How I Grew My Blog, YouTube, and Instagram By 3,000% This Year

Today’s the day, everyone! After hundreds of DMs, emails, and comments from you guys over the last six months, I decided it was finally time to sit down and share my top ten tips on growing your brand. It’s certainly no secret that I’ve experienced some awesome growth this year—in fact in 2020 alone I’ve experienced more growth than my first four years of blogging combined.

Crazy, I know. Whether you’re wanting to grow your blog, Instagram, or YouTube I’ve got you covered. Today I’m sharing my best advice on how I’ve experienced 3,000% growth organically (no scams, paying for followers, or any of that nonsense) in just one year.

Please keep in mind that everyone’s experience with growth is different. There is no one-way ticket to success—if it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. Also, remember that growth does not happen overnight. It takes persistence, consistency, and a strong work ethic. It also takes time; to put things into perspective, I launched my blog and Instagram on January 1, 2016. That was almost FIVE years ago. Trust the process and keep at it—I promise your time is coming.

If you want to hear how I started my blog + how to start your own click here to read.

1. Upload Consistently 

So you want your side hustle to become more than just a hobby… Well, it’s time you start treating it as more than just a hobby. And the number one way to start is by uploading consistently. I launched my Weekly Wrap Up series on the first Sunday of 2016. In the last five years, I’ve uploaded every Sunday but one—consistency is everything.

Come up with a posting schedule and stick with it. It’s okay to experiment with what days work best for you and to see which schedule suits your lifestyle best. But, once you find what works you have to stick with it. I upload daily to Instagram, M/W/F/S to my blog, and four times a week to YouTube.

Not only do my viewers know when to expect content but it shows brands that you have a consistent, professional schedule which is ultimately what they are looking for.

2. Find Your Rhythm 

Once I found an uploading schedule that worked for me, it was time to find my rhythm. This was especially important for me to establish while doing this full time over the summer because it made the transition back to balancing school and work so much more manageable.

By finding a rhythm I mean sitting down with your planner and setting dates and times for every single task—big or small. For me that means, photographing content in batches (once on the weekend, once during the week), filming multiple videos in one day and then editing in the evenings, writing posts first thing in the morning when my thoughts are fresh and flowing easily, uploading to Instagram as soon as my blog posts go live, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely days where I mix up my schedule but for the most part, I know what works for me. Once you find your rhythm, things will start flowing much smoother, I promise!

3. Post What You’re Proud Of

I also started posting content that I was genuinely proud of. There is no use posting five times a week if you’re only truly pleased with three of those posts. There are definitely posts I love more than others and that’s okay too but if it’s not work that you’d want your future employer to see, perhaps it’s worth leaving in the drafts.

4. Listen To Your Following (But Don’t) 

If you’re doing the same thing over and over and seeing no results, perhaps it’s time to switch up what you’re doing. Listen to your following. Go and do your research. Dig a little. Look into why things aren’t working and then change. your. habits.

I always start by asking my following: What are they looking for? What are they shopping for right now? What do they need help styling? And then I do a little digging: Which posts performed best last month? Which videos are people clicking out of quicker? Which days did my posts receive the most likes? What thumbnails are getting the most clicks? I try to collect this information once a month to help me better myself for the upcoming one.

Ask yourself, how can you best serve your reader? But by all means, don’t stop writing about what you want to write about. I love couture dresses. But I also know that my audience has absolutely no need for them. However, that doesn’t mean I stopped posting couture dresses altogether, it just means I share them in moderation.

Listen to your reader but don’t lose sight of your true calling either. People can see right through you if you’re only in it for the views/money.

5. Utilize Tags 

Start utilizing tags! This is so important for your SEO on both YouTube and your blog. That little dropdown menu on WordPress that says “Tags”—start using it! Enter as many relevant keywords as you can think of that pertain to this specific blog post. Then go back again and do the same thing but with the name of your blog after each of them. This will help your website rank higher when someone types in “fall outfit ideas” into the search bar.

The goal is always to make it to the first page (who even clicks into pages 2,3, and so on anyway?!). YouTube also has a place for tags however they limit you to 500 characters. Still, it’s so important to utilize this feature—if you’re not using tags, your video isn’t showing up when someone is searching for similar content.

I know that tags are tedious but I’ve really cracked down on using them this year and it’s paid off big time! Hashtags on Instagram are just as important. Make sure you’re using a mix of large and small hashtags to reach various audiences. You also should be using hashtags that pertain to that specific photo, not your profile in general.

6. Work On Your Keywords

Similar to tags, keywords are really important for your search engine optimization. This means that the first 100 words of your blog post need to be chock full of words/phrases that people may use when searching for a similar post. For example, many people may type into Google “how to grow your brand”. So within the first paragraph of my post, I need to utilize those same words in order for this post to be seen by new people.

