Do you want to increase traffic to your site? You might think, why do you need to learn how to promote your blog? Shouldn’t it be enough that you have a wonderful topic and interesting articles?
The answer is no. If you want more visitors, you simply must learn how to promote your blog.
One of the most difficult tasks facing any blogger is to effectively promote their blog. Thankfully there are several ways to promote your blog post regardless of whether you are part of a large blogging community or operate a well-known blog.
The trick is knowing where to look, and how to harness the power of your audience within different communities.
When promoting a blog, it is good to use the tools that only take the least amount of time yet can give you the most results. It should also be practical because nobody wants to spend hours doing stuff they don’t like.
You also have to choose the correct method or combination of methods that are favorable to your blog niche for faster results.
In this article, I am going to give you some tips on what worked for me and how I promote my blog.
1. Optimize Your Blog’s SEO for Google Rankings
You want your blog to get the maximum traffic it possibly can. The better the traffic, the more money you can make. But how do you get people to your blog? Place a link in another blog? Submit to niche directories?
That will work, but if you really want to grab at least 65% of the readers out there, then you absolutely must optimize your blog for Google rankings.
Optimizing your blog for search can be a lot of work, especially if you are trying to rank in Google. As it turns out, there is more to SEO than just the title and description for each post. If you want to reach a large audience, you need Google on your side.
Nowadays, people are more likely to search the web for information they need rather than looking in a book.
People know they can find whatever they want online because the internet provides complete information and services that are very helpful. Your blog may be trending right now, but it still won’t work without traffic from search engines.
Several techniques have been employed to get this page ranked higher in the search engines and there are several of them that you can use to make your blog rank higher on Google as well.
Here are some great tips for increasing your google rankings:
Do effective keyword research
Keyword research is a very important part of any content marketing strategy. Important because generally speaking, people search for what they want using specific keywords.
Understanding which words and phrases are trending helps to effectively craft your content around these topics, resulting in the higher ranking on search engines.
If you want to start a successful blogging career, it is important that you do keyword research correctly. The truth is that most of the blogs that are successful did not achieve success by mistake.
They were planned and then worked on until they finally achieved their goals. Many people think that good keyword ideas can only come from some sort of brainstorming, but there is a more effective way around this.
By using an effective keyword tool like Twinword Ideas, your job becomes easier, as you will know which keywords are going to work better than others.
See also: Why Keyword Research Is Still A Crucial Part Of Your SEO Success
Targeting long and medium tail keywords is vital
There are two types of keywords you can use to rank higher in the search engines: long tail keywords and medium tail keywords.
Long tail keywords are search queries with three or more words, and are much easier to rank high for because they often have less competition.
I’ve worked on blogs that have received hundreds of thousands of visitors and some that receive millions. How? I focus on long tail searches.
Keywords with 3+ words get more visitors than two word keywords because there’s less competition for them.
For example a keyword like “How to promote your blog” is more specific than the keyword “blog.”
Make sure you’re nailing your On-page SEO
The next step to promoting your blog is making sure that everything is up to snuff. On-page SEO is the process of optimizing your blog so that search engines can easily understand what your blog is about through your content.
Having good quality content that is relevant, unique, and engaging to your audience is the starting point when creating a blog.
On-page optimization aligns with having good content. The SEO factor encompasses how well you configure all of the elements on your page that Google’s search bots crawl and index.
It’s great to have a perfectly written blog post, but if you aren’t taking care of your on-page SEO, you could be losing out on valuable traffic and new links from influential websites.
When you think about it, it makes sense that if your pages aren’t optimized for search engines crawling your site, those pages won’t rank or even get discovered in the first place.
On-page SEO is important because it improves the chances that your blog posts will be found by more people who are searching for information on Google and other search engines.
That means more traffic and more people discovering your content.
See also: 10 Proven Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Blog By 100%
2. Research Your Competition
Quite often, finding the competition for a niche can be an easy task. That’s because there are thousands of people blogging about the same subject as you. The good news is that now you have a huge list of blogs that you can reach out to for guest posts and other tactics.
