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Promote a Blog Post [Day 3 – 31DBBB]

Posted By Darren Rowse 8th of April 2009 Blog Promotion 0 Comments

Yesterday’s task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge was to write a ‘list post’ on your blog. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to write that up and publish it by now.

Today we’re going to take that post and attempt to drive some readers to it.

Today’s Teaching on Promoting Blog Posts:

Blog Promotion is something that most bloggers have tried to do in many ways – however one mistake that I see a lot of bloggers making in their attempts to find new readers is that they only ever promote their blog as a whole. Their promotion is all about driving traffic to their blogs home page URL.

While there’s nothing wrong with this – I personally have had A LOT more success in promoting individual posts than my blogs front page. That’s what we are going to do today.

Having hit publish on your post yesterday – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Be more proactive than that and spend a little time today giving it some ‘nudges’ to help it on its way.

I know quite a few have already done some of this by leaving a link on our previous post promoting your link (some of your are reporting quite good traffic from doing it) but lets go a step further and find some ways to promote your post in other networks outside of ProBlogger.

11 Ways to Promote a Blog Post

note: please be careful in using these techniques. Don’t use them all with every post you write. Choose your best posts and promote them selectively and in ways that are useful to other people.

1. Pitching Other Bloggers – asking another blogger to consider linking to your post. note: there’s a real art to this – read more on how to do it at 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger.

2. Social Messaging – what social networks like Twitter and Facebook are you a part of? Attempt to leverage these to promote your post. The key is not to incessantly spam your followers and friends with your link – but use your network to ‘seed’ the link and let your followers spread word of it for you (this won’t happen every time but as your network grows it can become more and more powerful).

3. Social Bookmarking – promoting selective links on a site like Digg or StumbleUpon can lead to amazing results. Further reading on this topic at How to Get to the Front Page of Digg and Using Social Media Sites to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic.

4. Internal Links – don’t just promote your post on other people’s sites – think about where you can link to it from within your own site. Perhaps you’ve written on the topic before and can add a link for further reading, perhaps adding a section in your sidebar for ‘latest posts’ could work. Internal linking won’t drive heaps of new traffic but it can help with SEO and increase page views.

5. Newsletters – if you have an email newsletter list – shoot out an email to your list about your latest post.

6. Other Blogs Comments Sections and Forums – leaving helpful and insightful comments on forums or other blogs can be great at driving traffic if your comment is genuine, relevant and sensitive to the discussion. Leaving a link is sometimes also appropriate if highly relevant.

7. Email Signatures – Adding links to your blog to your outgoing emails is fairly common place – but whatever including links to recent posts instead of just your blog’s front page URL.

8. Followup Posts – write a new post on your blog that picks up where your last one left off. This builds momentum and if you inter-link the posts drives more page views.

9. Advertise Your Post – for posts that you’re particularly proud of and that are well received by readers you might even consider a mini ad campaign with a small budget using a service like AdWords or StumbleUpon advertising. Further Reading on this at Run a StumbleUpon advertising campaign on your blog.

10. Pitch Mainstream Media – occasionally posts will be relevant to mainstream media. You want to really pick a highly interesting post for this – it’s not something for every day.

11. Article Marketing – I wouldn’t recommend submitting exactly the same article you’ve posted on your blog to article marketing sites (this can get you into trouble with Google penalties for duplicate content) but I know of a few bloggers who rewrite their key articles for article marketing.

Of course there are many other ways to promote posts. Feel free to tell us how you do it in comments below.

Please note: don’t do all of the above things for every single post on your blog. I personally tend to pick 1-2 posts a week to give a push and let others grow organically.

Today’s Task – Promote a Post:

Take a little time to look at yesterdays post and ask yourself where it might be appropriate to promote it. If you look at the post and don’t think that it is really worthy of promotion anywhere – feel free to choose another relevant post to do it with. If you don’t have one – spend some time today writing something that you feel IS link worthy and then try promoting that.

For most of you I’d start with point #1 above – pitching to other bloggers. Choose another blog with highly related content to your post and politely submit it as a suggested link to that blog. Again – check out 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger for tips that will help increase the likelihood of it being successful.

Feeling Timid?

