Creative Ways To Promote Your Blog

Since your blog can be such an important part of building an online income source, I’ll share a little round-up of ideas of how to promote your blog – both online and offline.

After you’ve put in the effort to create a great blog, you want to find an audience to share it with and gain followers. Newly started blogs can take at least a few months before they begin to receive traffic from search engine searches. That’s a lot of “lonely” time!

To kick start the life of a new blog, there are a vast number of ways one can get the word out about their new blog or website. So, let’s explore a few!

 

Content and Comments!

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First off, you cannot promote a blog without quality content! Take the time to write a good one thousand words or more in your post. A post rich in content will get indexed and ranked better in search engines. Lots of content will stimulate comments. Of course, comments add more content! Be sure to respond to comments and engage your audience.

Engaging your audience generates a lot of activity which helps boost your trust and ranking in search results. You don’t need any SEO “gurus” just lots of quality content – the more the better! But… keep it unique and original!

 

Social Media

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Sharing your blog posts on social media sites is a fantastic way to boost traffic to your blog. A good time to share your post is as soon as you publish it. It does not hurt to do a follow-up share of older posts after a certain amount of time. There may be several new friends or followers that did not see your original share.

Social Share Links

You can add direct links in your blog post to share directly to platforms like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Many blog theme templates, like the thousands that are available for WordPress, include social sharing buttons. There are many plug-ins that will add and manage social sharing features, too.

Open Graph Data

How often have you shared a web page and had it show up in your share as some irrelevant gibberish that makes no sense? There are special tags you can embed in your HTML code that tell social media platforms what image and text snippet to display in your share. You will want to define this so that a shared blog entry appears as you want it on Facebook or other platforms. There are plug-ins for WordPress that can manage this.

Tag! You’re it!

Be sure to tag people whom you know are definitely interested in what you are sharing. They may in turn share your post.

Re-Tweet

Tweet it on Twitter. Re Tweet it a few times throughout the day. Infographic posts are great for tweets.

Pinterest

Share a catching picture on Pinterest that links to your blog post. You’ll want a catching and original image for this. Don’t settle for some generic stock image. Perhaps a photo of an activity you’re doing, or a work in progress, that relates to your post.

 

Email

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Email Lists

If you have a list of email contacts, or a mailing list you’ve compiled, send out an email notifying your list of a new post. On your blog website, offer an option for your visitors to subscribe to an email list. This way they can be notified when you publish new content. There are numerous blog plug-ins that can be used to build and manage mailing lists.

Email Signatures

Include your blog website link in your email signature. Configure your email client or webmail to automatically include the link in your signature at the end of every message.

Email Address

Set up an email address at your blog website domain. For example: yourname@yourblogwebsite.net. This adds a touch of professionalism. You can simply set this up to forward to your a regular email address you use.

 

Business Cards

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How often to you find yourself talking with someone, and you’re not at a computer, or even away from internet access altogether? Business cards are a great “offline” option for sharing your blog or website.

It is fairly cheap to have hundreds of cards made from suppliers like Moo Business Cards, and others.

Leave a few business cards in those little boxes you find at restaurants and other public places.

QR Code

You can even have a QR code link to your site printed on the back side of your card for quick access via a smartphone. Beats typing in a website on a phone keyboard. Speed and convenience really helps!

Car Magnets and T-Shirts

Make up some magnetic panels with your site logo, tag line and address. You can slap these onto the side of your car or van. T-shorts or clothing emblazoned with your site info is also a bold idea. You can have a QR code on these as well.

 

Podcasts

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Audio tracks add another dimension to your content. Record a 10 or 20 minute segment of a post as spoken audio and provide a link to that in your blog. Podcasts are great for those who like to listen while doing other tasks, such as exercise, etc.

You can record podcasts with free tools like Audacity and many others. Podcasts can be easily uploaded and shared on sites such as Sound Cloud, iTunes or Stitcher. There are many mobile apps for recording and sharing podcasts on iTunes and Google Play.

Podcasts can be done up with added music and sound effects. They can, and should, be a lot more than just a narration of what you write.

 

Make an eBook or Presentation

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If you have collection of posts, compile these into an eBook. An eBook can even be sold if it contains good quality content.

Another options is create a presentation slide deck in tools like Power Point, Keynote and other applications. This will work best if you take the time to reformat/rearrange your content into a format that looks great as a presentation. Don’t just copy your blog and plop it onto some slides. Presentations can become a form of content marketing through platforms like Slideshare.

 

Infographics

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Infographic posts are yet another great way to share your content. This can be very effective on platforms like Twitter or Pinterest. Tweets are small and fast. You can’t tweet a 5,000 word epic, but can tweet an infographic image. There are many tools, online or offline, available for creating your own infographics. You can even create an “analog infographic”.  Draw on a whiteboard, stick up Post-It notes, etc, take a photo – presto: You have an infographic!

 

Link From Within

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Creating links to other posts you’ve written on the same website is also very helpful.  For example, you’re writing a new post and you mention something you’ve written an in-depth article on in another post. You can create a hyperlink to that post so that your reader can go there and get the details on that subject. I did this in the paragraphs above about Content and Comments, and eBooks.

Likewise if you’ve completed a new post about something you mention in an earlier post, you can update the earlier post to include a link to your new post. Linking to other pages or posts within your blog helps improve traffic to all pages that are linked. Search engines like this too from an SEO standpoint.

Pro Tip: When creating a link, have the link open in a new tab so that your audience isn’t taken away from the post they are reading.

 

Some Don’ts!

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It is easy to get enthusiastic about a new blog or post and want to share it with everyone. But, of course we need to exercise restraint and not wear out our welcome! Perhaps now is a good time to research and refresh ourselves on internet etiquette. Review terms and conditions of websites/platforms we are sharing to.

Thou shalt not Spam!

Write this 100 times on a chalkboard (or whiteboard): “Thou shalt not spam!”

Thou shalt not plagiarize!

Be original with your content. Never copy and paste other people’s content. This can not only hurt your ranking in search engines, but can open a legal can of worms! Take your time and be original – it pays off in the long run.

Thou shalt not violate the Terms of Service!

When promoting through any platforms or services, read the fine print! Before doing anything, take your time to review the policies and terms of services sections. It is too easy these days to be penalized or end up banned from a platform for doing something that seemed benign but is a major no-no in the rules. You want to be absolutely certain that what you’re doing is legit!

If in doubt, stop, think, and consult before you proceed.

Bottom line:

Treat others as you want others to treat you!

 

If doing nothing else, just work on writing up more great content. Just focusing on quality content is the safest way to promote your blog for the long run! I hope you find this helpful. Feel free to comment below. All the best!