Throughout the year, I’ve been working on growing my blog and making it even more awesome than it has been in a while. One of the things I haven’t been focusing on is trying to get clients and telling the world how badly I wanted to rebrand your website! There are so many reasons why I haven’t had clients in 2015, but I wanted to share the main 4 reasons so that you can try and avoid them while you grow your blog or business.
I was starting to see all these bloggers turn their blogs into a business and being able to quit their jobs to blog full-time and I’m still trying to figure out what I want to do with my blog & expecting clients to just magically fall into my lap. I finally realized that what I was doing wasn’t working and that I needed to have a plan if I wanted to turn this space into a business.
I Didn’t Market Myself
I would occasionally share new posts on social media, but I didn’t have a strategy. I also hadn’t posted about design and the fact that I offered design services at all. Besides the occasional mention of my experiences in college, there was no way for anyone to see me as a legitimate designer. I’ve recently started using an actual schedule for social media. I’ve started sharing all my new posts multiple times on the days they go up and posting about my services on days that I don’t release a new post.
My Site Didn’t Look or Sound Professional
My site was pretty well designed since I am a designer, but I didn’t have a homepage. A homepage isn’t necessary for everyone, but it’s a great way to let new visitors know what I do. Each of my pages didn’t really have any thought to them, they just mentioned things I liked. The pages still aren’t perfect, but I’m working on making them better and they still have things I like, but it also mentions why I design and other things like that to let you know what I do.
I Wasn’t Clear on Who I Wanted to Work With
All I was really saying on my work with me page was that I wanted to design. I had packages on my page, but I wasn’t trying to sell them to a specific market. I still love designing for all types of projects, but now I’m trying to focus more on helping bloggers build the design-side of their branding so that you can focus on the other aspects of branding (content, messaging, etc.).
RELATED: Branding vs Design
I Didn’t Have Examples of my Work
Ok, this one still isn’t up and it definitely needs to happen soon. I’m sure there are a ton of clients that I have been missing out on because they don’t know what my designs look like. The problem is, most of the designs I did before focus more on making the clients blog look pretty. I didn’t focus on building their brand. Instead of creating a logo, I was creating a pretty header.
I hope you’re able to gain more clients in 2016 and market yourself better and grow your business!!!! Just keep it real and still blog about real life pls 🙂 **I get sad when bloggers get “big” and stop talking about real life; everything is a sales pitch. just, no.
I definitely will! I love talking about TV shows & things like that too much! Haha 🙂
I love honest posts like this one, thank you for that! I get you, I felt like that a few months ago and had to adjust my strategy. When you are running your own business, the way to learn is by trying. I’m sure you will do great on 2016!
Yes! Trial & error is the best way to figure out how to run a business! Even is something worked perfectly for someone else, it doesn’t mean it will work for your business, but you have to try! Glad you enjoyed the post! 🙂