I know that many new bloggers often feel quite timid and wary of promoting themselves. Don’t worry – you’re not alone. I have felt that myself many times and have at times not put my work forward where perhaps I should have. However – the times that I have been willing to push myself out of my comfort zone have often paid off.

While I’ve had a few times in my blogging life where I’ve had lucky breaks that result in traffic – most of the times traffic has arrived at my blogs in numbers have been a direct result of me doing some promotional work. Don’t just leave it to chance – put yourself out there and see what comes as a result.

Once you’ve done it – I’d love to hear how you went about promoting your post and what the result was in comments below. Lets learn together how to get this task right!

Update: There are lots of folks talking about this over at the forum, you should check it out! Day 3 – Promote a Post

Want More?

This task is a sample of one of the tasks in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook – a downloadable resource designed to reinvigorate and revitalize blogs.

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About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Hi Darren,

    About the social bookmarking, some people have been and still arguing that it have lost its so called credibillity in being source of traffic on the basis that the top 10 for example has been controlled by few influential people.

    Therefore, although our post especially for the starters are extremely good and have the expected quality, we may fail get enough attention.

    Plus, for example digg in john chow’s case if im not mistaken, although he got a lot of digg, once few people dugg his article, the article will be taken out aka banned.

    What do you think about these issues? Any suggestion to overcome it?

  2. Darren,

    You’re absolutely right that you can’t be afraid to get out there and promote your work. If you’ve done something good, you should want other people to see it! Sometimes it helps to use baby steps.

    But be careful. Networking doesn’t just mean sending your link to digg, or blindly emailing a related blogger about your post. I recently wrote a post about how to best go about these promotion methods.

    Obviously, now seems to be a good time to publish it (and promote it) here:

    http://www.3stylelife.com/?p=791
    Are you networking or netfaking?

    Things are rolling strong with the challenge!
    Barry

  3. A good lesson. I’ll try to do this exercise but, as you said, there are timid bloggers XD.

  4. Sorry Darren, I have another question for you if you dont mind…

    About the stumbleupon, based on my observation and further reading in few blogs, they claimed that stumbleupon will only bring one-off visitor as they accidentaly ‘stumble upon’ our blog.

    Yah, it is true that it can bring massive visitors to our blog but do you think that will our blog able to retain those visitors long enough before that start to get interested on our blog?

    What do you think based on your experience in your blogs particularly?

    Btw, this is such a great post. I’ll try my best to implement stuffs that have been suggested by you. TQ

    • H E L M I A S Y R A F – really it depends on the blog. The key with StumbleUpon traffic is to create a ‘sticky’ blog – ie a blog that hooks people in beyond their first 5 seconds on your blog. You want them to read your full post (the key to that is interesting content) and then subscribe (so prominent invitations to subscribe tend to work).

  5. Ok im definitely in the timid new blogger catagory but im up for the challenge! Im publishing my list post tomorrow so Im going to start looking for bloggers to pitch my post to today whilst working up the courage to follow through! :)

  6. Good post, Darren!

    As you mentioned, a lot of bloggers are shy in the promotion area, including me. Do you think also that having a blog hosted at WP.com limits your chances of becoming popular and/or well-known?

    Thanks for the great post, and I look forward to learning more.

  7. What The Pros Do (or anyone else who wants to):

    Feel free to pitch your post to me as a practice run; we’re all in the same boat and here to help each other, so there’s no pressure. Then you can go out at pitch confidently to other bloggers, media, etc.

    Contact info is on my site, or you could pitch here in the comments and get a wider swath of feedback.

  8. Promotion within limits will sure be helpful, when it goes beyond prescribed limits it will push visitors away for the simple fact that our promotion is a little too pushy/

    I personally would not like to promote with a push

  9. Darren-

    I often do many of the things you suggest (when appropriate), but I appreciate the formality you are bringing to the table.

