If you’d like to promote your blog and actually build a following, you’re going to want to read the rest of this post…
For years, marketers have struggled to promote their blogs. When I got started, I had no idea that I even had to do any kind of promotion. I figured as long as I wrote good content, the people would come.
As you can guess, they didn’t… I think over the period of six months I had a little over 200 visitors which by the way; is horrendously bad.
What’s the moral of story?
Great content is important, but only half of the equation. In order for your content to be read, you must promote the living day lights out of your blog and all of its pages.
So here are just 4 simple ways to promote your blog:
1. Guest Blogging
This is number one on the list for a reason; it’s the most powerful way to promote your blog full stop. Since this blog is somewhat new and I’ve been busy with other Internet Marketing stuff, I haven’t dived into guest blogging just yet.
BUT – I’ve used it to promote my other blogs on a large scale. So what is guest blogging?
Well essentially guest blogging is where you write and publish a blog post on someone else’s blog! Shocking I know…
…Who’d be crazy enough to write for someone else’s blog… I barely have enough time to write for my own…
Those were my initial thoughts on guest blogging, but I soon realized just how powerful it could be. Guest blogging has 4 main benefits:
- Traffic
- Backlinks
- Credibility
- Community Stealing
First is traffic, by guest posting on a popular blog in your niche you can easily bring in 1000+ targeted visitors. Then backlinks, at the bottom of your guest posts you’re usually allowed 2 links to your blog. Gaining backlinks from high PR blogs in your niche is an excellent strategy for boosting your authority and ranking power in the search engines.
Next is the credibility factor… By guest posting on popular blogs in your niche you’ll build a reputation for yourself. Many of the blog’s readers will start to recognize you as an authority after seeing you on several blogs. Doing so will brand you as an expert and force readers to checkout your blog.
Lastly is the community stealing factor. When you guest post on someone’s blog, their entire community will read it. Let’s take a top Internet Marketing blog for example. One that has say 100,000 active readers. If you guest posted on their blog; over 100,000 people in the IM niche may read it. That’s one hundred thousand souls who now know who you are. Now maybe just 30,000 people read the post and 10,000 click through to your blog.
Out of 10,000 visitors, you might get just 1000 new subscribers. How powerful is that? Sure my numbers aren’t concrete, but has that opened your mind up to the power of guest blogging? I hope so…
2. Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is another strategy somewhat similar to guest blogging… And I know, I know… this isn’t exactly new information – but it’s gotta be taught by someone.
Similar to guest blogging, you can use blog commenting to drive traffic, build backlinks, gain authority and steal communities. For those who don’t know, blog comments are the little comments shown below all WordPress blog posts.
When you post a comment, you’re allowed to input your website, name and obviously comment. To promote your blog with blog comments, you have to start commenting on the top blogs in your niche. If you’re in a large niche, you should find a minimum of 20 large blogs that have active communities. So whenever they publish new posts, they get an influx of several thousand visitors. Several thousand visitors that read their posts and browse through the comments.
If you post INSIGHTFUL comments on their new posts, their readers will checkout your comment, click through to your blog and may even subscribe. You also gain high Page Rank backlinks so that’s a plus. The major benefit of blog commenting is getting your name out their and stealing blog communities. As the people who actually read blog comments are regular readers and subscribers. So they are far more likely to click through to your blog and subscribe.
To get started with blog commenting, you should find the top 10 blogs in your niche that post new content every day or so. Subscribe to their RSS feeds and whenever you get a notification about one of their new posts, rush over and comment! The key is to leave meaningful and insightful comments that add to the post/conversation.
3. Social Media
I actually despise social media, it bores me to death. But I can’t denie that it’s a great way to promote your blog. The first way to promote your blog with social media is to sydnicate your blog posts onto Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter are the main social networks and I don’t pay much attention to any others.
With Facebook and Twitter, you need your own networks. You should be syndicating your blog posts onto your own Facebook page, groups, profile and several Twitter accounts including 1 main account.
For all my social media marketing; I use HootSuite and Ping.fm. HootSuite is a social media marketing platform that allows you to control everything from one simple dashboard. It allows you to manage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more. It also allows you to schedule updates and automatically syndicate your blog’s content to all of your networks via RSS.
On top of all that, it can take your blog’s RSS feed and auto syndicate all of its new content through your Ping.fm account. Ping.fm is another platform that allows you to syndicate any URL’s/text onto 30 social networks at once. You simple signup to Ping.fm, register on all of the social networks and connect them.
Then connect your Ping.fm account to your HootSuite account and have all of your new blog posts syndicated onto over 30 social networks. Plus all of your Facebook/Twitter accounts/profiles/networks. Very useful and automated strategy for social media.
