We were inspired to create this post because there is a challenge in the blogging community – it’s becoming increasingly difficult for creators to share their content on the web in a way that gets noticed. It’s our hope that we can provide some insight as to how to continue to show support to your favorite bloggers to strengthen the entire creator community!
If you’re a creator yourself, we hope to give you some tools you can use to continue to keep in touch with your followers, and even show you how to ask for basic support with your ventures.
In the year 2017, it’s harder than ever for bloggers and creators to share the content we create. We are finding numerous hurdles on almost every single platform that seem to work hard to not show content from creators, even though you chose to follow them!
For example: If we have 10,000 followers on Facebook, Facebook will only show our content to about 500 of those people. This makes is challenging to share the posts we do write to those that already follow us.
For us, sharing our journey and inspiring others is something we’re extremely passionate about, and we know other creators feel the same way.
We can also all agree that we all have blogs we enjoy following and want to continue following, and for these reasons, we want to share some ways we can work together to strengthen the community, and show support to creators big and small!
1. Subscribe to our email list & add our email to your contacts list.
We totally respect that you probably get a lot of emails in your inbox – we do to – but this is one of the best ways you can be notified of our new content. Why? Because 100% of emails are delivered.
However, subscribing to our list isn’t enough: you also need to add our email to your contacts list, or else it’s likely your email platform will send our emails to your spam folder along with the male enhancement emails.
This is the only reliable way to be notified of new videos and posts we or other creators publish which is why we list it #1.
Gmail users: If you’re on Gmail, check your promotions folder to see if any of our emails are in there. In addition to adding our email to your contacts list, you can also click and drag that email to your inbox. When it asks if you always want our emails to go to your inbox, say yes.
2. Follow us on Facebook & opt to see content from whoever your favorite creator is first.
Following your favorite creators on Facebook isn’t enough since Facebook only shows our content to maybe 5% of followers! The struggle is real!
Once you “like” our page on Facebook, if you really love us (like more than anybody!), opt to have our new posts to show first in your news feed.
You can only do this for ONE page or creator you follow, so make it count!
3. If you’re on YouTube, subscribe to us, bookmark your subscriptions page, click the bell to be notified of our videos & enable push notifications on your smartphone.
We did an entire video on the changes going on with YouTube, and while it’s quite lengthy, the length of the video was required to get to the bottom of how YouTube is making it challenging for creators to continue sharing content on the platform.
In a nutshell, we work hard to create quality videos and gain subscribers, but then YouTube refuses to show you content from the channels you choose to subscribe to but rather, promotes clickbait or “trending” videos that are more often than not, garbage.
The purpose of this video wasn’t to complain – it was to raise awareness and strengthen the YouTube community.
If you want to watch the video, click here (jumps to support portion of video), otherwise, here’s what you can do in a nutshell to be notified of our new videos (otherwise, we’re sending them into a black hole where they are never to be seen again).
Bookmark your subscriptions page
If you go to the YouTube homepage, it’s unlikely that you’ll see our videos anymore. Instead, bookmark your subscriptions page, where you should see new videos from channels you subscribe to.
Check that you’re subscribed (or still subscribed) to our channel
Many have found that YouTube has unsubscribed them without them knowing. So double check this!
Click the bell & make sure you’re set up to receive notifications for our videos
In the olden days, you were notified when there was a new video from your subscriptions, but now you’re not. Click the bell and click “notify of new videos”
After you click the bell, click “Manage settings” to ensure that the box is checked next to “Receive occasional emails from YouTube”.
If you would like to receive notifications on your smart phone, check that “Push and email” is selected next to “Subscriptions: Notify me via”.
Be sure that your notification bell looks like it’s ringing.
If it’s not, then you might not have hit ‘Save’ on your notifications screen!
Enable push notifications on YouTube on your smartphone
If you have a smartphone and would like push notifications on your phone when a video is released from someone you subscribe to, be sure to select “Push and email” next to “Subscriptions: Notify me via” but that’s not all you have to do… proceed to the next step!
I’m sure every phone is slightly different, but on an iPhone as we have, go to your Settings > YouTube > Notifications > Toggle “Allow Notifications
Try to watch the video within the first 48 hours
After diligent testing and observing, we’re convinced that if a video does well in the first 48 hours that YouTube will promote a video, therefor, your viewership when the video is first released is huge. Many thanks if you can support a creator in this manner.