    In this economy, anything that someone can do to make their product, service, blog, or self stand out from the crowd is more important than ever. That is why my post yesterday is titled “5 Reasons To Network In A Tough Economy”. Interestingly, if you look at the reasons it could have been called “5 Reasons To Be Sure To Promote Your Blog In A Tough Economy”… as the tips are universal.

    http://thomsinger.blogspot.com/2009/04/five-reasons-to-network-in-tough.html

    Enjoying the series, and it is ONLY day three!

    thom

  10. I always promote my new blogs through Twiter and LinkedIn and in my signature on forums, etc. I thought self promotion through the likes of Digg etc would be frowned upon. There was one guy I followed briefly on Twitter but he was too pushy on getting people to Digg his stuff so he was consigned to the trash bin!

    Anyway, I have just posted on Digg and will sit back and await the rain of abuse emails :-)

    http://www.kevincumbria.wordpress.com

  11. Your first commenter mentioned social networks and i kind of agree with him.

    “About the social bookmarking, some people have been and still arguing that it have lost its so called credibillity in being source of traffic on the basis that the top 10 for example has been controlled by few influential people.”

    I know recently Alexa changed their algo to exclude traffic coming in from social network and as a result a lot of blogs lost ranking including mine. BUT i still believe they can bring in good traffic especially if you can get some kudos from them, for me they just seem to be lazy when it comes down to bookmarking your post.

    Thanks for the insights Darren, I have been a bit busy with other tasks, but i have been looking at other bloggers in your list. Some interesting stuff. Keep up the great work

  12. ‘8. Followup Posts’ works for me as my post, ‘Travelling with Thai Phrase Books’, is the first part of a series on phrase books.

    And now that you’ve got me thinking… posting phrase book reviews on amazon.com might just be the ticket.

    thanks Darren…

  13. Again, perfect timing. I happened to be in the midst of unveiling my blog’s first pillar article series that just so happened to start yesterday with a list post.

    This is a perfect post for me to promote since it strongly encourages subscribing to my blog.

    Do any of you need help getting started eating healthy?

  14. I’m glad to see that I am actually doing most of what you recommend on daily basis, especially Article Marketing for which I see great results when it comes to the traffic they generates.

    I will add a video and podcast version of that post too, I noticed that this helps a lot too.

  15. I will be participating in forums and commenting today. Lets see what effect this will have on my post. I will also use comment luv on blogs to promote the post.

    I never completed your 2nd task because I had published a big list( 100 Blogging Articles to Help Bloggers ) a day before that.

  16. From the beginning of this challenge I am amazed about the synchronicities involved. For example, I had a post scheduled for yesteday about the blogging tools I used in my first 6 months as a “serious” blogger, and yesterday task was to write a “list post”. Which is exactly what I did.

    This morning I was thinking to give some momentum to some of the posts I wrote a few time ago and I even picked one that would be “timely” enough to do it. Well, I’m starting to promote it right here.

    Yes, it’s about synchronicities and the “master plan”.

    The Master Plan.

    In addition to link it from here I will try to build a little bit of momentum for my post using twitter and StumbleUpon.

    It’s been only 3 days from this challenge and I enjoyed a lot. However, I think the best stuff is yet to come.

  17. Great points. I find that most of my traffic comes from search engines and that it comes to individual posts rather than the main blog.

    While I regularly do internal linking, something that I’ve found that really helps with that is the Similar Posts plugin for WordPress.

    Since I was hosting the Carnival of Education today, I told a story and took the opportunity to link the Carnival to some prominent bloggers by including them in the storyline. I also emailed or Twittered them and asked them to link to me, but we’ll see if that happens.

    Another thing I did was to include a few links to some of my posts (including the List Post from yesterday – 20 Blogs I Wish Were Around When I Started Teaching).

    Great series already!

  18. Using application in facebook, is definitelly good. I did it so far for my local blog, and gives me a lot of traffic.

    Ps: the most wonderful app which works for me is Mirror Blog. Simply placed it in the leftbar, and people who stay in our network will get notice if there’s an update news.

    Other which work, by publishing a half of our post using Note, then set a redirection to our blog. Just tag our friend, and let them choose, where they prefer to comment. Ops, dont forget to let them know, to subscribe!

  19. Thanks Darren,

    Just like a Magic I notice a increment number of visitors and reducing the bouncing rate.

    I used some Internal links from the post and Related links bottom of the page which work really well. Visitors who came to the post went around my blog.

