"It's always a great idea to create excitement over your blog and business." I find myself telling this to my clients and peers on a weekly basis, and it's a practice that has played a large role in the increased following of Elle & Company. It's always smart to find ways to stay in the forefront of your readers' minds and keep them coming back for more. Generating buzz about your blog and business gets your followers involved and allows you to connect with them, which in turn builds trust, increases sales, and encourages reader and customer loyalty.

So today I'm sharing 30 simple, effective ways that you can create excitement and generate a buzz about your blog or business. Many of these ideas can be combined, added onto, or built upon, and I encourage you to get creative and make them your own; these ideas will be most helpful for you if they're relevant and appealing to your ideal audience.

30 Ways to Generate Buzz for Your Blog | Elle & Company

Host a giveaway. We all love free stuff! Hosting a giveaway for something valuable and relevant to your blog will gain the attention of followers and non-followers alike. This has the potential to drive traffic to your site, raise awareness about your blog, increase sales (if you're also a business) and draw in new fans.
Launch a new offering. Coming out with a new offering, whether it's a product, service, or feature, can pique followers' interest and give them something to look forward to. Use the time before your launch to generate even more of a buzz by sharing sneak peeks and/or starting a countdown.
Start a contest. Contests are great for getting your followers involved with and excited about your blog. It's also a great idea to come up with a hashtag for the contest so that readers can follow along.
Ask for feedback. This could take the shape of a survey, or you can get creative and ask readers to make decisions about something like a new blog series, the design of your living room, which photo to enter in a competition, etc.
Revamp the look of your site. A rebrand is a great reason to celebrate and create hype about your blog/business! Like I mentioned in #2, consider giving your readers something to look forward to by starting a countdown and sharing sneak peeks along the way.
Start a new series. Launching a new weekly, monthly or short-term blog series has the potential to grab your readers' attention and gives them something to anticipate.
Host a Twitter chat. When we first launched the weekly #ellechat, I didn't realize just how great it would be for creating a community. Start your own Twitter chat around a specific topic and start a conversation among your readers. The networking opportunities and shared ideas are a great way to generate excitement over your blog.
Get featured in a publication. Having your work highlighted on another site is a great way to create buzz about your business with a new audience. This can lead to an increase in blog traffic and sales, and it can also legitimize your talent and expertise with your current audience.
Guest post on another site. Like #8, guest posting allows you to generate hype about your business with a new audience. Share your guest post with your current audience on social media and get them excited about the feature, too.
Host a live webinar. Webinars are a great way to interact with followers and give them valuable advice and information. When your offerings are helpful and useful for your audience, buzz is inevitable.
Showcase new work. Gain the attention of potential clients and customers by making a big deal about completed projects. Share the work up and down on social media, blog about it, and feature it in an email campaign.
Teach a class. If you're an expert in your field, teaching a class is helpful for both generating excitement and validating your expertise.
Share your secrets. I talked about this in last week's post, but sharing secrets is valuable for readers and often unexpected. Blog posts that give insight and provide useful information are shared more often on social media and gain more attention from current and potential readers.
Partner with another blogger. This opens you up to a whole new audience and gives your current readers something to look forward to.
Host an event. Involvement and engagement generates excitement and don't forget to share it up and down on social media to encourage participation. Even if a follower can't attend, excitement can be generated just by following along with the event hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.
Rally around a cause. We all love working toward a greater good. Partner with a non-profit, donate a certain amount of profits or proceeds to an organization, raise awareness for a cause in a blog series - get creative!
Create an original video. Switch things up with a video on your site to tell people about a new offering, showcase a project, capture an event, or show new visitors around your site.
Start a podcast. Podcasts are becoming increasingly popular, especially among bloggers. Take your content to audio and mix things up a bit!
Start a vlog. It's easy to get stuck in the same blogging routine day after day, and that can lead to standard, expected content. Instead of writing out a post, consider taking it to video with a vlog. Share a tutorial, conduct an interview, tell a story - again, the opportunities are endless.
Get featured in the news. This generates hype with a much larger audience and also has the potential to legitimize your blog/business. HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a great resource for connecting you with sources for publicity.
Gain endorsements. Word of mouth and personal testimonies have the greatest impact for generating excitement about your blog and business, especially if they're from a person with a large following. Reach out to people, get out of your comfort zone, and go out on a limb!
Speak at an event. Like #8 and #20, this is a great way to validate your credentials and appeal to a new audience.
Enter into a competition. Allow your readers and followers to rally around you and support you in a competition. The excitement will increase even more if you win or place well.
Set a crazy goal. I said this earlier, but people love supporting a cause and following along with a goal. Let your readers in on a goal and give them an inside look at how you're reaching it.
Break a record. Richard Branson is famous for breaking crazy records like the first hot air balloon flight across the Atlantic and becoming the oldest person to kite surf across the English Channel. While you don't have to go quite that far, breaking a record can generate a lot of excitement.
Start a challenge. Engage and involve your followers by starting a challenge. Create a hashtag on social media to encourage participation.
Create your own day or holiday. Start your own 'holiday' for your blog or business and find fun ways for your followers to participate by pulling from other ideas on this list.
Launch a sale, deal, or promotion. Chick-fil-a has been giving away free coffee for the entire month of February, and you can bet that the restaurant chain been on my mind a lot more these past couple weeks. Launching a sale or promotion generates excitement about your blog/business by keeping it at the forefront of followers' minds.
Search for free places to advertise. Create hype on other websites, social media, or even local coffee shop bulletin boards. You never know - small ads and mentions can lead to big opportunities.
Do something they haven't seen anywhere else. This is the biggest way to generate buzz for your blog; do something entirely different and unique. There's something in all of us that appreciates an original idea and can't help but spread the word about it!

What ideas have you found helpful for generating excitement about your blog or business? Are there any tips on this list that you hope to put into practice?