Hello everybody! From our series of comprehensive guide articles on how to start a blog, we have already learned how to create a blog from scratch. Also, I have told you how to pick the best web design. Today we are going to learn the ways how to promote your blog.
Blogging has become a very popular activity in recent years. That is why there are a huge number of different blogs. Thus, you need to know how to stand out among many competitors.
Like any other site, a blog needs to use every possible way: SEO, social networks, contextual advertising, link promotion, etc. Today we will consider the most effective methods of how to promote your blog and make it a source of income.
Blog Promotion Mistakes
In this section, we will talk about common mistakes in promoting a young blog that hamper its development.
Writing More Articles
This method of promoting a blog from scratch worked well in the early 2010s. Then there wasn’t so much content on the network, and competition in the search results was lower.
Today, everything is different. And a young blog doesn’t yet have the factors necessary to increase blog traffic (the age and authority of the domain, backlinks).
But when the domain is more than a year old, there are backlinks and blog traffic above five thousand a month, then new articles are indexed faster and appear in the results. For such a blog, the strategy of writing more articles will be relevant. But again, your articles should be deep and high-quality.
Strive for the Perfect Website Design
Among the blogging tips on how to start a blog is a recommendation to devote time to website design. Design is certainly important, but don’t focus on developing the perfect logo or other elements. Design improvements take a lot of time and do not lead visitors to the site.
Underestimate the Importance of Email Newsletters
You wrote an article, spent the effort to attract a visitor to the blog, but there is one problem – most people leave the blog after the first visit. If you do not take their contacts and do not establish communication, consider that you have lost them.
10 Ways to Promote Your Blog
How not to do it, we have already figured out. Now let’s talk about working methods for promoting a blog, which is worth taking note of.
1. Set Goals for Blog Traffic
When you start to promote your blog, you need to indicate how many visitors and by what date you plan to attract. For example, first, try to get 100 visitors a day, then 300, 500, 1000. Keep your goals in mind or write on a sheet and hang in a prominent place. Track your traffic at Google Analytics.
This will help to focus and not be distracted by the secondary tasks.
2. Collaborate with Other Bloggers
Other bloggers already have their loyal audience. If the theme of their blog overlaps with yours, then this is potentially your audience.
There are such cooperation options with other bloggers:
- Post a guest post. You write an article according to the requirements. The author of the blog posts your bio and a link to the blog;
- Write an article in collaboration;
- Agree on the announcement of your article or blog in the newsletter, and so on;
- Attract the attention of experts and brand companies:
- Write a compilation of articles mentioning people-brands of the same topic as your blog.
- Make a summary of the webinar, books, speeches (It is an idea of quality content).
- Write a product review or take a photo with the product and mark it with a hashtag (The product does not have to be related to the theme of the blog).
3. Develop a Personal Brand
People are more interested in people than in companies or blogs. Therefore, the promotion of a personal brand will help in promoting the blog.
Creating a personal brand marketing strategy is a separate article on this blog. You can start by commenting on posts on social networks, articles on other blogs related to your topic. It is important to leave thoughtful comments and questions that will characterize you as an expert.
A good and correct comment is a step towards success in the promotion of your blog!
4. Turn Visitors into Regular Readers via Email Newsletters
Most blog visitors leave after the first visit and do not return. In order not to lose them, post a newsletter subscription form on the blog, and offer to receive new articles in the mail. Use high-quality ready-to-use email newsletter templates to save your time.
Having the contacts of visitors, you can tell them about new articles in the email newsletter and attract them to the blog again, but with less effort.
For mailing, it is better to immediately use the email service, rather than your personal mail. Services provide better email delivery and help set up effective email marketing:
- Set up an automatic greeting series of letters;
- Segment readers by interests;
- Improve your newsletter by analyzing statistics;
- Conduct polls, etc.
Have a look at a detailed guide on choosing a newsletter service. It will help you find a tool for your tasks.
5. Write Regularly
The frequency of publications indicates how lively the blog is and how seriously you take to fill it. This is important for keeping readers and for finding partners.
Once on an interesting blog, the reader is waiting for new articles. If they appear regularly, you are more likely to retain an audience. If the articles are rarely published, with an indefinite interval, the person will come in several times, see that the blog is not updating, and will not return.
Other bloggers who are looking for partners for mutual promotion and potential advertisers also evaluate how regularly new articles appear. If the blog is live, updated, you can collaborate with it.
6. Create a Content Plan
Content is the foundation for any blog. Without quality content, all the points listed below are irrelevant. Therefore, for a systematic and successful blog, a content plan is always necessary and preferably not one.
