Sunday, April 19, 2015

Writing outstanding content is not enough. You need to make sure that as many people as possible will be exposed to that content. This is where promotional activities come in.
5 Easy Ways To Promote Your Blog

1. Blog Comments

Leaving comments on popular blogs inside your niche can be very effective at promoting your blog, especially in the early days. If you write a funny, insightful or controversial comment, the readers of that blog might get curious and click on your comment link to check out your website. And since these readers are interested in your niche, there are good chances that they will like your content too. You need to be consistent for this tactic to work, however. This means that you should comment on many blogs and write many comments every day (e.g., 20 comments every day). There are two mistakes to avoid here. The first one is to write useless comments like “Great post!”. Your comments must add value to the discussion. The second mistake is to use keywords or the name of your blog in the name field. Keywords should never be used, as they make your comment look very spammy. Imagine getting a comment on your blog from someone named “Buy Cheap Car Accessories”.... The name of your blog could still be used, but make sure to precede it with your personal name. For instance, instead of using “CarsBlog.com” in the name field, use “Joe Smith – CarsBlog.com.” Promoting a blog is about interacting with other people. That is why you want to always have your personal name there.

2. Link Exchanges

Many webmasters believe that link exchanges are obsolete, but that is not true. If done correctly, they can still be effective for promoting a website or blog. In fact they can send you both targeted traffic and search engine juice. You just need to make sure that your link exchanges will not violate Google's policies (and that of other search engines).
Link Exchanges

The first requirement for this is to exchange links only with blogs that are relevant and useful to your own readers. The second requirement is to use a natural anchor text. This means that you should use the name of the blog in the link, and not some keyword that the blogger wants to target. If you are still worried about getting penalized with a link exchange, you can use the rel=”nofollow” attribute on the links (and ask your partners to do the same). This will remove the sharing of search engine juice, but the links will still be useful to share traffic and brand awareness. The most common place to put links is the sidebar of the blog. You could call them “Blogroll,” “Friends,” “Recommended Blogs” and so on.

Another place that you can use to exchange links is the RSS feed. Simply add a message at the bottom of your feed (you can do that with the RSS Footer plugin) with a link to your partner, and ask him to do the same on his RSS feed.



3. Guest Posts

 When you guest blog, you basically write an article to be published on someone else's blog. This practice is common in the blogosphere because it has benefits for everyone involved. The hosting blog gets a free piece of content. The guest blogger gets the opportunity to showcase his expertise or ideas to a new audience. The readers of the blog get to read an article from a different author. Guest bloggers can also include a byline on their articles, with a link pointing back to their blogs. If you manage to guest blog on popular blogs in your niche, therefore, you should be able to attract new visitors, new subscribers, and also to improve your search engine optimization thanks to the highly relevant backlink that you will receive. Here is how you can structure the process:
1. List the blogs where you want to guest post.
2. Analyze the first blog on the list trying to understand what kind of content is popular there.
3. Write an article specifically for that blog.
4. Make it something valuable, possibly a killer article.
5. Email the article to the blog owner, asking whether he is interested in publishing it.
6. If he accepts, you are are set, and you can move on to the second blog on the list.
7. If he rejects, adapt the article to the second blog on your list and send it to that blog owner.
8. Write a new article for the blogger who rejected you, and repeat this process until you have covered all the blogs on the list



4. Social Bookmarking Sites 

Social bookmarking sites allow users to store and share bookmarks of pages from around the web. Most of them use a ranking system to determine what bookmarks and submissions are popular among the community, and usually those get displayed on the front page.

One of the most popular social bookmarking sites is Digg.com. If one of your blog posts gets featured on the Digg homepage you can expect to receive anywhere from 20,000 up to 100,000 visitors in a matter of 24 hours. The drawback of  Digg is the fact that it is hard to get promoted to the front page, as there is a lot of competition from larger websites.

StumbleUpon.com is another large social bookmarking site, and it works around a toolbar that users must install on their browsers.
The advantage of StumbleUpon over Digg is the fact even a small number of votes can bring some traffic to your site, and that traffic can last several days. Other social bookmarking sites that you could try include:

  • Reddit.com 
  • Delicious.com 
  • Mixx.com
  • Propeller.com 
  • ShoutWire.com 
  • Fark.com 
  • Buzz.Yahoo.com
  • Newsvine.com 
  • Faves.com


The important thing is to dedicate some time to using those sites and trying to understand the tacit rules around them. Analyze what kind of content gets promoted to the front page, how the headlines are crafted, what kind of comments the users leave and so on.


5. Social Networks 

Social networks are useful marketing tools because they allow you to interact with your existing audience on different channels and because they can also be leveraged to attract new visitors. The first network that you should use is Twitter, given its exponential growth on the web.

Social Networks Traffic


You could create an account with the name of your blog and use it to share posts from your blog and relevant links from around the web. Your goal is to create value through your tweets while interacting with as many people as possible. Facebook is another popular social network you should try.
Facebook traffic


Create a personal profile for yourself there, and then a page for your blog. Make sure to explore the other features as well, including the ability to post pictures, videos, articles, and to interact with groups. Finally, consider using niche social networks as well. They will probably be smaller and have less traffic generation potential, but you will be able to find a very targeted audience on them. Here is a list that you can use with over 400 niche social networks.

6. Promoting Killer Articles

Your promotional activities should focus on two points: promoting your blog as a whole (i.e., by leaving comments on related blogs) and promoting your killer articles. In the first chapter of this ebook I already covered the concept of killer articles, but here are some tactics that you can use to promote those articles after you hit the “Publish” button:

  • Email all the people in your network to let them know about the article.
  • Email the owners of blogs and websites in relevant niches and let them know about the article. 
  • Ask a friend to submit the article to a suitable social bookmarking site.
  • Give the submission an initial push by asking other friends and contacts to vote on it. 
  • Mention the article and link to it from your social networking accounts. 
  • Link to the article from other blogs and websites that you might own. 
  • If the article has a good chance of ranking high for a keyword, do some linkbuilding focused on that keyword.




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