Friday evening, you've decided to write a new blog post. You picked a topic that you think your followers will love. Designed a perfect blog title. Used compelling headlines. Then applied your storytelling skills.
You basically spent the whole week crafting the best blog post in town. Then you published it. After 3 days, you came back to see your post, just to realize no one came to read it! The worst nightmare isn't it?!
The problem with most bloggers is that they spend more time writing than promoting their blog. When it should be the other way around. You should spend more time promoting than writing!
Blog promotion is a never-ending process. Just like SEO. In fact, blog promotion is off-page SEO. If you're looking for ways on how you can promote your blog, then I'm glad you're here. For this article, I'll show you 12 different blog promotion tips you can easily apply right now. So, read on.
12 Effective Tactics For How To Promote Your Blog
1. Email marketing
One of the most popular ways you can promote your blog is through email marketing. By collecting the email addresses of your visitors, you can then notify them when you post something new on your blog or redirect them to your old articles.
This keeps people coming back to your blog, which gives you more readers over time. It also allows you to build a closer relationship with your audience by talking to them directly.
Email marketing is a huge topic to cover here well, so I recommend you to read this separate guide on how to build a mailing list fast.
If you haven't set up your email subscription feature yet, you can follow this simple tutorial.
Today, you also have FREE access to an email marketing mini-course. Join here before it closes.
2. Guest posting
Another way you can promote your blog is to write guest posts. Contact other blogs related to your niche and offer to write a post for their site. Keep in mind that not all bloggers are open to this idea. But if you can find a few, it will still significantly help to promote your blog.
This is how it works, you provide them with great quality content, and in return, you put a link to your blog in your post. It's a win-win situation. If people enjoy your guest post then they are more likely to visit your blog for more great content.
Try to only guest post on blogs that are more popular than yours and those who already have built an authority. Look for blogs with tens, or hundreds, of thousands of subscribers and submit your guest post to them.
3. Blog commenting
Identify the top blogs in your niche and start interacting and commenting on their blog posts on a regular basis.
If your comment is useful, you'll get the attention of other people and the blog owner. You might even get an invitation from the blog owner to write a guest post, who knows?
Don't just write generic comments such as:
“Great post!” or “Love this post, thanks for sharing!”
Try to write some relevant opinions. Add some advice. Question the author. Always take time to read the post before commenting!
You may be thinking: “Oh, this is a lot of work!” Of course, it is! But trust me, your hard work will pay off. When you start interacting with other bloggers within your niche, you are also building your brand and authority. You need to think long term.
In addition, don't spam your blog links within your comments. Remember, blog commenting is more about building a relationship. Not link building! Some great connections and friendships can come out of it as a result.
It's those friendships and connections that will help you promote your content better in the future.
4. Participate in online forums
Same as blog commenting, participating in online forums is also one of the best ways you can build relationships with other bloggers and audiences in your niche.
You should join popular online forums related to your topic. For example, if your blog is about “fitness for moms”, join a couple of the most popular “fitness for moms” forums.
Many forums will allow you to post a link to your site in the signature that goes at the bottom of every post you write. Some forums may require you to make a few posts before letting you do this.
You can't simply start spamming the forums with your links. Instead, focus on making valuable contributions to the forum. Respond to other people's questions and be active in popular discussions.
Once you have joined a forum, make helpful posts. Just as with blog commenting, the content of your posts needs to be high quality and helpful. One of the most popular forum platforms is Reddit.
To find niche-specific forums, simply search for the forums in Google with this algorithm:
“intitle:forum” + [your niche keyword]
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines, such as Google and Bing, are the #1 source of traffic for most established blogs. Why? Because their websites and contents are optimized to rank better in search results!
This optimization strategy is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO can be complicated, especially for beginners. But essentially, it is just the process of helping the search engines understand your content better.
If search engines find your content great for a specific keyword, they will rank it higher amongst other blogs. The result: you will get huge organic traffic. Cool right?
To know more about SEO, read our complete guide here.