Related article: How to create content that gets leads
Everything is extremely simple:
- Do a little research;
- Collect lists of topics (problems, objections, popular queries);
- Form a plan for the month (based on your tasks);
- Follow the plan.
It is not necessary to act clearly according to plan, but a stock of those for 1-2 months is a must-have.
If there is no good content, no promotion will help him. Therefore, you need to give the right message with the help of different types of articles, differ from competitors in the niche, and also have an action plan.
Popular types of articles:
- Guides
- Reviews
- Advice
- Interview
- Infographics
- Video lessons
- News, etc.
If you adhere to at least the above-described types of articles, you can achieve a good result. The main thing is to act, try and watch what your target audience likes the most.
7. Internal SEO optimization
Probably the most important and effective way to raise the ratings of your website on the network is SEO. The higher you are in the TOP of search engines, the more views you get. As a rule, a person looks at the first 2 – 3 links from above and finds the information that he needs.
Search engine promotion begins with internal blog optimization. What to look for:
- Site loading speed. The recommended time is 2-5 seconds.
- The structure of the blog. Articles should be grouped by topic so that readers quickly find the information they are interested in.
- Widget for displaying new articles.
- Adaptation of the blog for mobile devices.
- Optimization of articles for search queries.
- The text should do a certain structure, bulleted lists, and headings.
- Use keywords. There are special services for it. At least register a keyword in Title, H1, and in the text.
8. Promotion in Social Networks
For many users, social networks are a way of communicating with friends and peers. And for a blogger, this is a good platform for promotion. Since most modern youth sits in such networks, they can act as your target visitors, making reposts of your article.
As my experience shows, people in social media love when your profiles look great. It should have great pictures, nice fonts, etc. To save your money on web design courses or specialists, here can help you with a large variety of social media templates for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on.
Promotion via Twitter
To do this, it is enough that you have an account on this social network. For promotion, use hashtags and add links to your blog posts. You can also buy such services as Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.
Promotion via Instagram
There are several methods:
- Add a blog link and description to your profile
- Promote your blog in Stories if you have more than two thousand subscribers;
- Buy advertising at influencers;
- Announce articles from the blog. Write a short description of an article in the post and the link to the publication place in the profile header.
Read also the article — Instagram Engagement best time.
Promotion via Facebook
Promote yourself as an expert. Then people will look for you on social networks and read the page.
I recommend creating a separate profile on Facebook, so as not to interfere with the announcements of blog articles with personal posts.
The second way is to announce a post in specialized groups. But there are a lot of publications in the group, so you need to try to get your article to get attention. Try to organize a discussion or ask for a comment or just write a catchy title.
9. Affiliate Programs
The purpose of joining an affiliate program is to receive financial compensation for the content you want to write on the blog. Affiliate programs are one of the best (and easiest) ways to start making money on a blog, no matter how many readers today. Also, it gives you a target audience and topic for your posts.
10. Banner advertising
Placing small pictures or animations on websites for a fee, clicking on which you can get to your website, and get acquainted with the information presented on it is called banner advertising.
Such banners can be varied in size, type, and format and be produced using many technologies. They can be used to achieve all sorts of advertising goals.
The main thing is to be able to correctly and profitably place a banner so that it is really practical.
There are many banner networks, so you can choose the one that offers the most favorable conditions.
Other ways how to promote your blog?
Also, you can promote your blog using such methods as:
- Participation in contests for bloggers. In addition to the opportunity to win a prize, this is a great chance to get a lot of links to the site, recognition in the blogosphere.
- Social bookmarking services. Bookmarking your blog will help speed up indexing and increase blog traffic.
- Promotions, gifts or giveaways of anything.
- Wikipedia. This service is constantly filled with new, interesting articles on various topics. If you are well versed in a topic, write an article about it and post it on the wiki with a link to your blog.
- Audio and video podcasts. Today it is one of the most common ways to popularize and promote your blog.
If all of my blogging tips sound complicated for you, you can turn to the help of professionals. There are many website marketing services with great reviews. They can help you with online promotion of your blog in short terms with subsequent online support.
Summing Up How to Promote Your Blog
I hope all this article has taught you how to efficiently increase your blog traffic to a desirable point. I suggest you use as much of my advice as possible. Remember, to promote a young blog you should make every effort. At this stage, you invest a lot of your time and creativity.
If you still have questions related to how to promote your blog, write in the comments. In the next articles on how to start a blog, I will tell you about other blogging tips to increase blog traffic, Resources with free images, and more about blog post SEO. Stay in touch!
Lana Miro is an expert in Visual Social Media. Lana falls in love with beautiful web design, social media profile designs etc. She likes to share her experience and explore something interesting. She also cooperates with TemplateMonster for helping everyone to find their best solutions for their own online projects.