However, most people stop here and don’t take it any further which is a huge mistake. Instead, you should be doing even more research on those bloggers and seeing who they are following and what they are doing that you are not doing and vice versa.
It is called competitor analysis. Identify what they do well and see how you can improve on it. Try to find the best blogs in your niche and use their blog posting frequency, keywords, titles, length of posts, etc as a benchmark for your own blog.
See also: How To Dominate Your Niche With The Best Keyword Research Tools
3. Set Your Goals for Blog Traffic
Set clear goals for using blog traffic to connect with your audience. Determining the goals when launching a blog is an important first step towards making sure that you are successful.
The better you are able to set goals the more closely you will be able to see how you have progressed and gotten where you want to be.
Pick a number that you feel is achievable each month. Aim to beat your goal every time, but don’t be afraid to fail.
If you do fall short of those numbers, look at what you could have done differently. Learn from your mistakes and come back stronger than ever next month.
4. Use Email Marketing to Help Promote Your Blog
Email marketing is a great way to promote your blog. You can send an email to friends, family, fans and followers to announce a new blog or article of yours.
To begin with, you should develop a content plan that outlines what you plan to share on your blog every week. This will help you prepare your posts in advance and schedule them for release at the right time.
Just as with any email you send out, use this time to highlight the benefits. Why are you sending this email?
The benefits will reinforce your readers’ interest in reading your blog, as well as help them remember it so they can come back and read newer posts in the future.
Don’t forget to follow up with an action item (i.e., click here), and thank them for reading!
When you have an email list going, use it to promote your blog posts as soon as they are published. You can invite subscribers to visit your website and leave comments once they’re done reading your article.
Let’s look at some of the ways email marketing can keep readers coming back to your blog:
List building
One of the easiest and most successful ways to market your own blog is through the strategy of list building. By displaying a subscription box on your blog, you can ask for users’ email addresses in exchange for signing up for more content.
Once your blog is up and running, you will need to begin building a list of subscribers at some point. Your subscribers are the people who will be your constant visitors. They are known as your target audience.
These are often people who are interested in a similar topic as you, or they may be interested in the same product that you are promoting on your blog.
Building your list from day one is essential for your blog’s long-term success. When you’re consistently offering valuable content to readers, they’ll be happy to join your email list and stay in touch.
The best tools to use for your blog email marketing
There are many blogging tools out there. You might be overwhelmed by the process of creating your blog. Here is a list of my favorite email marketing tools to help you with your blog.
- ConvertKit (my favorite and what I use today)
- MailChimp (free for less than 2,000 subscribers)
- AWeber (what I used several years ago)
See also: 15 Best Email Marketing Services To Increase Your Conversion Rate
How to engage your email subscribers
Use storytelling in your emails
Storytelling is not just a quirky way to make your emails stand out. It’s a tried and true method for engaging your subscribers.
Email marketing is a powerful way to engage your audience. The key is never merely to ask for something in your email that comes off as spam.
Instead, think of your subscribers as friends and try to write it like an email you’d send to one of your friends.
Storytelling is a time-honored and powerful method of communication. It is more than simply telling a story in your email campaigns, though it’s about getting your point across in a way that makes an impact.
Nail your email subject line
One of the most important steps in effective email marketing is having a great subject line. Without a good one, your open rates will be low and you won’t get anywhere.
Here are 6 secrets to writing a killer email subject line that gets people to open your emails and click through:
- Use power words
- Don’t abandon the subject line
- Increase your subject line’s “mischief” factor
- Be specific and direct using numbers and symbols
- Show something to believe in
- Let them know what action you want them to take
Put these tricks into action and watch your open rate fly through the roof.
Keep it simple
You want to provide detail, so that people have full knowledge and a clear understanding of what they could get out of your product.
But, you don’t want to overwhelm them with information that will not benefit them either by taking up their time or pushing them away from the product.
