Blog Audit: Get Your Blog Ready for Fall & Winter

The weather is starting to cool down and before we know it fall will be here! Your blog will change from posts about your favorite pool accessories and beach vacations. You will start to write about the kids back-to-school fashion or appetizers for the big Sunday football games. As you dive deeper into the fall season, you may begin thinking that it is time to get your blog ready for the holidays. But why wait until the last minute this year? Perform an audit on your blog and Affiliate account to make sure everything is ready for fall and winter…starting now! It’s never too early to prepare for the fourth quarter madness.

When visitors come to your blog they should be able to get a feel for who you are and what your blog is about in a matter of seconds. Ask yourself the following questions to ensure your blog is really engaging your audience:

• Is my bio box up to date and truly reflect who I am?
• Does my picture make me memorable?
• Are my social media profiles easily accessible to gain more followers?
• Are my followers able to share my posts on their own social network sites?
• Do I make it simple for followers to sign up for my newsletter?

Content is key. Every blogger has probably heard this at least 15 times now. Your blog must deliver quality and descriptive content. This checklist will help to keep your content in ‘check’:

• Create more colorful headlines
• Bring previous, popular posts back into the spotlight through your social media channels and newsletters (try to include new information and new Affiliate links!)
• Use more call-to-actions at the end of posts, such as linking to relevant posts or directing your audience to sign-up for your newsletter
• Keep a log of new ideas and brainstorms for blog posts to conquer unexpected Q4 writers block
• Add community polls and discussion areas throughout your blog to increase engagement 

• Perform an SEO Audit covering three key areas: Indexing, Content and Page Speed
• Proper file naming is crucial to image SEO success, so choose your file names wisely and update old file names to be relevant
• Download new plugins – For community-building plugins, check out De:comments, Disqus Comment System, CommentLuv, Akismet and Comments Evolved!

Fall and winter are prime time seasons for increasing your revenue through Affiliate Marketing with your blog. Get your Affiliate account organized ASAP, so you’re less stressed when Q4 is here. Four ideas include:

• Clear out closed Merchant programs and quit ones that are no longer a fit in your ‘Merchant Summary’ report to make room for new Merchants
• Update your settings – contact information, description, direct deposit information, etc.
• Download your Merchant list to obtain contact information for the Affiliate Manager whose programs you’ll be featuring a lot in Q4
• Learn how to download and export reports into an excel .csv file

In order to make money with your blog, you want to be sure you’re highlighting brands and products that you and your readers love. There are a few different ways to find the right Merchant for you:

• Subscribe to our blog to read New & Notable Merchant updates
• Sign-up to receive our catalogs for free in the mail
• Perform in-network searches by category or keyword
• Implement ShareASale’s Product Discovery Bookmarklet, which shows you who’s on our network and populates their Affiliate link for you!

Make sure to switch up how you’re promoting brands to see which method works best for you. Some bloggers like to use images of products, where others only need a simple text link. It’s best to not overwhelm your readers with ads, so be sure to use the following tools for your blog and social media networks:

• Product Showcase – creates a dynamic banner ad
• Make-A-Page – pull individual products from a Merchant’s datafeed for a table or curated view
• Custom Link Generator – creates deep and shortened Affiliate links
• Banner Ads
• Video Ads 

Along with this blog audit, you can also perform a SWOT analysis of your blog. A SWOT analysis will also help to refocus and realign your goals for upcoming months. There’s a lot of work to do on your blog for fall and winter, so get started now and let us know how we can help you have the best Q4 yet!