4. Like, share, & engage with content.
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and even Pinterest are all algorithm-based now, meaning, content is promoted that is engaged on by the community as that means it’s probably good content worthy of being promoted.
You’re familiar with the phrase “vote with your dollar” but in the online community, you vote with your “like”, comment or viewership.
Any time you see your favorite creators’ content on social media, it’s greatly appreciated if you give it a “like”, leave a comment of any length, or even share it on your own Facebook page or to a group you’re part of.
No need to wait for your favorite creators’ posts to appear on social media – feel free to share directly from their website as well! Many have social sharing icons at the top, bottom, or side of the post to make it easy peasy.
5. Purchase products through their affiliate links.
As a creator and blogger, it’s challenging to make an income, sometimes even just enough to cover the overhead such as hosting fees. One way we as creators can make money without asking for monetary donations is to use affiliate links to products we use and recommend.
How does an affiliate link work? When you click on one of our links and complete a purchase, we get a small commission. On Amazon this is 2-6% or so, but it doesn’t cost you a dollar more to shop through the affiliate link. This is hugely appreciated.
We try to do this every time we make an online purchase by clicking on someones link who we like, have learned from our want to support. We tend to spread the love as we have many friends and colleagues with blogs and YouTube channels that we like to support.
Bookmark Your Favorite Creators’ Amazon Links
For the sake of convenience, some prefer to bookmark these links so they’re easy to grab when you’re ready to make a purchase.
- Click on their link . It will open in a new window and it will simply look like the homepage of Amazon, but there will be a unique tracking code that is associated with our site!
- Press Ctrl + D (Command + D on Mac) on your keyboard to bookmark the link. Name it something like “Amazon – Pure Living for Life Blog”
- Any time you go to Amazon to make a purchase, access Amazon through that link and your favorite bloggers should receive a commission on your order at no additional cost to you.
6. Simply ask “How can I best support you?”
Last but not least, if it’s not obvious how to show support to your favorite creators, ask them! Some things other ways creators may love for you to support them could include:
Supporting them through Patreon: This is a new thing where you can pledge a small amount of money to your favorite creators on a monthly or per-video basis. We choose not to have this at this time, but many are set up on this platform.
Sending a direct donation through Paypal: We never ask our subscribers for financial compensation, but some wish to show support in this manner anyways, and it’s always appreciated. Most creators have a paypal account so if it’s not obvious what email they use, ask them and send away!
Shop their wishlist on Amazon: We are huge advocates of helping others in the means of providing tools rather than monetary donations, so ask if they have an Amazon wishlist and you can see if gifting something on the list is a way you’d love to show support whether it’s a better tripod, a better micorphone, or a new pair of work pants!
Bonus Tips – For Bloggers Only!
Well, you can access these if you don’t have a blog, but these are some extra things bloggers can do to let their readers know that there ARE easy things they can do to support their blog. If you don’t put it out there, they won’t know, so here are some things we do to let others know the type of support we’re looking for!
In a nutshell – verbalize your support with your actions!
Wrapping this up, there are numerous ways to show support for your favorite bloggers and most of it comes down to just enjoying and engaging with their content.
The web is an ever-changing place and with algorithms changing on a monthly basis, it’s challenging for bloggers to have their quality content seen! It’s no longer a matter of simply producing great content and sticking it on the web to be found – these platforms aren’t even showing our content at all so if people did see it, they would engage with it, but they simply aren’t seeing it. On any platform.
This is why the best thing you can do is do an audit on your various platforms to see if you’re opening up the door to have your favorite bloggers’ content shown to you at all.
THANK YOU For Your Support
From us personally, we want to give a big THANK YOU for everyone that has supported us this far in our journey!
We wouldn’t be able to do it without you. Here’s a big air hug from us to you.
We really do appreciate all of the comments and helpful tips you guys leave us even if we don’t have time to respond to them all – but we do make an appoint to read every one of them!
Share this post!
We really hope this page can serve as some sort of resource for the community, so think about giving it a “like” or share on social media whether you’re a lover of blogs or whether you’re a blogger yourself!
If you’re a blogger, feel free to create something similar for your own support page, just don’t copy/paste word-for-word as that could get you a slap on the hand from Google 😉 Thanks again to all!
