Whether you’re a new blogger just starting a blog or a seasoned one, participating in or organizing a blog hop can be a great way to connect with fellow bloggers and expand your blog’s reach.
If you are interested to learn what exactly is a blog hop, how to find one to take part in, or how to organize it yourself, then you’ve come to the right place!
A guide to blog hops
What is a blog hop?
A blog hop also called a link-up party or link party is an online blogger networking event. It’s when a list of links to various blogs is shared amongst the participating bloggers. A blog hop can be hosted by one or a few hosts and it can be either open or closed:
- Open blog hop: Anyone can participate in the event by including their blog link on the list before the sign-ups close.
- Closed blog hop: Only selected bloggers are invited to link their blogs in the link list.
The main goal of link parties is to allow bloggers in a specific niche to connect and share their readership with each other.
Benefits of joining blog hops
Relationship building
Networking and building strong relationships with your community and other experts in your field have a lot of benefits. Blog hopping is one of the most effective ways to build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.
Joining the blog hop and spending time connecting with other bloggers in your niche can give you a great head start to start building relationships. A great way to do this is through commenting and promoting their blogs on your social media accounts.
Drive traffic
A blog hop is a fantastic way to drive free traffic to your blog. When fellow bloggers share your blog on their socials and email newsletters, your blog appears in front of a whole new audience. A lot of those people will visit your blog if they’re interested. Which is the easiest way to drive traffic without active time or money investment from you.
Link building
Link building is one of the key components of SEO optimization. Google and other search engines take all the links to your website into consideration when ranking your blog in search.
The more quality backlinks your website and blog have, the better your chances of ranking higher in search are. The key word here is quality though. Your ranking in search will only be affected if you have reputable blogs linking to your blog.
Now, you might be thinking about how to get those quality backlinks. One of the easiest ways is blog hopping. When other blogs that participate in the blog hop link to your website, you have a chance to improve your SEO ranking.
How to find and join a blog hop
The first step will be to find out if bloggers in your niche do blog hops. Not all blog niches work well with blog hops. Most often, blog hops are for bloggers in lifestyle niches or those that are personal blogs. So, if your blog is all about home decor and your personal take on interior design on a budget, blog hops will work better than if you have a company blog.
The easiest way to find a blog hop in your niche is to ask around other bloggers in your niche. This not only will show you if blog hops are a thing in your niche. But it can also help you find the right opportunities you might not find advertised elsewhere.
If you don’t have a network of bloggers yet and are not sure where to start, it’s alright. You can easily use Google to help you find blogs that are organizing blog hops in various niches. Simply Google blog hop + [your niche].
You might find Google Forms where you can sign up for upcoming blog hops. However, not all bloggers list invitations publicly. If you can’t find a signup form anywhere, you can simply email the blogger directly asking for more information and if you could join.
Remember, once you join a blog hop, you’ll have to make an effort to participate. So, be prepared to write thoughtful blog posts that fit the theme of the blog hop you are participating in. You should also be ready to share other bloggers’ posts with your readers, and engage with their content by commenting.
How to organize your own blog hop
If you’d rather organize a blog hop yourself than join an existing one, you can definitely do it in a few easy steps:
Step 1: Pick a theme/topic. You’ll want to center your blog hop around a specific topic or a theme. It’ll help you entice the audience to visit because they’ll know exactly what they can expect.
Step 2: Decide if it will be a closed or open blog hop. Both can work great, it just depends on how many bloggers you have in your network already. If you’re new to the scene, you might consider an open blog hop to encourage more people, and if you already have an audience, then being more selective can be more beneficial and easier to manage.
Step 3: Pick a date and time. Decide on when you want to start the application process for a blog hop if you’re doing an open blog hop, when the application process closes and when you want to go live with the blog hop. It will help the participants to be more organized and it will also allow the readers to know when they can expect to see content from you.
Step 4: Set rules. You decide what sort of participation rules there will be. While you want to keep it simple, asking participants to actively promote the blog hop on their socials, and to their email list as well as asking to comment on other participants’ posts is a baseline.
Step 5: Choose participants. It’s always best to keep the participant list to less than 10. Otherwise, it can get overwhelming for everyone involved and you might not get the same level of engagement.
Step 6: Create a promotion strategy. You might want to create a marketing plan for the blog hop that involves social media promo and an email list campaign to get the word out about the blog hop to more people strategically.
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