BITW 168: Marketing a Blog & Facebook Ads with Amanda O'Brien

Marketing a Blog & Facebook Ads with Amanda O’Brien. This podcast is jam-packed with tips to grow web traffic as well as grow an audience for a blog. This podcast shares an awesome 5 Point Checklist for Marketing a Blog. Amanda and I chat about how to use paid advertising, especially Facebook ads, as a blogger to grow site traffic and followers at a low cost. We also dive into how to create and use Facebook groups to drive traffic back to your website and create an audience.

About Amanda O’Brien: Born in Australia, Amanda O’Brien has called London home for over 15 years. She is a blogger and marketing consultant. She spent nearly 20 years working for big global companies in marketing such as Kraft, Heinz, Direct Line Group, and B&Q. During her 20 year corporate career, she managed to visit over 80 countries.

In 2016 she started the travel blog, The Boutique Adventurer. Her travel website receives 115,000 page views per month and has over 130,000 followers on social media. In May of 2020, she started a new blog called The Discerning Cat. The site is already receiving over 90,000 page views per month and has more than 20,000 followers on social media.

Break Into Travel Writing: A podcast and website designed to help you build a travel blog your readers love as well as help you achieve your goals as a travel writer or blogger.

Please Note: Ads are how I pay the bills and keep this blog and podcast free for you to enjoy. I also use affiliate links; if you make a purchase through them, we may receive a small commission at no cost to you.

To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:

Click Here to Subscribe via iTunes
Click Here to Subscribe via RSS (non-iTunes feed)

If you like the show, please consider leaving the show a review in iTunes as well as Stitcher Radio. A couple of minutes of your time can help the show immensely! Thank YOU!

Marketing a Blog & Facebook Ads with Amanda O’Brien

Show focus: How travel bloggers should market a travel blog. How to use Facebook Ads to grow your traffic and audience at a low cost. Facebook Ads for bloggers step-by-step tutorial. How To Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Blog Content.

Listen to today’s episode where Amanda and I chat about how to grow traffic & audience for travel blogger websites. How to use paid advertising, especially Facebook ads, as a blogger to grow a site at a low cost. This podcast also shares Amanda’s 5 Point Checklist for Marketing a Blog.

>> Listen to the full podcast; click here!

5 Point Checklist for Marketing a Blog

Amanda’s 5 Point Checklist for Marketing a Blog and her top tops for each where you can share a few of your top tips and then jump into a deeper dive with Facebook as you outlined. Amanda’s overall approach to marketing a travel blog and her tips:

1. SEO including keywords, keyword analysis and keyword strategy. Take time to search for terms with low difficulty even if they have a lowish search volume, so you can actually rank and get traffic (especially for newer sites). As your site grows you can go after harder difficulty scores.

SEO Resource: Use Keysearch. It’s just $17 a month and offers lots of great reports and features. I am an affiliate, which means you can get an extra 20% off using the code KSDISC when you sign up. Amanda also recommends the free Hrefs tracker.

2. Pinterest and why it’s one of the easiest social media platforms if you are just getting started. Remember to engage with the platform and don’t just upload your own pins.

Pinterest Tip: Use Tailwind Create to auto-generate new pins!

3. HARO (Help a Reporter Out). A great resource for backlinks from high domain authority sites.

HARO Tip: Look beyond travel and into lifestyle topics.

4. Travel Blogger Conferences and why they are great for networking, building a community and learning.

Conference Tips: Check out TBEX if you are new to travel blogging. Traverse & WTM(London), & ITB, (Berlin), IMM (New York) are others to look into.

5. Facebook

(a) Facebook Groups

Networking with other bloggers and participating in collaborations, finding good guest post opportunities, link swaps. Amanda’s best tips and tricks for using Facebook blogger groups.

(b) Paid Facebook Ads

How To Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Blog Content.

How to use Facebook ads to drive traffic to a specific post as well as how to build ongoing traffic to your website.
Why you should target other Facebook pages to build your audience and further focus ads on behaviors, locations, and income.
How to create and use Facebook groups to drive traffic back to your website and create an audience.
How to use Facebook to grow web traffic, build an audience, and a trusted following.
What type of imagery (images and video) to use in ads.
Look for at least a 3% click-thru rate or 3% “like” with a return on ads. Anything under 2% return is a dud!
Understanding paid advertising on Facebook.

Facebook Ads Checklist

1. What are your objectives?
2. Driving traffic to a specific post vs driving traffic to your site in general
3. Specific Post Traffic – how much to spend and who to target
4. General FB Traffic – using paid FB advertising to build an FB Group which will drive traffic to your site ongoing

We dive into how to run ads for web traffic as well as how to run ads to grow your Facebook page followers. Knowing how you can use Facebook Ads to promote your blog is a huge advantage to growing your travel blog brand!

How to Invite Someone who has Engaged with a Facebook Ad to Like Your Page

Step 1: Go to your Facebook page

Step 2: Go into your Facebook page and scroll down on the left-hand column to where it says Notifications. Hit Notifications

Step 3: In the left-hand column there is a list of notifications. You will receive a notification for your ads saying people have reacted to your photo/post.

The next line will be Help Them to see future posts by inviting them to like your page.

Click on the number in the reactions underneath the photo in the post (in this example the number is 7 – click on this)

When you click on the number you will get this pop up:

Step 4: If Invite is in bold next to a name you can invite that person to like your page. Just click on the bold invite box.

Step 5: Once you have clicked on the invite it will be shaded grey and the word will change to Invited. This means the invite has been sent.

Don’t forget to scroll down with the bar on the right so you capture everyone.

Pin it!

Did you miss the last podcast interview episode? Learn how to Avoid Travel Writer Burnout with Chantae Reden

Want to Earn More Money With Your Blog?

Sign Up For Travelpayouts Affiliate Network! (Disclosure: This is my affiliate link and I would be extremely grateful if you would use this link to sign up to help support this free podcast!)

Feedback on the Podcast If you have any suggestions for upcoming shows or a question for an upcoming episode, leave a comment below. If you enjoyed this podcast, I’d be extremely grateful if you would take a second and leave me a review and rating over on iTunes. Your taking a minute to do this allows me to help more people with this podcast, so I really appreciate it (once on that page, simply click on the “View in iTunes” button to leave your review — thanks very much!)