems to be a member of several facebook groups.

Why?

Because they're active communities buzzing with people who are in the same industry as you. That means you have 24/7 access to the people you admire, their followers and like-minded individuals you can network and build a relationship with - or maybe even netflix and chill with ;) - KIDDING.

In saying that, I am member of far too many facebook groups to count. But there are five that I actually spend most of my time on. Five that I believe you would benefit a whole hell of a lot from being a part of. Five that I know will help you grow your business to be the success you want it to be.

Want to know what those groups are?..

UNCAGED LIFERS

This group is one of my favourites to hand because it's full of incredible people who are wanting to uncage their life and build a profitable business. Just like me! No way ;) I've found this to be my go to group whenever I'm needing advice, want to share a win or just a good ol' gossip.

Join Uncaged Lifers

BABES IN BUSINESS

I've been girl crushing on Cassie Howard for a few months now. She is amazing. In a couple of months she built a 6-figure coaching business. Prior to that she owned a super successful couponing website. Crazy huh? She really invests in her community and gives you a lot of extremely juicy tips on building a successful business. If you're in a serviced based field like coaching or consulting, this is definitely the group for you.

Join Babes in Business

#GOINDEPENDENT

I think the entire internet knows and loves Regina. The infopreneur queen, her facebook group is all about the entrepreneur wanting to create a business that sells info-products and makes a great income. I always come to this group for advice on info product creation. They are amazeballs. Yes, that's still a word we use in 2016.

Join #GoIndependent


BLOG + BIZ BFFS

If you'd like to be a part of a community that's highly engaged, supportive, collaborative and all around fun to be in. Melyssa Griffin's Blog + Biz BFFs group is for you. Melyssa runs The Nectar Collective which is an incredible website filled with in-depth and highly useful content for bloggers and entrepreneurs. Who wouldn't want to be a part of her community?

Join Blog + Biz BFFs


#BIZNINJAS

Aaaaaand, introducing my very new, very first, facebook group #BizNinjas!!! This community is all about supporting each other in our quest to creating more time, freedom and fun in our lives and businesses. You can use this group to ask for advice, share your feedback and network with other incredible entrepreneurs on the same journey as you.

Join #BizNinjas



Are you a member of business related facebook groups? What ones would you recommend?


Elise xo

3 Simple Ways To Make Readers Subscribe To Your List

You know growing your email list should be one of the top priorities when it comes to building your online business. If you didn't know that, oh my gosh where have you been!?!? It's time to start one my friend.

The easiest list building provider I would recommend to start with is mailchimp which is what I use and love. You get 2000 free subscribes before you start paying.. yadda yadda.. that's a post for another time!

ANYWAY, you can literally grow your list in a multitude of ways. Today I'm sharing 3 of those strategies with you in my very first podcast below.

(Sidenote: Ahhhhhh!!! My first podcast!!! Talk about exciting/nerve-wrecking/lots of sweating *cue monica* OH MY GOSH. Please hang with me as I work out the kinks, learn to be less awkward and  settle in. It won't take too long I'm sure.)

3 SIMPLE WAYS TO MAKE READERS SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR LIST

So after listening to those short and sharp tips I would love to hear what's one action point you're going to take away and implement into your blog and business today. Is it more promoting on social media? Being more diligent with following up when you've mentioned your influencers or are you going to give creating a few content upgrades a try?

At the end of the day, behind all of these list building tactics, nothing can replace adding genuine value to your readers lives. If you follow those principles, your business will grow rapidly and your list will grow substantially.

How To Easily Create & Install A Favicon For Blogger

Hey guys, welcome to the super quick and easy tutorial on how to create a favicon and then install it on Blogger!

Favicons are a subtle but great way to make your blog stand out in between tabs. If you're not sure what a favicon actually is, let alone how to create a favicon, this is what they are..

Let's get straight to it shall we?

HOW TO EASILY CREATE A FAVICON

Get your image and upload it to PicMonkey. If it's a square, perfect. It it's not, you'll need to crop the image with a square setting.

