How To Promote Your Blog

No matter how compelling your blog is or how much of a word wizard you may be, unfortunately, blog subscribers and engagement don’t come along magically. Luckily, we are here to help! Your audience determines the success of your blog, and the insights below will help guide you in building that audience. Use these handy tips to promote your blog to drive more traffic to your content.

The Importance of Promoting Your Blog

Before we dive into ways to draw readers to your blog, it’s crucial to understand why marketing your blog is so important. A properly-promoted blog with an engaged group of followers has many benefits, including:

• It can give readers a more meaningful relationship with your company/brand
• It can build consumer trust and loyalty
• It can attract new customers
• It provides a two-way communication system with your readers
• It can establish you as a thought leader via your content and subject knowledge
• It can build a supportive community around your brand
• It can drive sales (if this applies to your brand)

You First Need Quality Content

This can’t be stressed enough: great content leads to great engagement. Before you even consider promoting your blog, be sure you have quality content. A content-rich blog not only helps your SEO rankings so more organic traffic comes your way but can keep your audience entertained and informed.

Related: 5 Key Reasons Your E-Commerce Site Should Have A Blog

The more value your blog can bring to your ideal reader, the more successful it will be. Cater to your target audience with strong, relevant content that will make people look forward to what you post next.

Best Blog Promotion Tactics

Now that you understand the importance of marketing your blog, let’s talk about some ways you can do it!

Utilize Email Marketing

A powerful way to promote your blog posts is through email marketing. Whether you have a separate email list or want to reach out to your current subscribers, email marketing can be an effective way to keep your blog top-of-mind while also keeping your audience up-to-date on your latest posts.

Here are some ways you can use email marketing to bolster your blog:

• Create an email specifically to tease each blog’s content and encourage readers to visit your site to read the whole post
• Include a teaser of your blog within e-newsletters you may already send out
• Provide readers with some sort of incentive to visit your blog, like a special offer
• Repurpose successful blog posts, creating e-blasts that can provide readers with additional information that might interest them while directing them back to your blog itself
  

For the best email engagement, we recommend that you send updates consistently, keep content in emails brief, make sure you have a call to action, and never forget to link the reader to your blog itself!

Take Advantage of Social Media

Social media can be an amazing tool for getting the word out about your blog. Whether you use Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or other social platforms, there is huge potential to promote your blog (and even more if you are utilizing multiple social media channels simultaneously).

Here are just a few ways you can leverage social media to promote your blog:

• Share teasers on your social media pages that click through to your blog posts
• Include a link to your blog as part of your profile information on social sites
• Re-promote and cross-share content that performed well in the past
• Encourage employees, friends, and contacts to share blog posts
• Use hashtags and categorization tools to reach a wider audience
• Pin your more successful posts to the top of your social media channels to draw additional traffic

Related: Why You Need To Integrate Your Content & Social Ad Strategy ASAP
Remember, not all social media are created equal, so you will want to tailor your posts to best work for each specific medium. We also recommend re-sharing content periodically so you reach parts of your audience that might not have seen it the first time around.

Community

Sharing your blog content among aggregate sites and communities that include your target market is another useful tactic for drawing traffic to your blog. This can include:

• Posting your blog to bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and AllTop
• Participating on aggregate websites like Reddit, BizSugar, and Triberr
• Finding active online forums where you can use your blog to answer questions or provide expertise on topics that are being discussed. Be sure to look for forums in your niche too
• Sharing with relevant online communities and groups that fit your target market. These can include Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Google+ communities and more

Influencers

If you mention an influencer, company, or brand in your post, make sure they know! If you do, reach out to inform them they’re getting some exposure — whether you tag them in a tweet, send them an email, or post on their Facebook. If they like what you have to say, they may decide to share it with their followers as well, reaching a whole new audience. Plus, reaching out in a public space like Twitter or Facebook can expose you to other users who follow them and may see the interaction.

Repurpose Your Content

Have you had some blog posts that really stood out and performed better than the rest? Then use them as inspiration! You already know that users engaged with the post and found value in the content, so use that to create something related they might respond well to.
Related: 5 Ways to Take Your Content Strategy to the Next Level
For example, you can create and share a video, infographic, audio clip, photo or story that corresponds to the original blog content.

Engage with Your Readers

Your readers are the lifeblood of your blog, so don’t neglect them. If you receive a comment on your blog, respond to it. Whether you’re thanking a reader for sharing or commenting, answering a question, or addressing a concern, it shows your audience that you care and keeps them engaged. A great reader experience can come from even the simplest interaction, leading to more brand loyalty and great word-of-mouth for you.

Become a Thought Leader

If you blog consistently and give your readers posts that address their needs, give them answers and information, and generally provide them with value, you can become an authority within your industry. The trust and rapport that you build with your audience can establish you as an expert resource they can rely on. And of course, the more helpful you are, the more people you will draw to your blog, and the more engagement you will see.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize

Be sure you are writing content-rich posts and doing your keyword research. Millions of people search for helpful blogs every day, so make sure you are showing up in their searches. When you produce strong, keyword-rich content, your SEO rankings improve and more organic traffic is driven to your blog.

Related: How Content Clusters Benefit SEO

Be sure you are also using keywords in your blog title. Although it can be tempting to be creative or whimsical, if your headline addresses what people are looking for, it’s more likely to draw traffic. It’s also important to make sure your blog is responsive, so you can connect with your audience whether they are on a computer, mobile phone, tablet or another device. Additionally, it is wise to optimize your images with relevant alt text and your meta descriptions with compelling, searchable information.

Leverage Your Relationships

Who you know can be as important for your blog’s success as the content itself. Both your professional and personal relationships matter. Build networks that are mutually beneficial. When you share your posts with your supporters and inner circle, you are more likely to get genuine engagements and shares. You can also benefit greatly out of building relationships within the blogger community, which can lead to sharing each other’s content and even guest-blogging to reach a wider readership.

Keep an Eye on the Competition

Let your competition inspire you. If you notice a certain topic is performing well for a competitor, write about it too. You should never copy your competitors; instead, find questions you can answer based off of their posts and additional information you can provide that would be valuable to your audience.

Looking at your competition is also a smart way to find what makes you unique and build off of it. If you are providing value that is different from your competition, you give potential readers yet another reason to want to visit your blog.

Wrapping Up

An effective and consistent blog has become a vital part of any online brand. It’s an important factor in every successful company’s marketing mix, and visibility is everything in such a competitive digital space. While these tips are not exhaustive, they are a great place to start if you want to grow your blog’s presence. Using these pointers and an audience-centric approach, you’re sure to see your blog performing better than ever.