6. Utilize Facebook groups
Facebook groups can also be a good source of traffic and exposure for your blog. Unfortunately, many people fail to get results because they approach these groups in the wrong way and can barely be differentiated from spammers.
The best way to get traffic from Facebook groups isn't just to post your links. Instead, make sure to use catchy text images as well as a compelling message that shows how people will benefit by reading your article.
You may also consider creating your own group so that you can set your own rules, then ask the people within your niche to join. Try to give bonuses to those people who are sceptical of joining.
People who've joined your group will be expecting something in return. Therefore, you should focus on giving them real value that will really help them reach their goals.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram allow you to put a link in your account bio. This is a very powerful feature, but some people failed to utilize it.
If you don't have social media accounts, or you want to remain anonymous with your blog, it's okay. I don't recommend creating social media profiles for the sake of blog promotion. There are still other tips here you can try.
However, if you already have social media profiles, but not using this feature, then you're missing a lot of opportunities! So, how can you actually make most of this feature?
The answer is: by building relationships with people in your niche.
If they are on Facebook, send them friend requests. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram. Comment on their posts consistently. Eventually, they will notice you and they will visit your profile to know more about you.
Then, BOOM! They look at your bio, and they just realized your blog about dog training, and at the same time, they also love training their dogs. Coincidence? Of course not!
They then visit your blog, consume your content, and buy your product. Simple right?
Same as optimizing your bio for your blog, you should also consider sharing your blog posts in all your social media profiles.
The more immediate retweets, likes, and general shares you get, the more credibility the post receives, so kick-starting your shares right when you publish is a great way to encourage even more shares.
You can piggyback off of the trending hashtags you see next to your Twitter feed, or you can easily search for popular ones people are using to share related content in your niche.
Also, you should know exactly what time of the day your followers are active so that you would know when to share your blog.
I also recommend sharing your blog post 3-4 times a day. Try different captions and titles. Experiment with images. Look for the most engaging post and do the similar for your next post.
Many bloggers fail to include social sharing buttons on their blogs and this is costing these bloggers social shares, exposure and traffic.
Adding social share buttons to your page will lead to more shares of your content and as a result, increased traffic.
If you are using WordPress, you can add social share buttons within your blog by installing the free plugin JetPack. Nomad Girl uses the Monarch plugin from Elegant themes as it social sharing plugin.
10. Pinterest
Pinterest is also one of the best platforms you can use to promote your blog. It is a social bookmarking website that helps users to search, store or manage the content they are interested in and share it across networks.
You really need to check out Pinterest right now. The post I created several months ago is still driving traffic to my blog today. Make sure to use vertical pins because they are proven to work the best. Use compelling images and headlines to make your post stand out amongst others.
You can also leverage 10, 20 or more experts in your niche to grow your blog. How?
The answer is by doing “expert roundups”.
You interview a group of experts and ask them one or two questions to be compiled inside one article. Make sure you're interviewing the real experts here. Not the fake ones (we know a lot of them). This will hurt the credibility of your article.
Once your expert roundup has been published, ask all the bloggers featured to spread the word about it. Then you'll get thousands of extra visitors to your blog.
12. Do cross-promotion with other bloggers
Find bloggers with a similar audience to yours and see if you can do a “shout out exchange”. In other words, you mention them on your blog and they mention you on theirs. You can also promote them to your email list while they promote you to theirs.
It would be better if you choose the people that you already know and trust. Look for bloggers who are worthy of your shout out. This ensures that you're only promoting reliable and trustworthy people.
Wrapping UP
With so many blog promotion tactics listed here, it's impossible to use them all at once.
My advice is to start off with one or two strategies and see what works best. Then try adding another one. And then another.
It might be that one tactic works for one blog post and a different tactic works for another, depending on your content and audience. Try not to be too hasty when eliminating a strategy as some might take longer to work than others.
Eventually, you can collate everything that works into a solid content promotion process. You can then use this process to get more traffic to each post you publish.