5. Promotion in Social Networks
Over the past 10 years, the world of social media has undergone a major shift in direction. No longer is social media just for teenagers and the cool kids.
The new social media is primarily made up of bloggers, who are using their reach and voice to build their presence.
Your social media presence is important. You can’t just start a blog and expect people to find you. In fact, you might only be making things more difficult for yourself by doing so.
Social networking sites can be extremely helpful to boost your blog’s visibility and help you gain new followers, but if you don’t know how to use them correctly, your efforts are likely wasted.
Promotion via Twitter
A great way to promote your blog is using Twitter. Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that enables users to publish and spread short status updates called tweets.
Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
Tweets may contain text, URLs, hashtags, photos, video, instant messages, or other media.
You can also use Twitter to let others know about your great content. This way you are not only sharing your views, but helping others share theirs as well.
With Twitter if you don’t have enough followers but you want to increase your followers for free, it is very much possible.
Promotion via Instagram
Now let’s talk about Instagram as a promotional tool. It is mostly for fun, but it can also be a valuable way to build relationships with your audience.
The best part: there are no borders! You can post photos from anywhere you want, share your experience about almost anything that interests you.
Promotion via Instagram is certainly possible but it all comes down to the quality of your content and the amount of people engaged with your page.
In order to make the most out of the service you first need to get followers with great content that reflects your blog’s industry.
By getting engaged users on board you can generate some traffic and then reach out to people who may be interested in your blog thus boosting your audience and by default the popularity of your page.
You can get more Instagram followers by following these steps.
Promotion via Facebook
Facebook is a social networking site providing a platform where users can interact with each other through likes, comments, shares and many more for promoting any matter or business.
Facebook is also used as a marketing tool by millions of business owners as it provides various marketing options to promote their products over this website.
Networks like Facebook are the best way to create more awareness about a blog or a business. As we know, people trust their friends before they trust advertising.
It is that network effect that can be used for the blogging business. Use this knowledge and your blog promotion will be a success.
You can get more Facebook followers by following these steps.
Learn how to make your content a great source of information for your followers. Make sure that they can easily pass along the wealth of knowledge you have.
Here are some tips to help you share good contents:
Make your content easy to understand
Learning a new skill can be difficult, particularly if the information is complex or highly technical.
It is always better to simplify the message whenever possible by breaking the content into easily digestible chunks and then linking to further information should your audience want it.
Your in-depth analysis of how memory works, for example, may be best served broken up into several short articles about how a baby’s brain forms memories, how memories are formed in adults, and how memories are stored in our brains.
People want information, but they don’t want to wade through jargon to get it. It’s not enough to be insightful and entertaining.
You need to find a way to clearly present and explain your ideas in a fashion that doesn’t dissuade people from reading them.
See also: The Freelance Blogger’s Guide To Doubling Productivity
Use interesting titles
If you want to drive traffic to your blog, promote it in a way that intrigues people. In other words, the title of your blog should get people to click on it and read more.
One way to do this is by using interesting titles that say something about what blogs are on the page.
Your titles should include:
- Numbers
- Keyword or keyword phrase
- Make your headline interesting
- Include a paint point in your headline
If you want to know how to write a compelling title in 5 steps, you can also check with your competitors to know what they are doing right.
7. Guest Blogging Is a Good Way to Promote Your Blog
Guest blogging is one of the most powerful ways to promote your blog. While it takes time to build a brand, there is no doubt that the results are worth the effort.
You can easily get your content published on other authority sites by doing guest blogging. By guest blogging, you are exposing your content to new audiences.
You are telling others that your blog deserves a bigger audience. If you are smart enough, you can even increase your targeted backlinks.
A blog post should be attractive and interesting to attract readers from the very beginning. With content that turns into sales, you can grow your subscriber base and increase your domain authority.
If you guest write on other blogs in your niche, it will help search engines find your post, and in the process they may also find your site and link to it.
It also gives you a chance to build up a relationship with that blogger which might lead to them promoting your post on their pages.
