Blogging is a great way to bring in new visitors and keep them on your site. But you’re probably wondering how to promote your blog now that you’ve started one. Here are seven easy strategies that you can use to promote your blog (and you can also apply most of these to your website and other online properties).

1: Submit your blog to search engines.

If your blog is part of an existing website, then you’re most likely covered as long as you’ve added a link to the blog on your site. We recommend adding it to both your main nav at the top of your page as well as in the site’s footer. If you have a standalone blog, then you’ll want to ensure that you’ve had the major search engines (Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc…) crawl your site. There are also search engines that are focused only on blogs. While these search engines aren’t as popular as they used to be, they still add a link to your site. This can be especially helpful when first starting out.

2: Include a link to your blog in your email signature.

This is an easy way to let the people you interact with know that you have a blog. You probably send out well over 5000 emails each year (some of us send that many out per month). So even if 1% of the people that see your email click on the link, that’s 50 people that have discovered your blog.

3. Guest post on other blogs.

Search for blogs that are complementary to yours. So if you’re a health and wellness coach, you obviously want to do guest posts on blogs about supplements, fitness, and/or weight loss. But if you have a post about staying healthy while traveling, you may want to guest post it on a travel agent’s blog. Just ensure to modify it for each site you share it with as you don’t want to be hit a duplicate content penalty.

4. Share your blog on websites, forums, and social media groups related to your topic.

While your blog can contain anything you want, at least some of your posts should answer a question. If you’re writing a business-related blog, most of your posts should answer a question or provide insight on a particular topic. It’s these informational posts that a great to share in different places, but ensure you’re following the rules.

Since so many people have abused sites that allow link sharing, many sites have disallowed it, or put tighter rules around it. Many social media groups will ban you for posting a link – even if it’s relevant to the discussion. So be sure to read the rules.

If link sharing is allowed, make sure that you follow these basic rules in addition to any that the site you’re sharing to has:

• Ensure it’s relevant to the conversation. If it’s not, people will ignore it and you may lose relevance.
• Don’t overshare the same link. Just because a group allows you to share a link each day, doesn’t mean you should share the same thing over and over. Mix it up by sharing different links and don’t share more than a couple of times per week unless the group gets hundreds of posts per day.
• Add some text relevant to the conversation and then close with a phrase like “for more information check out” and add your URL.
• If people comment on your link, reply back to them.
• Interact with other posts/articles on the site/forum/group so you don’t give other participants the impression that you’re just there to promote. Yes, you want to promote your blog. But you’ll be a lot more effective when you build a good reputation within a group.

5. Promote your blog posts on social media.

We covered social media groups with the prior item. But you should also share your blog to your own social media accounts and pages. Whenever you create a new blog post, share it. We can even help you automate this process.

We recommend blogging at least once per week, but that’s not always possible. But you can always share your old posts, provided they are still relevant, each day or week to all of your accounts.

Bonus tip: When sharing your posts to social media, invite your connections to share the post (and make sure your post is set up to be shareable). You’d be surprised how willing your friends and family are to help you.

6. Write about posts from other blogs on your blog and link to them.

When I first started blogging many years ago, I looked to more established blogs for inspiration. I found a few that interviewed experts in their field and shared their answers to three or more questions. So I created a post where I wrote about the other blog’s interview series. I then answered the questions as if I were asked them by the other site’s owner.

If you’re using a WordPress blog (or another blogging platform that supports them), your site will create a pingback to the other blog. This automatically lets the other blog owner know that you’ve created a link to their blog. This is helpful for a few different reasons. First, they may share the pingback as a comment. This is an older practice that most sites don’t do anymore. But if they allow it, you’ll get a link to their site that helps with SEO and could drive traffic. Second, the blog owner will be aware of your blog. So if they look at it and find it useful, they may reach out (or respond if you reach out). That could open the door to conversations about link exchanges, guest posting, and other collaborations.

In summary:

There are a lot of ways to promote your blog (and website) to get some initial buzz going. When blogs were first getting off of the ground (2005-2012), there were some interesting methods for blog promotion that are no longer around. For example, site owners used to host blog carnivals where contributors could share a link to their post and a blub about it. The intention was that everyone that contributes would share the carnival on their own sites. There were also tools like StumbleUpon, Del.ico.us, and MyBlogLog that were social media services focused on link sharing.
Now, our options are more limited and the space is more crowded as the number of blogs has grown exponentially. But as we always advise our clients, it all starts with great content. Once you’ve cranked out dozens of useful posts, you’ll start getting noticed. These tips will help you get there quicker, but if you really want to get the word out, reach out to us for a complimentary consultation.