We’ve talked about content creation, curation, and marketing on this blog extensively in the past, but there’s always room for another take, especially pertaining to blogging. An infographic on “30 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts” by Andreea Ayers at Launch Grow Joy, for instance, has been making rounds in the media, so we thought it deserved another look.
Kevin J. Allen at Ragan.com also asks the question many content marketers have been asking at one point or another: If you write a great a blog post, but no one reads it, did that post ever really exist? In other words, writing is only a small part of the equation — you must make it visible to your audience.
Allen says:
Promotion starts with a consistent voice, tone, and approach. Pepper in some social media platforms, bookmarking sites, personal contacts, other blog pushes, and syndication…
Here are the highlights of Ayers’ infograph, below (emphasis ours):
- Write in your own voice and be authentic.
- Pick a frequency — daily, weekly, monthly, etc., and stick with it.
- Have visually appealing photos with each blog post. […] Don’t steal other people’s photos.
- Building a following takes time.
- Sharing each post on social media should be your first avenue for promotion.
- Bookmarking sites have millions of users. Add them to your strategy.
- Don’t forget to optimize each blog post for specific keywords.
- [Your contacts] signed up for your newsletter or RSS feed because they want to hear from you.
- Leverage other bloggers’ networks to gain more exposure.
- It’s not about blogging more, it’s about promoting more.
- Syndication allows you to spread more content across many networks.
- Quality has more impact than quantity.
Sean Johnson, Public Relations and Social Media Specialist for Weidert Group, offers five “new” ways to promote your blog, preceding it with: “A great blog is a pointless exercise if you don’t tell people it’s there.” He offers the following (and some of his advice coincides with Ayers’):
- Build a blog board on Pinterest. If you [are] including images and graphics in you blogs — and you should — why not use a Pinterest board dedicated to your blog to share?
- Comment on other blogs. When you make those comments, why not include the URLs of relevant blog posts you have written that further make your point?
- Make your email signature more interesting. You probably already have an email signature setup that includes your social media accounts such as LinkedIn or Twitter. Why not include your latest blog post? […]
- Share with a bookmarking site. There are millions of people using bookmarking sites such a StumbleUpon or Reddit to find relevant content based on subject areas of interest or keywords.
- Syndicate your blog. Having your blog published regularly on other blog sites can do wonders for attracting new prospects, especially if it is a site that aggregates content related to your industry.
(Here’s a good how-to on promotion of your blog on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ from Marc Pitman, Social Media Examiner.)
Christian Russell from Next Level Blogger, in his guest post on the Blog Marketing Academy website, also outlines “10 Smartest Things You Can Do to Promote Your New Blog.” Some of it resonates with us, other tips we’ll have to be sold on, like the “pillar content” concept and the “Power of 100 Rule.” The pillar content concept is to stockpile 20-30 “killer article ideas ready to go.” However, wouldn’t fewer but more time-sensitive, newsier pieces, created on demand, either by you or relegated to a newsgblogging team of journalists be better?
Also, the “Power of 100” rule seems time-consuming, though the motivation behind it does make sense, as the author explains:
Make 100 personal contacts a day. Sending a personal email (not bulk email), responding to a message, a phone call, leaving a thoughtful blog comment, etc. Personal contacts… 100 of them… every day. […] Practiced over time, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much business comes your way as a result of practicing the Power of 100. Bottom line: be social.
We’ll close with a few more tips from Russell:
- Write a daily action plan. […] And your daily action plan has to contain tasks that produce results that will grow your business.
- Go 60 days without tweaking your site. Resist the urge. Make a commitment to launch your blog, and then do nothing but promote… Don’t get me wrong. Design is important. But constantly tweaking your site is a distraction. At the beginning you have no community. You’re maybe getting 10, 20, 30 visitors a day. Get out there, network and talk to people. Brand yourself.
- Respond to your readers. […] In other words, check your email! And be responsive and appreciative to your audience. Every minute you spend interacting on a personal level with your readers is well-spent.
- Immediately begin building an email list. […] There is an argument for waiting until you have more traffic, but I say that an email list of 10 people is way more exciting than you might realize.
Image (top) by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.