Once you've done that, you'll then need to resize your favicon to 16 x 16 pixels.

HOW TO INSTALL YOUR FAVICON ONTO BLOGGER

Head to 'Layout' on your dashboard, find the Favicon tab on the top left of your layout.

Click Edit > Choose File > Upload Your Favicon > Save > Save Arrangement

And you're done! One note I'll make is that your Favicon might not show up right away. You may need to clear your browser cache or shut down your browser entirely for it to refresh. enjoy your new fancy pants favicon! ;)

Elise xo

5 Ways To Get More Traffic Through Pinterest

I remember the days when you had to request to be invited to join Pinterest, when it was mainly all DIY & craft projects and there weren't that many pins circulating around so you would literally pin every post there was. Oh my how the times have changed!

Pinterest is an amazing tool you can utilize for your blog (if you didn't know that already!) The biggest attractor is the amount of traffic it can bring to your blog consistently. For me, Pinterest my third biggest traffic driver for my blog. I've only started using it properly for my business for less than 3 weeks and I have an inkling it will become number one traffic driver before the end of December. So if you yourself are interested in getting more traffic to your blog through Pinterest, here's how.


CREATE RELEVANT BOARDS

What is your blog topic? Social media. Recipes. Self love. Knitting sweaters for penguins. Okay maybe not sweaters for penguins (believe it or not they actually exist). The reason you want relevant board topics is so that people start to trust that you'll share content specifically around the topic they're interested in. Create a few key categories out of your topic. So for instance you have social media. You might want to have a board solely dedicated to Pinterest, and another solely to Periscope and maybe another to Twitter.

Bonus Tip! Don't forget to make your first board, your own board with all of your blog posts!


USE KEYWORDS

Millions of people are using Pinterest's search engine every single day. And they're using keywords to find the content - your content. I don't know how many times I have searched 'brunette balayage' to find exactly what I'm looking for - I still haven't had the guts to get it done yet! Use keywords in your pin descriptions. People will find your blog so much quicker when you add keywords! For example, if my blog theme is around food I may want to use cooking, baking, recipes, vegan, sugar-free, gluten-free etc in my descriptions. Doing this gets traffic to your blog life a mofo!

Bonus Tip! Add keywords into your board descriptions to give your pages that extra boost.


DESIGN ATTRACTIVE IMAGES

Pinterest users love bright and pretty vertical images with text. They're like flies to a cake! These types of images get repinned over and over and over again. The easiest way to create an image like this is to use PicMonkey, Canva, or for the more experienced, Photoshop. It's important to be consistent with your branding and colouring when doing this - otherwise it gets a little confusing.

Bonus Tip! In your down time go back through old posts and re-do them with pin-worthy images.


BE PICKY WITH YOUR PINS

This part is the least fun, because it means you're going to be deleting a whole lot of pins. Say whaaaaat? Yup, any pins with less than 5 repins have to go. Why? To put it simply: Pinterest rewards your account for having less crap. Yes, you literally get more repins by deleting most of your pins. I still don't fully understand this, but it really does work. If you're not totally convinced yet, give Sarah Titus' 9 Reasons You Should Be Deleting Your Pins a read. When you get some free time, trawl through your account and get deleting. You won't regret it!

Bonus Tip! After you have "trimmed" your account, try pin less than 30 high quality pins a day.

SET UP FOR A BUSINESS ACCOUNT

This is a fantastic way to get super valuable analytics data for your account. You get to see the people who are pinning from you, which boards they're spending most of their time in and what they're pinning.

Bonus Tip! While you're at it, set up for Rich Pins as well! Here's how to set up for Blogger and Wordpress.



Pinterest is definitely becoming my favourite method for marketing and getting more traffic, I can't wait to share further info and stats with you along the way. If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll help you out. Till then, share with me..

What's your favourite way of bringing traffic to your blog?

Elise xo