You got yourself a shiny new blog, it all fresh and looking lovely, and you have also over come the first hurdle by writing your first blog post. Well done you! Seriously you are over the hard part, trust me. Now you got your first written blog post up, I suspect you want people to read it. I mean it can be some kind of secret diary where you tell no body about it – nothing wrong with that. I’m talking about the kind of blog post where you actually do want people to read it, what the point of writing something if no body want to read it.
So the question I suspect you are asking is Where To Promote Your Blog Post?:
What is your blog about? That the first question to ask and only you can answer that. Does your blog belong to a specific niche? Ok let me simplify it – if your blog is about Anime, look for Anime forums, groups on Facebook, hashtags on twitter, Google anime bloggers and join with fellow people who also wrote about anime. It that simple when you got a certain niche and you are catering to that niche through your blog. But what if you don’t have a niche and your blog is about all kind of different thing that you are interested in.
Social Media:
It not a big surprise that the first place I started. Social media for bloggers have become hugely important and you will guaranteed to find what you are looking for. Whether it to find that person to read your blog post or need answer to a problem you are having. It will be there:
Facebook: There are hundreds and hundreds of Facebook Blogging group. I find joining a Facebook group a great way to promote your latest blog post, in fact 45% of my traffic to this site is from various Facebook group so I worthwhile doing if you are promoting your latest blog post.
Here a list of a few Facebook groups:
Twitter: Join various Twitter blogging chat by using a specific hashtag. There are loads throughout the week and you can find a list of twitter chats here. Twitter is so fast paced that the majority of your followers will probably only see the post once, so my advice is to tweet a link to the blog post a minimum of 7 times.
Instagram: I find this a tricky way to promote your blog post, and I find it only work if you do an outfit post or a recipe. I also don’t get much traffic and there no where to actually directly link to your latest blog post unless you write the url and someone copy and paste it and view the blog post from there. I would post an image with a caption, share a tip, ask a question or simply uses the popular hashtag #ontheblog when promoting your content as well.
Pinterest: This is my favorite of all the social media platforms. Content shared on Pinterest is driven entirely by visuals, so having beautiful images is a must. And since it’s a very female-dominated website blogs whose target audience is women will benefit from using it the most. To learn more on how to use Pinterest with promoting your blog post then actually search on the site search engine and it will come up with hundreds of different visual that will give you advice.
Google+: This is my least favorite social media platform. Still just as important as the other as it an excellent place to find certain communities and group – much like Facebook. The great thing for me about Google+ is that it’s full of people who are eager to +1 and share your content, when Google+ is used properly. Don’t ignore it and use hashtag when you post.
Bookmark Your Post:
Bookmarking sites can open your content up to millions of potential viewers actively searching for that article you have written. I always make sure I bookmark my posts as soon as I’ve hit the publish button so I don’t miss out on all the traffic they are able to generate.
There are others bookmarking site out there, but I’m going to mentions the big one I had the most success from:
StumbleUpon: It’s a bookmarking and discovery engine that allows users to ‘stumble’ through related content. It’s easy to use and once you’ve signed up you can add your latest blog post to your account, categorize it based on your blog post topic and then let StumbleUpon work its magic and promote it to users who are interested in what you’re talking about.
If you do decide to give StumbleUpon a try for promoting your posts then I should mention that they don’t like you to just add your own content. So it might be worth actually stumbling on a few pages after submitting and adding a few on social media.
Comment On Other Blogs:
Commenting on other blogs that interest you and how you feel compelled to tell that person on how much you enjoyed reading it. Be authentic and read and also don’t be spammy. Commenting on other blogs there’s a high chance they’ll want to learn more and take a look at your blog. This could lead to them sharing one or two of your posts, opening up your content to new audience.
E-mail Signature:
It might be a good idea to put your blog post in your e-mail signature. I often find myself clicking on links like this and then end up subscribing to new sites because they have awesome content. Also it be a good way to tell your mates about that blog post you have just written. Unless you want to keep it a secret.
Newsletter:
I don’t actually use newsletter for this site, I do it for my clients website. What I find is I often do a blog post on a client website and then put it a snippet of the post on a newsletter and then I send it out to subscriber and people will visit the site to read the full blog post. However I do this only once a week as you don’t want to look like you’re spamming your subscribers.
I hope this advice have helped you, if you got anything to add then feel free to jump in.
