Anime Blogs take work. If you already have an anime blog, you might be wondering how you’re supposed to gain followers to your anime blog. I mean, HOW do anibloggers(as they’re usually called) ACTUALLY gain subscribers to their content and followers on their social media?
This May will be my third year blogging. And my second year with aniblogging. When I first began blogging, as I mentioned in my “A Day in the Life of an Anime Blogger“, my first year wasn’t the best. I basically didn’t write anything and when I did, it wasn’t about anime. I wrote about mental health and other topics. Anime was my passion but I couldn’t find many groups about it and nobody was talking about how to make money off of it!
It was frustrating. I kept reading income reports of bloggers who wrote about blogging, mommy blogs, and even food blogs that brought in all this income and all I could do was MAYBE a dollar or two from Ads. But this isn’t how to make money off anime blogging. I already talked about that in the How to Make Money Anime Blogging article. Original title, huh? That’s SEO for ya.
For me, the two social media sites that I focus on are Twitter and Pinterest. Later on, I’ll figure out Facebook and Tumblr but those are my weak points. First, Pinterest is a GOLD mine when it comes to bringing you in traffic to your blog. People go there more than Google to search for stuff such as popular anime shows or cosplays. Anytime I have an article, I ALWAYS make sure I have 3 or 4 pins that I can use on Pinterest.
How Do You Gain Followers on Pinterest?
BE CONSISTENT!
The Pinterest algorithm likes it when you pin the same amount every day. So, not just pinning about 50 pins one day and then ghosting for a few days. If you pin 10-50 pins EVERY day, you’ll get more impressions and your pins will be shown more.
USE A BUSINESS ACCOUNT
Pinterest lets you have a free business account. It looks so much more professional and did I say it’s FREE? Then you can track your pins to see how many clicks and saves it’s getting. The image below shows how you can track your pins with impressions. You can even see which boards are getting the most saves and clicks!
Here’s an example of an individual pin below. This is one of my pins for my Dragon Prince article. It shows the stats for the last 30 days. It has 21K impressions which are how many times it’s shown on my followers’ feeds and people searching for the tags I’ve used. Then it has 444 saves and 39 people have actually clicked to go to the article. That’s the tricky part with Pinterest. Especially with an anime blog, it can be tricky to get people to actually CLICK on the article. You have to make a catchy enough title and introduction to it. Even then, it doesn’t always work.
FIND OUT WHEN YOUR FOLLOWERS ARE ONLINE
This part can be tricky as well. It takes a bit of trial and error to get it right and even then you can mess it up. That’s since it can ALWAYS change. At first, most of my saves and clicks happened about 6:00 pm at night and somehow, after about a year, now 4:30 in the morning is when I get them. I don’t know about you but I don’t want to get up that early or stay up that late just to pin the most. Luckily, if you create a pin on Pinterest, you can schedule it for the time you want(just click publish later when you’re creating it) and then you can sleep in!
You can find when they’re pinning by using the business account as well. Your notifications will tell you when they were
MAKE YOUR PINTEREST BOARDS CONSISTENT
This is the same with any blog, no matter what nice you’re in. With an anime blog, I found that people generally like the boards that have a theme. So my first few boards are my BEST of the Nerdy Girl News, my Group Board, and then my Sales boards where I have most of my merchandise at. No matter how you choose to do this, you need a BEST of (Your BLOG NAME HERE) board first. This is what people will see first and click on the most.
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After that, I have all the anime that I review or just really like in alphabetical order. I like things to look neat and having it this way just makes me feel organized.
Pinterest takes consistency. Give it about 3 or 4 months of consistent pining and you’ll start to get followers every day. I get about 100-200 every day even if I don’t pin myself now. You just have to keep at it and don’t give up!
How To Get Followers on Twitter
Twitter was harder for me to learn. I never really used it before and didn’t understand its algorithm. I started by using Facebook groups(which I no longer use) and did their follow-for-follow method. I don’t recommend this at all. Yes, you’ll have a higher number of followers but they’re just vanity views. 9 out of 10 of those who follow are just doing it to complete the thread and won’t ever go back to your blog. Or they’ll just unfollow you once you follow them back. When I began my anime blog, I removed all the vanity follows and checked to make sure my followers were people I actually KNEW wanted to read my blog.
With Twitter, I started by searching for tags of similar bloggers. Things like just anime or shows like Angels of Death. Then I would follow them so my feed would show more relevant posts. More than half of the time, they would follow me back. But I don’t consider that the follow-for-follow method since I’m only following people I actually WANT to follow. And they don’t always follow back. But finding more people who had an anime blog, really helped.
Also commenting is a huge thing on Twitter. Feedback is always important and I found that the more I commented, the more exposure I got on my posts and the more engagements I got back.
With an anime blog, you’re NOT in this alone.
You WANT to form a relationship with other anime bloggers. They can lift you up when you’re struggling to not hate your writing and might even always share your tweets.
I can’t even begin to explain how grateful I am for the anime blogging community. I’ve made some incredible friendships and gotten to know some incredible writers and people. Anime blogging can be tough but no matter what, we CAN do this.
If you’re interested, I do have a few guides for Pinterest for sale. I’m still working on the ones for Twitter. But the first one for Pinterest contains an in-depth view of your website and your Pinterest account. I’ll explain everything you need to raise your followers and gain more traffic. The second guide is I’ll actually be your Pinterest Virtual Assistant. As in, I’ll do your Pinterest account monthly to guarantee that you’ll get your views and followers. The first one is a simple 30 dollars and the Pinterest VA is $60. Message me through here if you’re interested!
As always,
Keep Smiling!