One of the simplest ways to grow your blog’s readership is to leverage other places that you have an online presence.
Leveraging places that you have presence online could include:
1. Twitter Background Image:
I’ve been using a background image on Twitter that has URLs of other places that I’m online and it’s gotten a lot of interest. While the links are not clickable they do highlight other places that you hangout online – including your blog.
It is impossible to track how many people are impacted by background images but I do know of a number of people who have found my blogs through mine.
2. Profile Pages on Social Media
The other obvious place on Twitter to promote your blog (apart from your tweets themselves) is your profile section which enables you to say a few things about yourself (160 characters) as well as leaving a link.
Almost every social media site going around has an opportunity like this to add a link to other places of online presence in a profile page. The sky is really the limit – do it on Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, MySpace, StubmleUpon, Digg, Flickr, YouTube…. the list could go on and on.
3. Social Media Sites (eg – Facebook)
There are numerous ways to leverage social networking sites and to drive traffic back to your blog. I’ve already mentioned how you can do this using the ‘profile’ area above but there are often other ways also.
Sites like Facebook also allow you to pull in RSS feeds so that you can have your wall updated every time you post something new on your blog. Look out for opportunities to import RSS feeds – these are increasingly popular and can be really effective.
There are also lots of applications that allow you to promote your content – one that many bloggers us is BlogNetworks.
4. Email Signature
One of the most common ways that website and blog owners have used to promote their blog is to use the ‘signature’ area at the bottom of emails.
It makes sense to use this – if you’re anything like me you are emailing hundreds of people a week (or day) and could potentially be reaching a lot of new readers or reinforcing your brand with older ones.
Note: Feedburner even offer a service that allows you to show your latest posts from your blog in your email signature.
5. Forum Signatures
This is another fairly common one but one that I’ve seen can be quite powerful at times (if used well with a good forum strategy).
The signature alone won’t always drive traffic but as we covered here recently on ProBlogger if you use it in conjunction with being a useful contributer it can be highly effective at driving traffic.
Many forums also allow you to add links to profile pages.
6. Blog Comments
Many bloggers spend a lot of time reading and commenting upon other blogs in their niche.
Every time you comment on another blog you can be potentially adding to or taking away from your blog’s brand. Every comment is an opportunity to connect with both the blogger behind the blog and their readers.
The best way to drive traffic from blog comments is to leave helpful, useful, stimulating, insightful, controversial comments. Do this over time and people will want to know more of who you are and what else you do.
7. LinkedIn ‘Questions and Answers’
One great social networking site that many bloggers have profiles on is LinkedIn (my profile is here). Just being a part of LinkedIn can help promote your blog but their Question and Answer tool is another opportunity that many bloggers fail to use.
You don’t want to make your use of the feature too self promotional but good questions can be effective at reinforcing your brand and even stimulating people to visit your blog (if well written). Also answering other people’s questions can get you on their radar – there are lots of ‘open’ questions which give you opportunity to do this.
8. YouTube (and other Video and Photosharing sites)
Many bloggers create videos and upload them to sites like YouTube. There are numerous opportunities to leverage this. For starters you can add links in your profile page, you can add links to the video description of every video you upload (they work best if they are at the start of the description) and you can add your URL into your video (as a pre roll or post-roll ‘credit’).
Similarly sites like Flickr allow some linking within your profile pages and the pages where you show photos.
9. Your Other Blogs
Many bloggers have more than one blog. While they could be on diverse topics and not really suitable to regularly cross promote within your content there are still opportunities for interlinking them.
One such place is in the ‘about page’ of your blogs. People often go to these pages to find out more about the author – as a result it’s appropriate to include links to other projects/blogs that you’re working on here.
If your blogs are related in topic and it is relevant to mention them in your post then you should be doing so.
10. Guest Posting
I’ve written a lot about the power of guest posts so won’t go on about it again here – however it’s another great opportunity to develop an online presence that can be powerfully leveraged to draw readers back to your blog (and to build your brand).
Read more about guest posting at:
Final Thoughts
The above techniques can potentially drive traffic to your blog but as I’ve written this post I’m reminded of a post I wrote some time back on building your personal brand – one straw at a time. All of the above activities don’t just drive traffic – they collectively build your brand.
The other thing I’ll finish by saying is that ‘relevancy’ is the key to all of the above driving traffic to your blog.
For example – if your YouTube account just has personal videos it’s less likely to drive traffic to your blog if it’s on a topic similar to your actual blog. The same is true for each of the 10 points above.
