Once a relatively obscure form of digital journaling, blogs are now a dime a dozen. That’s not to say your blog isn’t worthy of attention; It’s just exceptionally hard to stand out when millions of new blog posts are published every single day.
The solution, of course, is promotion. And if you’re wondering how to promote your blog effectively without busting your budget, fret not— paid advertisements aren’t the only option. With the right fundamental strategies, you can leverage great content and networking for blog marketing success.
Want Higher Rankings and More Readers? Learn How to Promote Your Blog.
Imagine you’ve just finished a new blog post after hours of work. You followed a blog checklist, did all your research and plumbed the depths of your vocabulary. The only step remaining is to publish the post and hope it garners some kind of response.
Days later, you’ve been met with nothing but radio silence. You know readers would enjoy your post, but they’re just not showing up. In the end, you can’t help but feel like you’re talking to an empty room.
For many bloggers, this scenario is highly disappointing. For business bloggers, it’s nothing short of a nightmare.
You’ll be glad to know it only takes seven core promotional strategies to learn how to promote your blog and avoid this situation entirely. Once you master them, you’ll be able to achieve better search rankings, bring back old readers and attract new ones.
1. Don’t Compromise on Quality
It may not be a groundbreaking concept, but it’s true nonetheless: High-quality content is its own form of promotion. In Google’s words, it’s the single most important thing you can do.
Why? Because top-notch content:
- is prioritized by search engines;
- is more likely to be organically shared;
- tends to have a lower bounce rate than its low-quality counterparts;
- encourages visitors to return;
- helps generate backlinks from other sites; and
- builds credibility and trust.
Users actively dislike low-quality content, too. Adobe conducted a survey in 2019 and found 39 percent of customers are most annoyed by excessively wordy or poorly written content:
The bottom line is, your SEO efforts will be in vain if you don’t have excellent blog posts to back them up. With that in mind, never publish rushed or sloppy blog posts, and always take the time to polish each one from beginning to end.
2. Create Shareable Content
When’s the last time you saw someone share a blog post on social media, and what was your reaction? If someone other than the author posted it, you were likely at least a little intrigued. That’s because when we see someone link to a blog they’re not associated with, we assume it must have something interesting to say.
Thus, one of the best ways to promote your blog is to get other, unaffiliated people to share it on social media. Unlike other methods of promotion, this isn’t something you have direct control over. So, the best strategy is to always strive to create content that people will want to share.
A handful of strategies can help you accomplish that goal:
- Write punchy headlines: When a blog post is linked on social media, readers will use the title as a clue to what it contains. If that title is memorable, you’ll be more likely to convince readers that the post’s content is too. Need some inspiration? Try plugging your keywords into SEOPressor’s Blog Title Generator to get a list of ideas.
- Include aesthetically pleasing graphics: This is especially true for visuals like infographics which serve to communicate nuggets of interesting information in an easily digestible format. Don’t have a graphic designer on call? Check out this HubSpot tutorial to learn how to create beautiful infographics in 15 minutes or less, or try using a free tool like Canva to create professional-looking images.
- Say something unique: To be clear, “unique” doesn’t necessarily mean you need to post original research or exclusive news stories to stand out. Instead, it means you should aim to provide visitors with fresh content they haven’t seen before—including ideas, perspectives, imagery, humor, technical information and anything else that can stimulate readers’ minds.
- Embrace video content: If you’ve ever scrolled through Facebook then you already know how popular videos are on social media. Whether they’re of cute animals, cooking, DIY crafts, tutorials or presentations, videos are highly shareable. Given that 54 percent of consumers in an international survey reported wanting to see more video content from brands, it’s likely worth your while to start incorporating video content into your blog.
Don’t forget to include social media sharing buttons on all your blog posts—readers will be able to spread the word about your blog with just a couple of clicks.
Finally, be sure to promote your blog on your own social media accounts by posting links to each new post. Even if your audience is small, your LinkedIn connections, Facebook friends or Twitter followers could be your blog’s next readers.
3. Work with Influencers
Influencers have something of a bad rap—the mere mention of the word can conjure images of Instagram celebrities posing with bottles of herbal supplements.
However, those types of influencers only represent a narrow portion of influencers as a whole. Every content creator—whether they make educational videos, in-depth blog posts or beautiful social media photos—has the potential to be an influencer, even if their following is modest.
More importantly, consumers listen to what influencers have to say: The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer found that among consumers aged 18 to 34:
- 63 percent trust influencers more than brands;
- 58 percent bought a new product in the last six months because of an influencer;
- 40 percent trusted a brand in the last six months because of an influencer; and
- 33 percent talked about a brand in the last six months because of an influencer.
Consumers don’t even need influencers to be popular in order to trust them. Rather, they tend to put their trust in influencers who are relatable: The same study found relatability is twice as important as popularity in attracting consumers.
What does this information mean for you? Influencers have the ability to promote your blog successfully, whether they have millions of followers or not.