Once setup; you’ll automatically get 30+ social backlinks to your new posts immediately after you publish them. You’ll also get a great boost in the search engines since social links to NEW content are like normal backlinks on steroids.
4. Link Building
Link building is the final way to promote your blog… in this post. After all, most of us get the majority of our traffic from the search engines. Yet very few people truly understand Search Engine Optimization and even less people get top rankings.
If you have an established blog, have 50-100 posts and don’t much about SEO – you’re probably sitting on gold. Here’s why…
Most bloggers don’t know jack shit about link building, but they write great content and lots of it. So the volume of content compensates for the lack of backlinks. If you’re one of those people and simply focused on some hard core SEO – you’d explode your blog’s traffic. Since the key to blogging is lots of great content – most people don’t have the time to focus on SEO.
So I have a really simple process:
- Bookmark – Bookmark Your Post On The Top Bookmarking Sites (Bookmarking Demon or free Social Marker)
- Share On Social Networks – (This part is automated is you use my social media strategy)
- Build 10 Blog Comment Links – Go And Leave Comments On The Latest Post Of The Top 10 Blogs In Your Niche (They must have comment luv enabled)
- Spin Blog Post And Make It More Article Like – Spin It With A Tool Like The Best Spinner or Spin Rewriter.
- Submit Spun Article To Article Directories (Use Article Marketing Robot or Free Submitter)
- Submit Spun Article To Top Web2.0 Sites (Use Senuke X Or Manually Submit)
- Submit Spun Article To Blog Networks (Article Ranks/Unique Article Wizard/My Article Network)
- Build 10 Build My Rank Snippets To Post Using Keyword As Anchor Text (Click Here For 10 Free Links)
That’s about it… Four simple ways to promote your blog. In all seriousness, none of these strategies will work if your blog looks like shit, your content sucks and or you’re not converting visitors into subscribers. But that stuff is for another day.
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{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions below.
Hi Jamie,
I like your process list!
Great way to keep
your self organized.
I agree Commenting
is another great way to
promote your blog
not only for the back link
(which isn’t super strong by the way)
….But for the potential traffic
that can come your way.
Keep up the great work.
My Best,
Stephen
Stephen Peters´s last [type] ..Promoting Your Blog ….. The Secrets to Leaving Comments
Thanks Stephen and I agree – blog commenting for link building is a waste of time. If you want to do that hire a $2/hour Filipino to post on relevant niche blogs.
But traffic and exposure work – works well.
Great article Jamie! I follow a similar process with several different tools.
These techniques are quick simple and extremely effective.
Joshua Zamora´s last [type] ..How To Get Targeted Website Traffic From YouTube in 3 Easy Steps
Thanks Joshua and yeah – all super easy to follow and implement.
Thanks Jamie,
This is great stuff to know as I’m just starting out. Take it slow though as some of us really are novice at this. I need a ‘For Dummies’ approach .. and I’m sure it’s not just me.
Look forward to your posts in the new year.
Sharon´s last [type] ..Sing-A-Long-Spanish For Children
Haha ok – but there’s a problem.
I write in very basic Internet Marketing talk…
If I were to explain everything, the majority of my audience would be fed up. No one is going to give you exactly what YOU need on a silver platter – you have to use what you’re given and work out the rest yourself. (Use Google perhaps?)
Just some advice
Hi Jamie,
I think this is a great no-nonsense approach to promoting a blog. I’ve come across similar advice but I like your style.
I’m familiar with guest blogging, blog commenting, and social media. What I need to focus on more is link building. I’m going to check out some of the process you mentioned and see what works for me.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Theresa Torres´s last [type] ..Happy Holidays: Holiday Season in America
Thanks Theresa…
If you’ve been focusing on social media media and the other two, definitely start spending more time with link building – it will seriously help!
@Jamie, its a really good post. Link building, commenting, social media, blogs have become some of the most basic and very effective ways to promote blogs and websites. Social interaction and updated information are really beneficial.
Thanks Nalin,
They are all effective ways to promote your blog. Above all I’d say social media, guest blogging and SEO are most effective.
These are all great ways you’ve discussed to promote a blog but they’re surely not “stupid simple”
Remember we must always tell it the way it is to avoid sending the wrong impression to our readers. This is important so that they don’t expect what is not possible.
