I can’t believe it’s (basically) 2023! This year, I really didn’t think that I had done a lot to grow my blog. Boy was I wrong! As always, I’m rounding up the blogger tools I used this past year, and I’m only using tools that helped me grow in some way. I did plenty of other things, but since they didn’t work, I haven’t included them.
Let’s get blogging!
Past Editions: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
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Made an “As Seen On” page
I’ll admit … there’s not much there. But I did this to make it easier to list places I’ve appeared over the years in one place. This is partially to showcase my resume, so to speak.
How can it help you and your blog?
This helps show your experience and reputation. It helps people see what else you have to say on platforms that aren’t your blog.
I’ve made mine with Elementor and it’s just logos of sites that I’ve appeared on. Nice and easy!
How To Brainstorm Blog Post Ideas: 12 Questions To Ask Yourself
Created freebies
I send my newsletter subscribers freebies regularly, but this time I’m talking about posting free downloads that don’t require subscribing to a newsletter or anything. One freebie in question is a holiday self-care workbook!
There are a few reasons why you should give away materials for free (other than helping people).
One is that they help you show people what you can do. Think of it as an audition for possible paid products or your newsletter.
Another is that promoting that you have free products brings you more traffic, even if people don’t download them.
I personally chose that, while I sell ebooks for health bloggers, I don’t sell ebooks that are for health. I always give away information for health, which is why I gave away the holiday self-care workbook.
Why You Need a Blog Newsletter + What To Send Your Newsletter
Started sharing tweets on Instagram
By this I mean that I’ve been screenshotting some of my tweets, making an image on Canva, and posting them as images. Here’s what it looks like:
I did this for a couple of reasons.
One – I’m already content on Twitter. Why not use that elsewhere?
Two – I discovered last year, after starting to make Instagram images with text on them, that people were more likely to share those posts than my regular posts. Why not lean on that even more?
And whoo boy has that paid off!
In the last year, 7 out of 12 of my most liked posts are tweet screenshots.
2 of the 12 posts with the most comments are tweet screenshots.
5 of the 12 posts with the most impressions are tweet screenshots.
6 of the 12 most saved posts are tweet screenshots.
10 of the 12 most shared posts are tweet screenshots.
They have also led me to more followers and more engagement on my other posts.
You can do this even if you’re not on Twitter anymore! You could do this with posts from Facebook or LinkedIn. You could even do this with fake posts from social media that you’re not on, like Twitter. I prefer doing this with real posts because then I’m using things I’ve already created.
Blog Traffic for Beginners: Keep Your Traffic Up This Summer
Was interviewed by Effie for her YouTube channel, RA and Myself
Effie Koliopoulos is another arthritis patient and advocate who I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with before, and in 2022 she interviewed me for her YouTube channel.
Not only was the actual post itself good exposure for me, but as we both promoted it on our various sites, it boosted my social media exposure, as well.
I mean, I gained over 100 Instagram followers in one month, which is unusual for me. I generally gain 20-60 followers a month, but the promotion by Effie and the publication of the interview definitely impacted my follower numbers.
How To Improve Your Blogging Skills: 8 Skills You Need
Instagram 7-day posting challenge
I decided to spend 7 days posting every day on Instagram, called the Real Life with Chronic Illness Instagram Challenge. I posted a new in-feed post every day, posted a new Reel every other day, and posted in Stories throughout the day every day.
I focused on, as you probably could guess, real life with chronic illness.
While I talk a lot about chronic illness on the blog and on social media, I don’t show a lot of my real, day-to-day life, often because I’m busy dealing with it.
But the reason why I did the series in the first place was to bolster my Instagram. I wanted to improve engagement with my account and get new followers. A great way to do that is to post a lot.
These posts (all categories) included:
- Asking for good disability representation in movies and TV
- Showing swollen joints in my hand
- What I eat when my jaw arthritis flares
- The cost of chronic illness, beyond doctor’s appointments and medications
- How I schedule my day around illness symptoms
- What fatigue really is
- How much the passing of the Affordable Care Act influenced me
- What I have to do to manage POTS
- Desk set up for chronic illness
- Medical PTSD (PTSD from a medical event)
- Makeup to help me look less chronically ill
- Note-taking for medical appointments
- And so much more!
As a whole, this series was really good for me. It increased account engagement (as I expected) and I got a lot of lovely messages from followers that they felt seen or that it helped them understand their loved one better.
What does this mean for you?
For one thing, doing a series connected to your blog/social media’s primary purpose can boost your engagement and followers. But for another, it can help you better connect with your purpose, which can inspire you moving forward.
Another thing is that, if you aren’t already posting a lot of one type of content on Instagram – such as in-feed posts, Stories, or Reels – it can show you if you should be. Maybe you put all your effort into in-feed posts, but posting on Reels is much more beneficial for you. Maybe you should be posting more in-feed posts. You get the idea.
Authentic Mental Health Blog Post Ideas That People Actually Want
Made an introductory thread on Twitter
This is pretty simple – it’s a thread introducing myself. I explain who I am, what I do, what I provide, and where to find me. These have been popular for years, and thankfully I finally did it before there was a mass-exodus on Twitter.
