This article is for you if you have no idea how to get the word out about your site. Many people have blogs, and many in our profession have blogs, yet many have trouble drawing readers and comments. There are three primary causes for this:
They didn’t bother to implement an appropriate Initial Blog Promotion Strategy. Hence their blog never got off the ground.
They haven’t established a method for continuous blog promotion.
They rarely update their blog.
I’ll go over each of these concerns in turn and lay out a plan for you to confidently advertise your blog.
Methods for Drawing Traffic to Your Blog
I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this, you have a self-hosted WordPress blog you want to promote. You aren’t utilizing a WordPress.com-hosted blog. You use a third-party hosting service like HostGator or Dreamhost to maintain your website on a domain you control. You aren’t even utilizing a CMS like Drupal or Joomla or a blog platform like Blogger.com. It’s not that I have anything against Drupal or Joomla; I’m just not as well-versed in them and prefer to stick to what I know. Since self-hosted WordPress blogs are the de facto standard in our field due to their user-friendliness, adaptability, and scalability, you should switch to one as soon as possible.
The blog advertising plan consists of two parts, each covered in its article. In this first of two articles, we’ll discuss Step 1 of our blog promotion plan: launching the campaign. This is a one-time thing you do before you start posting regularly to ensure that you have all the essential plugins set up and that your blog is ready to be promoted.
The second part of the series will focus on maintaining blog traffic and readership over time. When you produce a new blog article, use this checklist to ensure it will be seen, read, commented on, shared, and ranked favorably by search engines. Although I won’t be delving too deeply into SEO here, I intend to produce a separate piece outlining my best practices for maximizing your blog posts’ discoverability in search engines. So, let’s get started with Step 1.
Phase 1 of Blog Promotion: Establishing an Initial Promotion Strategy
Create a “ping list,” or a collection of websites that will “ping” each other whenever fresh content is published online. To start, copy WordPress’s list of ping services and paste them into your list. WordPress.org provides a decent starting point list. You may paste that list into your WordPress blog’s ‘Writing’ section. Simply copy the list and paste it into the ‘Update Services’ box found under Settings>Writing on your dashboard. Your blog will receive visitors whenever you make a new post because these providers will be alerted.
Once set up, Feedburner allows readers to get updates from your site automatically. Feedburner allows visitors who appreciate your blog to subscribe and receive updates automatically, increasing the likelihood that they will revisit your site. You’ll get more readers this way than if they had to remember to visit your blog actively. Creating a Feedburner account is as simple as visiting feedburner.com. You’ll need to provide the feed’s URL, typically yourdomain.com/feed. If you submit your content to Feedburner, your readers can subscribe without much further work.
To make your blog posts more accessible to search engines, you need to use an SEO plugin. There are many available, both free and for a fee. WordPress SEO by Yoast is a free plugin I’m currently using. SEO Pressor is a premium alternative that provides more features and automation. Using these add-ons, you may check that the on-page SEO is in good shape.
Blogs and RSS feeds should be submitted to directories. Maintaining a ping list serves the same function as submitting your RSS Feed and Blog to directories. By submitting your RSS feed and website’s URL, you may alert numerous catalogs to the existence of your blog and keep them apprised of your most recent postings. People looking for what you’re offering can be found browsing these directories. Ensuring your submission fits the right category and appeals to the right people is crucial. You can submit your site and feed to a wide variety of blogs and RSS directories, all of which can be found with a short Google search. Both no-cost and premium services are available. Some websites insist on a link exchange. If you have the financial resources, you may also use services that will submit to these directories on your behalf.
Create an Account on a Social Bookmarking Site: Similar to bookmarking in a web browser; social bookmarking allows users to save and organize online pages for later reference. When you do this, other users who share your interests on the site will have access to the pages you’ve bookmarked. Those who share your interests will receive an alert as you save relevant blog posts. This drives targeted visitors to your site since they identify with your interests and could benefit from reading the content you’ve bookmarked. One piece of advice for using social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your publications. Don’t fake the authenticity of the articles you save. Articles from other sites, not simply your own, should also be bookmarked. Connecting with others and building relationships on social media can help you expand your existing audience and attract more visitors. StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Diigo, and HubPages are all examples of highly trafficked social bookmarking sites. Even if social bookmarking services are losing ground to social media giants like Facebook and Twitter, they are still valuable for driving visitors.
Join an automated social bookmarking service: You can use submission automation programs to save time while submitting to numerous social
bookmarking sites. Onlywire is among the best available. Using Onlywire saves you much time compared to signing into each social bookmarking site and adding your bookmarks individually. Once you have accounts set up at various social bookmarking sites, updating your favorites is as simple as clicking a button. Onlywire can be used for free, or a premium version can be purchased. The paid version has no limit on monthly submissions, but the free version does. Until you are comfortable with the platform and have all of your accounts set up, it is recommended that you use the free version. Regular blog promotion can prompt you to consider switching to a paid plan.
Register for a Blog Broadcasting Service and an Autoresponder: Sending out a site Broadcast to your email list is a great approach to increase the number of people who revisit your site. When it comes to autoresponder services, you mostly have a few options. GetResponse is a very well-liked service among network marketers. However, I find that Aweber is perfect for my purposes; thus, I use it myself. At each pricing tier, they offer essentially the same set of features. If you want people to sign up for your newsletter, you’ll need to collect their email addresses (or name and email) using an opt-in form on your website. You’ll need to offer them something of value in exchange for getting them to part over their contact info. The freebie should offer something of great value to the potential customer, such as an audio mp3 or an educational textbook or film. A tutorial showing them how to fix their issue might be another option. After someone subscribes to your mailing list and provides their email address, you can use an autoresponder to send them Blog Broadcasts. Simply said, a Blog Broadcast is an automated or semi-automated email containing the text of your blog post delivered to your subscriber list. Connecting your autoresponder service to your blog’s RSS feed is the first step in this process, after which it will begin monitoring your feed for new entries. When it learns you’ve published new content, it can automatically notify your mailing list subscribers. I find that having the emails queued up to send works better, but I still need to manually release the email to my list before it is sent out. This allows me to make minor adjustments to the email’s layout and content to make it more readable and relevant to my readers. I would advise against using an automatic blog broadcast system.
Blog Ads and Everything Else Therein…
This essay provided insight into the first steps of successful blog promotion. We decided on the first steps you’ll do to get your blog ready for posting, including connecting it to the many external services it’ll need to function correctly. We’ll examine your daily routine of actions following the publication of each blog post—what we call your “Ongoing Blog Promotion Strategy”—in another piece. Maximizing your exposure to your ideal readers requires an effective Ongoing Blog Promotion Strategy. A solid plan can help you improve your visibility online, attract more visitors, and build your online reputation and authority. The best of luck with your blog!
Nate Jackson is a doting father of four lovely daughters and a devoted husband. Nate is a mechanical engineer with a BSME from MIT who has transitioned into the online marketing field. He has made it his life’s work to help budding internet marketers create sustainable workflows that protect them from information overload. He applies his analytical skills to improve PPC and SEO keyword performance. If you want to learn more about blog Methods For Marketing Your Blog: Step One Of Your Promotion Plan, you can check out his website.
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