    I used couple of social networks. But I am bit scared of asking another blogger to consider linking to your post. May be that is no a good thing.

  20. My list post on Twitter yesterday was about the 3 benefits President Obama’s visit to my town, Istanbul. Today’s promotion of that link asks if one detriment today (the White House press corps having trouble leaving Istanbul this morning) offsets those benefits.

    Detriment of POTUS Turkeytrip offsets benefit(http://tiny.cc/b0xHk)? WhiteHouse press flight 3hr bureaucracy delay today, Pentagon solves

  21. It helps if you already have a decent presence on various social media (stumble, reddit, digg etc.), you can then pitch a post to multiple places and your friends will hopefully support it. It is a lot tougher when you have to build a profile from scratch at the same time as building a blog.

  22. I’ve never really used point 1 but plan to in the future. Have you ever written in more depth about that particular point?

    Thanks for another great article. I’m really looking forward to the next 28 days!

    -Joel Drapper

  23. Day three and it gets interesting.

    Promoting posts and blogs is not that easy if you have are rather new blog. You can have great content, but the visitor just looks at your site and thinks: oh, zero comments, not that good.

    Should a new blogger promote his/her posts straight away from the beginning or shall he/she wait some time till the content of the blog grows?

    PS: Really enjoying the challenge. Keep up the good work Darren.

  24. Are there any Germany around? ;-)

    My list post yesterday was about 5 ways to double your memory’s capacity. You can find it here:

    http://geld-mit-importen.de/blog_simon/wordpress/2009/04/07/5-wege-seine-gedachtnisleistung-zu-verdoppeln-day-2-31-dbbb/

    “5 Wege, seine Gedächtnisleistung zu verdoppeln”

    When do you start the forum, Darren? It would be nice (especially for later tasks) to know if there are any other bloggers from Germany in this competition.

  25. Darren,

    Thanks for the clear overview. What is funny is that I directly (after publishing my post started to do what you described, without the 3rd day information)…

    Thanks
    Ralph

  26. I like the idea in your email today, suggesting to use this challenge to help other bloggers drive traffic to their sites.
    I will try to blog about a few of the bloggers with interesting posts I encounter here.
    If anyone wants to write about a blog post I just release, I would be happy too:
    http://spacebug.com/Open_source_community_should_employ_Microsoft_business_strategies

  27. Very good point here.
    I think you could classify this different promotion methods depending on the goal of your promotion:
    – are you trying to gain visibility and have lots of visits ? Aim at twitter, digg likes, facebook
    – are you trying to get feedbacks for your community ? use a newsletter
    and so on…

  28. I promoted my post after I wrote it on Twitter, I do tend to only promote the posts I feel good enough, but I am my own worst enemy and think that most of the things I write are rubbish (and they very well could be). So have decided to try and get this out there through twitter and stumbleupon… I have thought about submitting it to Sphinn but, even though it’s about search, I feel it’s too basic for that site.

    if you want to have a read of the post its here http://juniorseo.com/top-5-sites-to-add-to-your-rss-reader-for-junior-seos/

  29. Good morning world! Let the fun begin. For those who look for someone to pitch to, just pitch to me.

    I will have to write a new article, because My list may not fly as catchy enough to make an impression.

  30. Thank Darren you for your very precise and detailed “promote your post article”.

    Co-challengers may send me their posts, I will be happy to help promote them if they are related to the universe of my own blog, that is:

    – Thoughts to change Humanity’s “rendez-vous” with destiny –

    On a journey towards the truth, the little and big things that are raising our awareness, and empower each one of us to leverage the changes in the course of events that a leadership starved Humanity has unwillingly engaged into…
    Full steam ahead was the Titanic modus operandi; right now, is a good time to “stop and think”…

    If you and your blog or post are thoughts and action provoking Trim Tabs, please drop me a line and I will help.

  31. My list post already included a number of internal links, and I already planned to write some follow up posts to “fill it out” with more information.

    I already have my RSS feed seeding on Facebook, and just mentioned my post on Twitter.

    My email signature includes a link to my blog’s main page… never thought about changing it to individual posts, though. I will keep that in mind.
    I think that I will keep my signature the same in the forums that I frequent, but I will be more aware of places where I can link to my posts in response to a conversation.