I decided to do this because I wanted to give more information about who I am and what I do in an organized way.
I wrote out the thread in a Google doc so I could tweak and edit things before posting it. I explained who I am and what I do. I explained who I am personally. I also included relevant links to a variety of places: my post categories, my different social media networks, my ebook shop, etc.
This can help people establish their credibility on Twitter, provide a wide variety of places for people to follow them (especially important when Musk bought Twitter and people started leaving Twitter), and more.
Writing about Health on Social Media Like a Pro
Changed when I create blog post titles
My previous strategy was to come up with blog post titles after I had written the majority of the post so that I could create a title truly based on what was in the post. But this year, I decided to create the titles first before writing the posts.
One reason I made this change is WordPress added a new headline analyzer tool so I could really see the strength of the headlines (and what made them have a higher rating). This showed me that my blog post titles could be a lot better, and if I changed the titles after I wrote the post, then sometimes the title didn’t best fit the content of the post.
I really, really hate clickbait, so if I have a post with 15 of the best tools for bloggers to try in 2023, I want to include 15 tools that helped me grow my blog in 2023. I don’t want to just say that so people click the post.
By coming up with the post title before I really dug into writing the post, I could tweak the purpose of the post to better match the title.
To be clear, I still use the variety of resources I have to create blog post titles. I just do this before I spend all the time writing the post until towards the end.
How To Be Good at Blogging: Blogging with Limited Time
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you’ll know that I use social media editorial calendars. Well, in 2022, I decided to switch when I do certain elements of it.
A social media editorial calendar is, well, an editorial calendar for social media. Using these helps me be more intentional with what I’m sharing and make sure I’m not sharing the same posts multiple times in one month.
But those aren’t the only things in my calendar! I also share other people’s posts to help build community. I share inspirational quotes so others interact with my content and so I’m not only sharing links to my posts. I ask questions to build community as well as to not solely share links to my posts.
Making these calendars involves intentionally planning out social media posts for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram. I do this in a Google Sheet (1 per month) with one tab per social media network, and then I schedule out my social media in Buffer and Tailwind.
I promote a blog post every single day, and for years, I identified them up to a week before I promoted them. In 2022, I started doing this at the start of the month, for the entire month.
This enabled me to be more strategic about the posts I promoted, and so I didn’t promote the same post more than one day a month.
While this meant more work at the start of a month, it meant less work on a weekly basis. It also meant I could spread out how frequently (or infrequently) I posted about a specific topic, such as arthritis.
Started posting Reels more frequently
I finally caved and started posting Reels last year, but in 2022, I got more dedicated.
After the success of my Reels in my Real Life with Chronic Illness series, I decided to post them more frequently. I use the Reminders app on my phone and aim to post 5-10 Reels a month. At my most frequent, I post them every 3 days, but that depends on other things. If I let anything go by the wayside, it’s Reels.
I find Reels a lot of fun, especially as there are so many where you can just use photos and don’t have to film any. I try to post a combination of lifestyle and health Reels, but my health-based ones are the ones that are the most successful.
This has been extremely helpful.
Not to talk about the Instagram algorithm, but the algorthm likes it when you regularly post Reels. So by posting Reels, Instagram showed my in-feed posts more frequently.
My Reels also get a much higher reach than my in-feed posts do. The lowest amount of reach my Reels have seen is over 200 accounts, and the highest is over 15,000 accounts.
On the other hand, the lowest number of accounts my in-feed posts have reached is 170, while the highest is over 2,700.
When I look at the reach of all of my Instagram content, the 22 pieces that reached the most people are all Reels.
Essential Social Media Tips for Bloggers
Started keeping Reels in my profile grid
For a long time, I removed Reels from my grid because I didn’t like how they looked. But I realized I was doing myself a disservice in the name of “aesthetic,” which I didn’t follow too much in the first place.
Basically, I realized that if I rarely went to other people’s Reels tabs in their profile, then how could I expect others to go do that from my profile?
I have found that this super helped my Reels engagement, which in turn helped my other posts, so as a whole it helped my account.
People would go to my account, scroll through my feed, and see my in-feed posts and my Reels together. And yeah, it messed up the ~aesthetic~ of my grid, but only by a bit, and that sort of thing doesn’t matter as much any more.
Bought the 2022 Genius Blogger’s Tool Kit
The GBTK is a bundle created annually by the Ultimate Bundles folks, and I generally buy it every other year. I could buy it every year, but it takes me so long to work through one year’s worth of resources that it doesn’t make sense for me to get it more frequently.
The 2022 edition had 62 resources (worth $6427.51), and they were 6 eBooks, 29 eCourses, videos, & audio, 20 printables, workbooks, & guides, and 3 templates.
In addition to the courses featured in this post (and those that will probably be featured in next year’s post), I got a lot of stock images, Canva templates (for a variety of things), blog post ideas, and so much more.
I’ve already seen an improvement in my income and blog traffic, which you’ll see in other sections, and I’ve already made more money from things in the toolkit than it cost to buy the toolkit.