8. Learn From Your Analytics
Setting up your blog for success starts from the analytics, and some bloggers even build a blog to post the analytics reports on their blog from time to time to keep them updated about their blog performances.
What kind of events or issues happened with your blog which may affect your business, and what should you do to fix it? How can you increase your strengths (such as traffic, conversion rate, email list, etc.)?
Analytics are vital in order to determine what readers really want, how to improve your blog and make it more attractive.
Make sure you track all of the following: Visits, Unique Visitors, Page Views, Bounce Rate, Time Spent, Referring Sites and Social Media Shares.
9. Interact With Your Audience to Promote Your Blog Better
Interacting with readers is one of the best ways to get them to stay loyal followers of your blog. Readers gain a sense of loyalty when they feel that they are being heard and could possibly participate in the conversation happening on your blog.
To be able to interact with your audience, you must do the following:
Make it easy for readers to comment on your blog
As a blogger, you probably know that it is beneficial to have a comment section so that readers can interact with your content. Once you have decided to add a comment section, the procedure to get such functionality in place isn’t really difficult to do.
Respond to the comments on your blog
When you get your first comment on a post, reply. A new user coming to your blog and seeing that you acknowledge their existence will be encouraged to continue commenting.
Plus, when you reply to their comment, it tells them that they have been heard. And that’s important.
Ask your audience questions
Ask your audience questions. . . it’s that easy. By asking questions and responding to the responses, you will develop a relationship with your audience. This makes it easier for them to trust you and what you are teaching them. Plus, it helps engage them in the conversation—which leads to increased traffic and conversions.
Identify how best to help your audience
One of the best ways to promote a blog is to recognize what your audience needs and then provide it for them.
Make a list of the top questions people have regarding you or the subject matter covered on your blog. Those are going to be the keys to determining how you can help your audience.
For example, if you’re writing a blog about travel tips, people might ask how you pack light. So your goals will be focused on how to pack light, how to stay organized while traveling, etc.
10. Develop Your Personal Brand
Developing a personal brand is one of the most powerful and effective marketing tools you can do. The term personal branding refers to your own image and identity.
It focuses on who you are as an individual, what you have to offer that’s different and unique, and how you want others to perceive you.
We live in a customer-centered world and in order to be known, we have to stand out from the crowd. Readers will give their attention only to those who can offer them something of value.
You must build relationships with your readers and prospects, not just push products on them. Having a strong personal brand is an essential part in gaining the attention of your audience.
See also: Complete Copywriting Guide: How to Craft Copy That Sells
FAQs
How much money can you realistically make blogging?
This is a question I’m asked weekly, if not daily, by new bloggers. And the answer isn’t an exact science. One blogger could make $5k a month while another makes $500 a month – it all depends on your specific niche and audience size.
Does anyone read blogs anymore?
Well, I guess it depends on what you consider a blog. Blogs have become so much more than they were ten years ago. They can be used to make money or they can simply be used for personal blogging.
Either way, you should be writing no matter what your intention is because writing is a powerful tool for public relations and content marketing.
Is blogging a good career?
Yes, blogging is a great career.
Who is the highest paid blogger?
Top 10 highest-earning bloggers are:
- Moz: $44.9 million per year.
- PerezHilton: $41.3 million per year.
- Copyblogger: $33.1 million per year.
- Mashable: $30 million per year.
- TechCrunch: $22.5 million per year.
- Envato Tuts+: $10 million per year.
- Smashing Magazine: $5.2 million per year.
- Gizmodo: $4.8 million per year.
Final Thoughts
After reading this post, it should be clear to you that there are various ways to promote your blog. I’ve provided an overview on some of the more popular options, but you’d do well to further research each of them.
For a blog to be successful you need to understand how to promote your blog. There are numerous ways to learn more but the most important part is consistency.
Any type of marketing that you do needs to be consistent or it will not have any effect on your blog. You just need to decide what makes sense for you.
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