I have read a post from a great blogger on making 10 blog comments in 30 minutes. And I’m like really? Sure? Let’s see how possible that is using a practical example. I took me between 5-10 minutes to digest all you’ve said in your post and scan through others comments so I don’t repeat what someone else has said. This is to ensure I add value to your post. Then it took me more than 30 minutes to write and edit this post (should I add that I spent more than 20 minutes for a post then lost it and had to re-write this?). Now let’s say I spent 30 minutes on average reading and commenting on your post. 30 minutes multiply by 10 is 5 hours! No kidding!!!
30 minutes claim verse 5 hours actual time? That’s just not right. I am not saying people can’t make 10 comments a day, but they should know really what to expect. The reader might go ahead and set a goal of spending 30 minutes to make 10 posts everyday and then eventually feels bad that he or she couldn’t achieve his/her goal. And don’t forget we encourage these people to post quality comment. Well, quality comment takes time. You must read, understand what you read, and pick out the missing point to add. I just used this as an example of the effect of not telling it right.
Your guest posting expectation analysis is quite exaggerating. I have done some guest posting on authority blogs including on Gathersuccess.com and I didn’t even notice the traffic. And I spent much time replying to comments hoping those comments will convert to some traffic. But they didn’t. I only got few traffic the first few days after which nothing. You know the way blogs are designed makes many older posts go buried on the sites, so except a visitor finds the page through the search engines your guest post becomes buried in 30 days and no one finds it to read. So if you don’t get traffic within the first few days, that’s it except the occasional 2 or 3 visitors you’ll get.
Don’t get me wrong, guest posting is a great way to promote a blog and I think it’s likely the best especially for connecting with those in your niche and getting recognized, but the benefit is mostly felt when you do a lot of it in a short time and on different high traffic blogs too. But then, that will eat greatly on your time because you’ll have to be answering to so many comments on different blogs.
If you guest, to maximize the traffic you get install before hand the wp great box plugin so that you can set specific message for the visitors coming from that site. Ultimately you want to get them into your list and/or your feed.
What I can add more about blog commenting is that it takes time, but when done properly can be very rewarding. Before you start commenting have a plan. What do you want to achieve with it, backlinks or traffic or connection with the blogger? Actually you can achieve all three at a goal. So what’s your strategy? how do you intend to find blogs? what factors will you be using to select these blogs and why? How many minutes or hours can you spare?
And about link building in general, here’s a tip:
It’s not always about how much you have, less can be more if you do it right. When building backlinks, it’s about quality and consistency. If you can build 10 a day or 10 3 times a week, or even 2 daily, it’s fine as long as you do it right and build quality backlinks.
Remember, always keep it real. Why? because it works. And you can be sure of escaping any panda update the big G chooses to come up with. It’s a business you’re building. So lay the foundation right.
To your blog promotion effort.
Karo´s last [type] ..There Is No Traffic Too Small To Make You Money – Special Edition of Beginners Blogging Guide newsletter
Read your short bio and I found it quite amazing. So you started at the age of twelve and you are still in your teens. Quite a feat. I just started like a few months ago. I know you have gained a lot of knowledge from experience but the good thing is your writing sounds your age which is good because it makes you believable.
Reese´s last [type] ..Where Does All My Money Go?
Thanks for the compliments Reese, looks like you’re doing well with Credit Donkey. How’s that going?
Great post.its very vaule able information for me and all bloggers thanks for sharing wonderful post.
abhinav@computericons´s last [type] ..Amazing Shopping Software Interspire Shopping Cart
These are great ways to promote your blog. When you want a fun way of promotion, better try social media marketing. It’s nice to work for your business and socialize at the same time. Learn the best strategies in web marketing.
Great tips Jamie, blog commenting is an awesome strategy and good for people that may be new to blogging to get out there and get noticed.
I see in most of the comments there are complaints about how time consuming most of these methods are. I agree, but I also agree with you in saying we should just hire someone for a few bucks an hour to do them for us, and there is nothing wrong with that. Why not get the job done, save your time, and also give a job to someone who probably really needs it once they are doing these things so cheap? I have overseas workers who are grateful and hardworking, and if you feel you wouldn’t trust them working for you from afar, there is the employee monitoring software you can install that would keep them under surveillance. These things really don’t cost too much and they are certainly worth it on the long run.
Thanks for all the great content on this blog, I like reading your articles from time-to-time.
Best regards,
Leonard
Thanks for backing me up Leonard. Yes these strategies are time consuming, but they are free. In the world of marketing… If something is free it’s generally time consuming.
If you pay for traffic/promotion – it’s less time consuming. But most of the time it’s cheaper and more effective to strategically pay for the “free” strategies via outsourcing.
Although I am newbie in blogging I get good commenting is quite important. They are much estimated and that allows to go on discussing the topic. Thanks, dude, for this powerful article