To find influencers who are a good fit for you, hop on social media and keep an eye out for trusted figures whose content is relevant to your niche. Do you blog about cybersecurity? Think about collaborating with an influencer who reviews tech products. Do you write blog posts for a company selling personal care products? You might want to work with an influencer who’s known for their immaculate makeup.
The most important factor when choosing which influencers to collaborate with is relevance. If an influencer creates content related to your industry and has an audience who would be interested in your blog, they’re probably worth your consideration.
4. Implement Internal Links
Internal links are robust tools with many applications, and blog marketing is no exception. By linking to your blog’s posts from its parent site (or between blog posts), you’ll be able to boost website indexation and make it easier for readers to keep reading your content.
Moreover, internal links pass link equity to their destination pages. In other words, if you link to an underperforming blog post from a high-performing one, the former will gain ranking power from the latter (in Google’s algorithm, that ranking power is known as PageRank).
The advantage of such linking is tangible—a case study from NinjaOutreach found that over the course of a few months, an internal linking SEO campaign led to a 40 percent increase in organic traffic:
To help your blog benefit from the power of internal links, start by identifying keywords elsewhere on the blog or site where it might make sense to link to an existing blog post. If you wrote a post about the history of sandwiches, for example, you could link to it from any other onsite page briefly mentioning sandwiches.
Just be sure to avoid anything approaching link spam, and don’t link to the same blog post multiple times on the same page.
5. Write and Welcome Guest Posts
By both writing guest posts for other blogs and publishing them on your own, you’ll be able to create mutually beneficial agreements driving traffic to everyone involved. The guest post’s author will get backlinks to their own site, and the blog the post is published on will enjoy fresh content with minimal effort. Better yet, guest posts can lead to long-lasting relationships that help cement each party’s authority and reputation.
Of course, the same rules of high-quality content creation also apply to guest posts: Whether you’re writing a guest post or publishing one, don’t settle for anything unpolished, unoriginal or lacking value. Instead, uphold your standards of quality so everyone wins.
Ready to start writing and publishing guest posts? You’ll first need to connect with peers who have a history of exceptional content creation. To do that, you’ll need to evaluate your current professional network and work to expand it. Try going through the people in your professional Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook networks to get started. Once you’ve identified a few possibilities, it’s time to start doing some outreach.
If you’re requesting a guest post from a high-profile person, you may need to open up your wallet. After all, it takes time to write high-quality content that’ll add genuine value to your blog, so you can’t expect well-known pros to do it for free.
If you’re writing a guest post for another blog, however, you might consider doing it free of charge (unless you’re already an established personality). This can help you get your foot in the door, and if the post successfully drives traffic to your own blog then you’ll still be gaining value in the end.
Keep in mind the guest posts you submit can be duplicates of articles you’ve already published on your own blog, i.e. syndicated content. If you go that route, remember to point search engine crawlers back to your original post via the canonical tag.
6. Use IRL Networking
When you’re trying to figure out how to promote your blog, it can be easy to forget the importance of face-to-face networking. In fact, real-life interactions are overflowing with invaluable opportunities for promotion.
This is especially true at large industry events such as conferences, seminars and trade shows. There, you’ll have the chance to promote your blog to just as many people as you could via any social media channel (provided that you don’t already have tens of thousands of online followers, of course).
One of the simplest and most cost-effective ways to accomplish this is by giving out business cards printed with your blog URL. If you really want to pique their interest, be sure to briefly mention the value your blog offers. For instance, if you’re attending a seminar touching on a specific topic you’ve blogged about, don’t be afraid to share your previous coverage with other attendees.
Want to make sure everyone at an industry event knows about your blog? Try using custom promotional products to get your blog’s name and URL out there. Items such as lanyards, pens and tote bags are perfect for such events, and are generally available from wholesalers at a low price point.
Also remember that anyone you meet who has a blog of their own is a possible connection for future guest posts, collaborations and backlinks. Try not to view other bloggers as your competitors—instead, think of them as potential business partners.
7. Link to Your Blog Wherever Possible
Internal site links are absolutely important to successfully promoting your blog, but it can be equally beneficial to include a blog link in other places, too.
For instance, trying linking to your blog in:
- your email signature;
- your social media profiles;
- your author bio on publishing platforms like Medium; and
- relevant Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
Just be careful not to inundate those you talk to with excessive links. You want to give folks easy access to your blog from multiple platforms, not overwhelm them with constant self-promotion.
To avoid social media algorithms viewing your links as spammy, also strive to create original, engaging content to accompany them.
Blog Smarter, Not Harder
According to WordPress, its users produce about 70 million new blog posts each month. If you’re relying on word of mouth alone, you could spend every waking moment creating posts and still never see a spike in popularity.
That’s why the fundamental tactics of blog promotion are so essential. When you focus on quality over quantity, you can stop trying to crank out as many posts as possible and start focusing on creating useful, engaging and high-quality content that helps attract readers and turn them into customers.
Image credits
Adobe / February 2019
NinjaOutreach / March 2018