The toolkit is unavailable at the moment, but there will probably be a flash sale in early 2023, so make sure you’re subscribed to my newsletter so you don’t miss it when it’s available 😉
What I Would Do If I Started a Blog Today
Took the Black Friday Affiliate Surge course
This is, as you can probably guess, a course all about how to make the most amount of money possible on Black Friday through Cyber Monday. And it’s a course I got through the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit.
This course includes:
- A free downloadable Elementor template for a Black Friday roundup page
- Email templates
- A cookie strategy (which I had never thought about before!)
- Dos and don’ts for your own Black Friday offer
- How to promote your Black Friday page
- A social media strategy for Black Friday/Cyber Week
- And more!
I found this course extremely helpful, and it completely changed how I did my Black Friday/Cyber Week promotions. These changes increased my Cyber Week income, of course, but also increased my Cyber Week blog traffic.
My blog traffic over Cyber Week increased by 19.45% in 2022 compared to 2021.
My email opens over Cyber Week increased by 36% and my email clicks over Cyber Week increased by 300% (not a typo!).
Starting a Chronic Illness Blog: Tips for Blogging with Fatigue and Pain
Got a new broken link checker plugin
I got the Broken Link Checker plugin, and I’ve been very happy with it.
This plugin “Checks your blog for broken links and missing images and notifies you on the dashboard if any are found”.
Here are a few reasons why getting this plugin was a great move:
One – Broken links tell search engines that your site isn’t reputable and/or isn’t updated recently, which makes it rank your site lower.
Two – Fixing broken links is an easy way to update older blog posts, which tells refreshes your page to search engines.
Three – A broken link is a missed opportunity to build or maintain your reputation, or to make money through affiliate links.
Four – When including facts, it’s very important to me that I cite them. So if a website moves a page, which breaks a link on my blog, I want to update it ASAP.
Five – I have so many blog posts, and it’s a real headache to review them to check for broken links. This plugin checks for me.
Six – If I cite the same site in multiple places and it breaks, this plugin makes it so I can update all of the links with one move.
I’m a big, big fan of this plugin!
How To Be a Health Blogger: Writing Blog Posts
Made a new blogging resources page
My previous blog resources page was made ages and ages ago. It was so outdated that I decided to completely scrap it and start over again.
It only includes resources that I actually use, and it’s a lot easier to read.
25 Awesome Blog Post Ideas for Beginners
Created new Zapier Zaps
Zapier is a site that “automates 5,000+ apps in millions of ways” (x). Basically, it helps you connect sites or processes that aren’t already connected.
I already used Zapier to make it easier for people to sign up from my newsletter directly from my site. But after buying someone else’s ebook and being signed up for their newsletter, I realized I should do that, too.
Now, when you buy one of my ebooks, you are added to my newsletter. If you’re already a subscriber, your information is updated.
I have the free Zapier plan, which allows me 5 Zaps at a time and up to 100 tasks a month. It’s super easy and I really recommend it if you want to automate things that aren’t necessarily automated!
How To Write a Blog Post in 10 Easy Steps + Free Blog Post Template
Took the She Approach’s Affiliate Sales Surge Challenge
This is another course that I got through the Genius Blogger’s Toolkit! It’s a course that is “aimed at helping bloggers increase their affiliate earnings, and breakthrough their affiliate plateau. If you’ve been stuck earning the same in affiliate commissions for a while (or your income went down suddenly), this will help you get back on track to earn $500+ per month” (x).
I LOVED this course/challenge. It revolutionized how I think about affiliate linking, and it provided actionable things to do to make more money from my blog.
5 Ways to Track Blog Traffic + a Free Traffic Tracker
Get all of these tips in an easy-to-use checklist here. They’re a lot simpler in this form than in the post, but it’s a great place to start! And get all of my free downloads when sign up for my newsletter and get access to my Resource Library.
Like this post? Share it! Then check out:
The Blog Tools I Use and Love, Your Guide to Making and Using a Media Kit as a Blogger, 12 Tips for New Health Bloggers, Getting Smart with an Editorial Calendar for Bloggers + Free Editorial Calendar
Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
Great article. Definitely gave me a few new ideas for this year.
This is such a great post with some really helpful (and different!) ideas on how to grow your blog. Thank you so much!
Looking forward to utilizing some of these tips!
Very insightful, thanks. A few things to mow over here. Particularly interested in that “As Seen On” page. Exploring that a bit now!
What a list of robust tools. I love the idea of making an As Seen On page. I had one published a while back but pulled it to create a more streamlined experience. I may add it again as I have been featured on a few high level blogs with some major media mixed in as well. Keep up the great blogging work.
Wow! I am new to blogging, and there was so much good stuff in here! Thank you for sharing your experience and resources!
You offer so many valuable tools in this post. Pinning to come back to- wow!
Thank you, I will definitely save this post for later and come back when I managed to set up my Instagram profile!
Wow, some really great tips here! I’ll definitely be giving a few of these a try for my own blog. Thanks for sharing!
Some really useful resource recommendations for blogging. I already knew some but am glad to learn some new ones. Thanks for sharing.
I have been trying to make more instagram reels but it has been a frustrated process