Right folks, I hope you’re all back to work and ready to rock this year like no other year! Well, I am! I love starting my year with a fresh update on my blog + website and I’m already putting some ideas together to polish things up. I know we all need to improve a few things here and there, thus, I prepared a list of 5 Awesome Things You Can Do to Improve Your Blog in 2016:

You might also like:

• FREE 5-day course: Start A Profitable Blog
• Benefits of Migrating to Self-Hosted WordPress.org
• 10 Ways To Upgrade Your Old Blog Posts

1. Get Your Social Media Act Together.

You probably are already growing some numbers on social media accounts, but if you really want to make a big splash in 2016, you should sit down and think about your strategy. Not only your Instagram should be in the best condition and your tweets should be funny as hell, you should also take the most out of your time spent online. Make sure you share your posts out there DAILY. You can use amazing helpers such as Hootsuite and schedule your posts in advance. Only 1 extra hour a week and you can see a huge improvement in your traffic and build connections online.

Read more: Growing Your Blog’s Audience Through Social Media

2. Be consistent!

6 months ago when I started blogging consistently 3-4 times a week, I noticed a huge improvement in my monthly stats. You don’t have to follow the number here. Even if you blog once a week, it’s fine! Choose a schedule that works for you and stick to it. You don’t have to go all-in from the early beginning. Even after 3 years of blogging, I don’t feel like I could keep up with daily posts. Of course, it’s in my goals one day, but I believe in quality over quantity and so should you.

This applies to other areas of your blog too. Make sure you update your social media as much as you can, improve your products and send emails to potential customers on the certain day of a week/month. People are busy, so don’t forget to remind them about yourself from time to time.

Read more: How to Maintain Your Blogging Biz When You Have No Free Time

3. Improve your photography skills.

Trust me, you don’t need to own a fancy camera to make great pictures. As long as you read the manual and learn a thing or two about picture editing- you can make your blog + biz look 10 times better. Make sure you take your images in a natural light and work a bit on exposure + contrast.

Read more: How I Edit My Instagram Pics + 10 Tips for Better Blog Photography

4. Connect.

I know it’s fun to have your mom & sister reading your blog, but I bet you can still see a number of more than 2 views a day? Make sure to get to know your readers and connect with them! If you get a lovely comment- reply in a nice manner. It’s more than possible that the person reading your blog is also trying to build his presence online, so you should take a minute and pay them a visit. Comment back, like a picture or two and here you go- your one-time reader can become your best blogging buddy! It doesn’t take much to say please & thank you, so make sure you spread some happiness to people that appreciate your work.

Same goes with possible business partners. Send a generous email to the brand you always wanted to work with, no-one will punish you for trying and you might be surprised to what this can turn into!

Also read: 10 things to keep in mind when launching your first blog

5. Start a mailing list.

If you’re taking your blog seriously, you must start a mailing list today. I only started building my mailing list a couple of months ago and I already noticed the benefits of sending weekly emails to my subscribers. It’s the best way to get noticed and attract loyal blog readers. If you’re looking for a useful software to start your mailing list, I can highly recommend using MailChimp for this, they turn keeping mailing list into a very easy task!

Read more: Growing your newsletter. How I gained my first 1k subscribers?

Hope you guys found these tips useful! Let me know what are your goals this year!