Promoting

So you’ve just written and published a great blog post. It offers value to your readers, it’s super detailed and it has an awesome headline.

But…people aren’t flocking to see it yet. Maybe you shared it on your social channels. Maybe you even paid for a couple of ads to get more traction. But still – you need more traffic. Where do you get it?

In this blog post, I’m going to share 4 most effective methods for promoting your blog posts.

Some are quick wins – methods that will get you traffic quickly and effectively. Others take time – but they’re definitely worth the effort if you’re willing to put in the time. Let’s get right into those tactics:

1.    How to promote your blog post on social media – the right way

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Sharing your blog post on social media can seem easy. You write a short blurb about the blog post, you add the link, you stick an image on it and that’s it. You might share it a few more times in the weeks to come, but that’s about it.

If that’s your current social media strategy, there are ways to massively improve it.

Here are some of my best tips for promoting your blog posts on social media:

• Optimize your updates for different social networks: each social network is different and their users have different expectations. Whenever you share a blog post, in order to maximize your results, try optimizing your updates for each social network in turn – and that means everything, the text update and the imagery used to promote it
• Keep promoting your blog posts regularly: if your content is evergreen – or at the very least, for as long as it is still relevant – you should continue to share it out on your social media channels regularly. On Twitter, you can do this more frequently (once every few days, for example), while on other social networks (like Facebook or LinkedIn) you can re-share it once a week or every few weeks, depending on how much you normally post. To help with this, you can use a social media tool with queue features, like Agorapulse, which allows you to create numerous queues for your posts. Each queue has its own schedule so as you add updates to each queue, the tool will automatically share them out at the times and dates you initially set. This way, you don’t have to schedule or publish each post manually and you can even have the updates republished regularly and completely automatically
• Leverage groups: Facebook has some groups specifically created for sharing blog posts (they kind of work like a blogging community); however, those shares might not always be from your target audience. Instead, join relevant niche groups (on Facebook, LinkedIn) and be active regularly – check their guidelines however to see if you’re also allowed to occasionally toot your own horn
• Social media ads: last but certainly not least, you can always leverage ads to get a quick boost in traffic. Try to experiment with your targeting and copy and monitor your results to see which ads perform best

2.    Guest post regularly on popular niche blogs

Guest posting won’t get you tons of  traffic – I’m certainly not going to pretend it does. But a great and consistent guest blogging strategy will help you grow your blog and drive more traffic:

• It will build up your authority in your niche
• It will help you build up quality backlinks
• And it will boost your SEO so that your blog posts rank higher and therefore, you’ll get more traffic back

Plus, you’ll also get traffic directly, particularly if you guest post for very popular websites; most publications allow for at least one link back in your author bio, but there are also quite a few that let you link to one or two of your blog posts within the body of the content.

Start by putting together a wish list of websites that accept guest posts, check their guidelines and start pitching and writing; or, if you’ve just started out blogging and want to make a name for yourself, start with smaller blogs and work your way up.

But most importantly, set yourself some monthly (realistic) targets: how many guest posts can you produce a month?

3.    Connect with other bloggers and influencers to boost your shares

A few shares from the right people can generate amazing results for your blog – bloggers or influencers from your niche.

There are several ways to go about this:

• The long way: start building relationships with bloggers and influencers in your niche by connecting with them on social media, sharing their content on your social profiles, or linking to their website/blog posts in your content. To speed up the process, you can always reach out to them to let them know you loved their content – and that you shared it out as well. It might take a while to build up these relationships, but they’re very much worth it: these relationships will help you time and time again
• The short way: one option is to join blogging communities where bloggers of all kinds share their latest content so that other bloggers (and sometimes, influencers) will share them out on their profiles. Make sure however to return the favour! Another great option is to use something like Quuu Promote – similar to a blogging community, in the sense that you’re posting your links/updates and others share them out, this is a quick and highly effective way to generate shares from real social influencers and traffic, quickly (plus, you can also see stats for each of your updates in terms of total shares and clicks)

Ideally, use both methods so that you’ll develop valuable relationships with bloggers and influencers, and gain traffic quickly by joining blogging communities.

4.    Promote your blog posts to your existing audience

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Are you building up your email list?

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tactics and that certainly holds true with blogging as well.

So, in order to drive more people back to your website and reading your blog content, follow these steps:

• Create lead magnets and place them throughout your blog/website: it can be how to guides, whitepapers, research papers, e-books, templates – basically, any content that provides real value to your audience and makes them want to download it
• Promote your blog broadcasts on your blog: get people to sign up to receive all your latest news and blog posts
• Send regular email broadcasts with all your latest content, as well as promote some of your older, evergreen content

Ideally, try to set up A/B tests in order to optimize your strategy and generate better results. most email marketing tools let you do this with the emails’ subject lines (so you can see which subject lines generated the largest open rates), but you can also send out broadcasts with different wordings/imagery to see how that affects your click-through rates.

Conclusion

Promoting a blog can take just as much time as it took to actually write it – sometimes, even more. But since there is so much content available online, both good and bad, that a good promotional strategy is essential to success. Otherwise, quite simply, people won’t see or find your content. Use the tips in this article to develop a promotional strategy that works for you and use it every time you publish a new guest post.

[“source=forbes”]