What other ways do you drive traffic to your blog from other places that you have an online presence? What works best for you?
Great tips darren.thanks for this info.Well done.
cool. will change my twitter bg.
Darren you not only give us one but 10 useful tips.Wow!!
yes i agree with lazy drunk.cool.
Among 10 tips i like when you touch about forum signature.
Darren this article is marvelous article.very impressive.
Darren i always wondering how you get wonderful idea when writing.I want to be like you.
Another batch of excellent tips Darren…
I like the email signature link and the facebook RSS feeds to my wall.. however one thought I have on those is that the audience for these links are mostly people I know personally. Not that I have a problem with my friends reading my blog (I hope they do!), I just don’t think these particular links will reach the masses of people I don’t know personally.
That said, of course one new reader could blossom into many, so these are still great tips!
The signature at the forums are better to be simple. They should be aimed at providing your link to readers to know more about you and your works, but its better they do not intend to build backlinks which may make readers that you are spammy….
Great tips… Thanks…
I’ve recently had to just pull-back a bit on the plethora of social media apps, because of time/benefit. For people just starting out, I think it is important to try as many as possible – but track your results and then focus on adding value to the ones that work for you.
Email is ubiquitous – you never know how many times one of your emails might get forwarded, and to people who are outside of your traditional circle, so an email sig is a great way to market yourself.
The only problem with having set widths on the twitter background image is that different screen size settings cover up different parts of the pictures. So, when I go to the PB twitter page I only see the tweet-update section and a half-covered pic of Darren. It isn’t a terrible problem, but an annoying one for someone like me. I decided to use a smaller pic that can be repeated. It might not have cool links, but I know my design-ADD won’t go off every time I see it. Heh. :)
Excellent post indeed! The only tip you offer that I have tried is the LinkedIn Q&A, but I will check that out. Thank you!
I’m going to try out the Twitter background image idea. Thanks for the tips.
Good post. I already do a lot of these and I think they all ad up to extra traffic.
Blog promotion through social media really is the best way to get quality traffic! The keyword there is quality my friends ;)
I like the fact that you point out what a useful comment is. I tell people in my coaching program if they want to get quality traffic from commenting a blog post, help the author out as much as possible by adding relevant information while using keywords that are in the post.
Keep up the great work and I’ll definitely be stopping by again, I like what you have to say!
Great tips. My blog is brand new (though I’m not new to blogging), so I’m working on putting all these to work for me.
Thanks again.
About the twitter background image, what resolution are people designing these things for? I’m working on a widescreen monitor, but keep my browser set to 1024px wide, and all of these images are being overlapped by the tweets.
Great simple steps anyone can do to drive traffic to their blogs :-)
Darren –
Thank you for these meaningful tips and directions on how to get the most out of our blogs and social media alignments. I could spend all day here, reading your valuable content. Now I know where to come for any answers to my questions.
Thanks!
– RhondaH
I find that if you write good call to action with your signature, you can drive a lot of traffic from the forum, especially when the discussion matches your call to action!
Well-formed list. I agree with you and appreciate your observation about this needful thing.
Cheers
Of course D, this was a great post, as usual. Thanks. I kept thinking how can I add a little something or another point or two, but as I was scrolling to the next point you would cover it, great job, but I got one…
You can leverage a blog network like B5Media.
lol.
Have a great Day,
Kenney
Following the advice of numerous blog pros, I’ve done most of these things. They do require constant upkeep and checking.
Do you have any suggestions for consolidation in order to decrease the amount of time required on a daily basis? How do you organize?
Commenting on other sites in my niche area has been very effective and I devote at least an hour out of my day to do this.
I’ve been fortunate to guest blog at a few sites and each time I’ve made a friend and I get a spike in my traffic.
Cheers
George
The Twitter background looks a mess unless the reader has a very wide browser window.
I’d avoid that one as it could end up making you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.
The blue pill or the red pill? If given the choice which one would you take? If you take the blue pill you will return to your online website and everything will be the same as before (including your rankings), or take the red pill and let’s see how deep the rabbit hole goes . So what is the Matrix? The Matrix is a simulated world where nothing is real, and yet we use it to communicate, share and do business on a daily business.
——————————————-
johnyymathew
Social advisor
Thanks Darren. I just updated my Twitter background. Look for @larryweaver
Well done and said! You are the best — and Youtube and Facebook has helped our business explode! Thanks for the post-GREAT!
If these 10 points were a test I’d score 70%.
Where I didn’t score:
1.The twitter background thing – may be redundant in this day of other tools like TweetDeck and Twhirl.