This is also true for YouTube. Make sure you are using the description bar to actually describe what your YouTube video is about! These keywords help YouTube recommend your video to more people.

7. Consider Thumbnails

Thumbnails are so important. I won’t lie, they don’t always come easy to me either but they are the first thing someone sees before clicking into your blog post/YouTube video. Make sure you are adding a “featured image” to every single blog post and that you are taking the time to create thumbnails for your videos.

I use Canva to make mine. Remember that the human eye is naturally drawn to brighter colors; warm tones are energizing and cool tones are calming. Also, remember that many people don’t read the title of your video, they simply look at the thumbnail before clicking in so I always recommend using text on yours.

I can just tell based on my thumbnail how well a video is going to do—once I started spending more time on them, and genuinely putting forth the effort, my views skyrocketed.

8. Promote Across Other Platforms

You have to start using all forms of social media simultaneously. I know it can be draining to be looking at a screen all day long but this tip is the most important of the ten.

When I film a haul for YouTube, I always share a corresponding blog post. In this blog post, I will style some of the items I featured in the video and will link all of the items I talked about so that my viewers can shop. I will also import the video in case people saw the blog post first, to drive them over to YouTube to watch the video afterward. In the description bar and comments of my YouTube video, I will leave the link to the post in case people watched the video first, to drive them over to the blog afterward.

As soon as I post a new blog post and YouTube video, I head to Instagram where I will share to my stories that I just posted new content. I will directly link to both the blog post and YouTube video. If you don’t have 10K and don’t have the “swipe up” feature, utilize a Linktree and tell people to “click the link” in your bio. I then will upload my favorite outfit from that day’s blog post to my feed and mention in the comments that the look can be shopped via the LIKEtoKNOW.it app or today’s blog post. Driving traffic to make sales is a whole other topic that I will do a separate post on.

Then, I head over to Pinterest and pin all of my outfits to this board. The goal is for people who are searching for fall outfit inspiration to stumble across my photo, love the outfit, wonder where everything is from, and click into the blog post.

Oftentimes I will make a Tik Tok too sharing the outfits from that post. I will write in the comments that I’ve linked everything over on my Instagram. This has helped me gain thousands of Instagram followers throughout the year. Tik Tok can be tricky to figure out but it can really change the game.

I also have my posts automatically uploaded to my Facebook page. This is how many brands and family members access my content. I also try to spend time in my WordPress reader, engaging with other people’s blogs so that people in turn will engage with mine/leave comments on my posts

Everything I do is done with a purpose. And I know that this may seem like a lot, and that’s because it is. On any given uploading day I may spend 8 hours doing the above tasks, and that’s without the actual creation of the content (planning outfits, taking photos, filming/editing the video), that 8 hours is just on the “extra” things. BUT, people who cut corners do not win races, and there is no reward without work.

9. Do Things For The Experience 

Start doing things just for the experience. Before I started getting paid to wear certain clothes and promote specific brands, I took unpaid partnerships just for the experience, just so that I could add it to my “resume”.

Be careful; unpaid work is a slippery slope and there is a point where you deserve to be compensated for the advertising you are doing for said company. But at the same time, you can’t expect to “get the job” if you have no prior experience on your hands.

This year more than ever I started reaching out to more influencers that I look up to, guest speaking on followers podcasts, and consuming more content to better myself as a content creator. It has paid off tremendously.

10. Stop Comparing Yourself

And last, but certainly not least: stop comparing yourself!!!!! You will never move forward if you keep looking side to side. If you spent as much time and energy focusing on bettering yourself as you did worrying about what someone else is doing, you’d be where they are!

I promise you that your time will come. But you have to work hard, you have to trust the process, and you have to stop worrying about how fast everyone else is moving.

The second I stopped complaining on my Instagram stories about how Sally just hit 10K in one year and I’ve been working at it for four, and started doing the things I mentioned in #8, was the second I gained 4,000 Instagram followers in two months. Trust me, dreams do not work unless you do.

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Phew, and that my friends is my best advice on growing your platform. If I could go back and tell 14 year old me all that I’ve accomplished over the years, I would’ve never believed you. I am so proud of where I am and yet I know there are much greater places for me to be.

I hope this post gave you the tips you were searching for and if nothing else, the encouragement to start working your a$$ off.

With love, McKenz

Latest Post: Workout Pieces I’m Currently Wearing
Related Post: How To Start Your Own Blog
Instagram: styledbymckenz //YouTube: McKenzie Morgan //Pinterest: mckenzmorgan