Start spreading the news! In other words – sometimes “write it and they will come” is not the best assumption for bloggers. Write it and then tell people about it! Now that is more like it.
One of the suggestions that didn’t seem to sink in for me so well my first read through 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (affiliate link)was to create a list of the places you are online. Email groups, social media outlets, forums, collaborative blogs, etc. Now you’ve got a go-to list for promoting your new blog post.
Obey the Rules of the Forum but be Creative
Even forums that don’t allow you to promote blog posts in the actual forums posts will usually allow website links in the signature. I love the idea of making this a link to a specific blog post instead of your main blog homepage. Brilliant!
Pitching Your Post
One of the suggestions that Darren mentions – in fact the very first promotion tip on the list – is pitching your post to other bloggers. I’ve always personally been very uncomfortable doing this and sometimes find it annoying when others do this to me.
I think it’s in the tone…if someone who has interacted with my blog in the past contacts me and says “Hey great post about X, did you see when I posted about Y last week?” it’s not bad. But if I get an email that says “Add a link to this post using these keywords and I’ll pay you” I hit delete faster than my kids can undo the organization job I did in their room yesterday.
What do you guys think? Do you regularly (or ever) ask another blogger to link to a post you wrote? Have you have other bloggers do that for you? What are your thoughts about that?
Homework – choose one method from the book and promote your list post from yesterday. CHALLENGE! Choose one method from the book that you don’t normally use and promote your list post from yesterday.
Hi Angela,
I don’t think I’d have the nerve to approach another blogger out of the blue with my post! As you say, if there’s been some interaction beforehand, that would be different.
With my post on London’s new bike hire scheme – http://londononthecheap.net/how-to-use-londons-bike-hire-scheme-as-a-member/ – I’ve gone the social networking/bookmarking route. I like your tip about making a list of where you have an online presence. I’m pretty sure I’ve signed for various sites, then forgotten about them.
I think having a mutually beneficial idea in mind when you contact them is the key. Guest posting offers, coordinating on a specific topic, etc.
I do a lot of promotion on my travel posts… Between Twitter, Facebook, TBEX and direct emails to anyone I mention my posts get quite a few hits. If I am talking about a destination, hotel or someplace with a FB page I make sure to add my spot there and I @ the Twitter account, too (just in case they aren’t monitoring it well).
What a great idea! Being sure to touch base with the twitter/facebook accounts of brands you mention in your posts can get some good exposure. One of my S101 articles was linked from the company website and gets very good rankings in the search engines as a result.
I do social media promotion of my blogs, but I rarely ever post links on blogs or forums unless I’m asked to. I don’t want to seem like a spammer. Maybe I need to rethink my feelings on that.
Use your signature line in forums to the best extent. I love the idea of highlighting a specific post in your signatures instead of your main blog url. I would limit in-post-links on forums unless very specifically answering a direct question. And only if I were actively contributing to that forum. Get a feel for each forum – some are more lenient than others.
As a reader, I like it when there are links to commenters’ sites. Not gazillions of spammy links, but one, fairly self-explanatory link that lets me follow my nose and find out more about that person, that’s the kind of link I like.
This is a bit of a cheat maybe, but I feel virtuous about it.
I hadn’t read ahead and didn’t know this was what we’d be doing today. But as it happens, thanks to Barbara Trejo’s posts (known to some here), I thought I would check out SocialOomph.com, to automate some Twitter feeds.
It’s for a website I haven’t talked about here, my personal website where I’ve been writing a serial story. I am experimenting with promoting fiction on the Web, a different task than our usual SEO ballgame.
Long story longer, I spent lots of time yesterday and today learning about promoting via SocialOomph in particular, and I’ve automated a Twitter feed as part of the great fiction experiment. @AdaSophiasDiary
The blog / website I am mainly devoting the 31 days to is germanpowcanada.com, and today I posted some content, which is what that project desperately needs.
I’m trying to visit everyone else’s blog, though I haven’t got to Lori’s yet. Tomorrow is another day!
And the Day 3 tips are great. They alone could take weeks and add loads of value to a website or blog.
I use social media a lot (especially twitter and my facebook business page) to promote.
I do use email signatures when I feel they’re appropriate but not for all mail. I generally leave them off of personal correspondences (i.e. friends/family who I know have no interest in my writing anyway) and off of unrelated business correspondences.
I don’t do much in forums but I try to stay active with twitter. I co-moderate a twitter chat group about dogs there (#dogtalk for those of you who are interested, Monday 9:15PM EST) which gains me a lot of additional exposure and followers. My theory is the more followers I have, the more potential visitors to my site when I post a link there. (Plus I enjoy doing the chat and learn a great deal from them, which makes them worthwhile even if they didn’t help promote).
I’ve done some guest posts also, which provided links back to my site. The idea of using a link to a specific post instead of the home page is a good one and I’ve just starting implementing that.
I also try to visit relevant blogs and leave comments on posts when I can contribute something useful. Bloggers, at least those in my niche, seem to remember that and return the favor, which helps to promote.
The other thing that I’ve done that seems counter-intuitive but has worked for me is linking to someone else’s blog from mine and letting them know (through a track-back or a tweet) that I’ve linked to them. I’ve started a few relationships that way that led to guest posts or links back to my site and the relationship benefits both blogs. (Plus I’ve met some really great friends that way :-))
I haven’t made much use of trackbacks, but the few times I have, it seems to help with traffic, especially when the trackback is made on a popular blog. It’s nice to know that it helps start relationships too.
I typically share my posts to my social media outlets. That’s really easy to do. When I send out newsletters to my readers I like to include three recent post. I do many of these things already, but I guess the key is that I could improve on my consistency and do them all more regularly. One suggestion I found interesting is adding a specific link to a signature. I wonder if there’s an app out there that can help automate that process and add new links to the sig.
I do reach out to other bloggers but it’s typically to ask them to write content for my blog, not the other way around. I do have some articles floating around out there, but they’re typically on article banks or on static websites and not blogs.
I also participate in forums sometimes, but since most of them don’t allow promoting one’s own blogs, I usually help people out by answering questions, and then take that forum post and turn it into a blog post.
I think what I’m learning is that I’m doing some good things, but I need to schedule them into my day and make it happen more consistently.
the video blogs that i have is mostly related to travel and field trips *;:
Video blogs are very nice because you can sort of express what you want in an artistic way, you can also have a viral video posted on your blog -+ health