2.Linked In has only started to really pop onto my radar so that looks interesting.
3.Guest posting – I guess it’s like joining the Masons – “to be one ask one”. I’ve never asked anyone if I could be a guest poster. But that is probably the best traffic generator on the list.
Which BTW Darren is a great list!
Great summary.
I agree, guest posting is a great approach.
Giving a post away, is a high price to pay – but it leads to a rush of visitors plus a permanent link…
Thanks for the tips, Darren! It’s good to have all of these social media ideas in one place.
I’m still new at the social media game, and currently only use Twitter and forums. I’ve been holding back on FaceBook due to time restraints, but I see now that I need to go ahead and take the plunge!
My main concern is the quality of readers that you get from social media. Are they like StumbleUpon or Digg readers — pop in and out without getting any deeper into your site?
I have noticed quite a few people do not put a nice Twitter background. I am always willing to help those people out by creating them in Photoshop. No one ever asks me to do so though and I have given them the option to just e-mail me so that I can help them out. There really isn’t anything in it for me but it makes me feel good to help people.
Having a nice background with a personal picture of yourself and all the names and links to web sites is sure leveraging.
Great post! I love the idea of using a Twitter background image. I’ve been doing it for awhile now and I think it really helps.
I personally have a lot of success with Facebook. Posting new content to it is a great way to put it in front of a lot of your friends who curiously like to click things. :)
Darren thanks for the great tips. I knew of some but intend to implement many more thanks again for the ideas
Gary McElwain
Very useful set of tips! I didn’t know about the Facebook blog network app, so I got connected with that today. Thanks!
Good list of social medias and uses. I friend you on facebook, and it definitely helps to follow someone when you’re connected to them through more than one medium.
Darren,
Very good tips and information. I definately have to improve my blogging networking skills. That’s how I look at it. In person, I meet a lot of people to advance myself in my career.
I have to do the same for my blog but then virtually although currently, I use my blog on a very small scale.
Patrick
I’m thinking of changing my twitter profile background… Thanks for all the useful stuff man.
Cheers.
Thanks for all the tips. Just found you through Twitter (even though I’ve been hearing about you all over the place) and am going to spend some time reading more in depth this weekend.
Great article, Darren!
I’m wondering the best way to build the background image, taking into account the different page sizes and resolutions, as already addressed in some other comments. Is there a way to utilize CSS I wonder. Maybe you can only use a static JPG? Anyone have some ideas?
Timo
Yes Boss. Good stuff.
Although, one might be tempted to post more than once, solely to exploit tip #6.
I think that of the methods mentioned the most effective are forum signatures and commenting on other blogs. This usually doesn’t take a lot of time but if you actually leave quality comments and make quality forum posts it can be a good representation for your blog.
I’ve recently been experimenting with quality link exchanges with related blogs, so I’ll have to see how it turns out.
Thanks for writing this helpful post.
NathanKP – Inkweaver Review
One of my favourite posts by you Darren, well done!
I tried the Twitter image, but depensing on your screen size I have found that the image displays differently, which causes a big pain. Also how many poeple really visit each others Twitter profiles that often?
Another realy great tip is commenting on other peoples blogs. This has boosted my traffic really well. I think this should be the number one tip people should first try.
Once again great post! Keep ’em coming!
The addition of the RSS feeds in Facebook is one of the only reasons that I didn’t ditch that site after they changed into their current format. Thanks for the tips Darren.
I like the Twitter background image. That’s definitely a great way to promote your blogging efforts. I thought that your suggestion to leverage YouTube was an interesting point, and I hadn’t really thought about utilizing it to further promote my blog. Thanks for the tips!
Where can one get a twitter design like that?
Thanks
– Scott from http://venturedig.com
“VentureDig is Twitter for Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs”
Great suggestions. I am a new blogger but I have been reading your blog for several months now. I really appreciate your blog and all the advice about blogging. Keep up the good work.
thnks darren for this useful info.
I don’t spend much time updating my social media space, and while I have links to my blog from all my social media accounts I don’t link my blog to any of them. Except for a twitter plugin that let twitter know when I post a new article. I’ve learned that linking back and forth is bad for Google rankings. Correct me if I’m wrong, one way links are good, two way links not so much.
Darren,
Thanks for this wonderful set of tips. I an off to consider the value in adding a few more social networking sites to my life, and getting out there and reading and contributing to other sites.
Fiona Fell
The Profit Maximising Web Geek
http://www.FionaFell.com.au