    As always, great tips and looking forward to the rest of the course!

  32. I have now Twitted all my contacts and added it to my Facebook stream.

    I can see the idea in doing that to drive more reads.

    Great 31DBBB.

    Michael
    http://www.photofolio.dk/blog/

  33. My list post from yesterday, Top 10 Reasons for Learning Chinese was automatically posted on Twitter. As a result, I received more comments (6) on Twitter than I did on the blog post itself (5). I also received 2 re-tweets. So even some passive promotion can work wonders.

    The only trouble with this is that comments are now diluted between Twitter and my Blog. Any interest is good, but I’m starting to wonder how important it is to consolidate all comments/responses in one place.

    Got a couple of ideas for how to further promote my Top 10 Reasons to Learn Chinese and will try and implement them this evening.

  34. Thanks for this, Darren. This is the one place where i feel I could truly learn and do more.
    I am the timid type when it comes to promoting my blog because I don’t take rejection well. I know I need to just get over myself and start valuing what I write more.

    Also, I just don’t understand twitter and facebook – how to use them to promote my blog. I only have a few followers and i don’t spend time on them (I’m spending too much time writing blog posts LOL!)

    There is a lot for me to think about with today’s topic – thanks for another great challenge :)

  35. Hi Darren and friends,

    Can you share with me a few tools you use for collecting information for your blogs?

    I have listed a few in my blog. The tools are not exhaustive (for example, I left out stumble upon in social bookmarking list). But can you kindly take a look and tell me whether you can think of other categories, I missed?

    The link to my post “Seven InfoTools Beyond Search” is here:

    http://www.tools2think.org/infotools/?p=5

    If you can think of any, please leave a comment on this post.

  36. That’s one of the reasons I LOVE twitter! I have it set up with a plugin to auto tweet and I keep manually re-tweeting over time.

    Comment Luv plugin is great too!

    Thanks Darren!

  37. 1. I tweet every blogpost with a tiny URL on Twitter.
    2. People can sign up for an RSS newsletter.
    3. I changed the people in my FaceBook GROUP to my new PAGE and I post the same tiny URL on my Page.
    4. I visit travel forums on Africa and sign with my name and site-URL.

    Good idea to start changing the site URL in my signature to a post URL! Thanks for the idea.

    Johan
    http://www.planyoursafari.com

  38. Blog carnivals can also be a great way to promote a post you’re particularly proud of.

    You’ll get a boost in traffic (sometimes very small, sometimes very large depending upon the carnival), but more importantly your post will get read by most of the other bloggers involved in the carnival. Many of them will Stumble your post or bookmark on other social networking sites.

    You’ll usually get comments left on your post from the other bloggers, and you in turn can visit their posts and comment on them. Sometimes you discover great new blogs, and form new working relationships with others in your niche.

  39. This is really hard for me – I tried to tweet my list post yesterday to see if someone would re-tweet it, but I don’t have a lot of followers, and the subject I chose is not very mainstream (autism and pop culture). Also, I wanted to write that post in english, when generally I write in french.

    I am going to try harder today, thanks for the halp Darren!

  40. I emailed the members of the Basset Hound breeders Google Group after the director of the controversial documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed commented on a piece I’d blogged.

    I invited group members to write comments to the director as a lot of the things we’ve been talking about behind closed doors would be better discussed in the public arena.

    Although over 200 people received my invitiation to comment directly on my blog, only a handful responded. Others continued the discussion in the Google Group although the director wouldn’t read them there because she’s not a member.

    I got more comments via Twitter than people directly in my network.

    What did I learn? That reaching out to your community is valuable but tough. And they don’t always act in a way you would expect.

    The blog post referred to here is:
    http://www.bassethounds.nu/svt-broadcasts-controversial-uk-documentary/

  41. Promoting your post is the first thing any blogger should do..
    Depend on article I promote my article on following ways:

    #Twitter
    #Facebook
    #Delicious
    # Digg /Su depend on the nature of article…

  42. Thanks for the reminder. I know “content is king”. But it only rules if people know its there.

    I must make and effort to step out of my comfort zone and promote my work.

  43. Well, I didn´t post my list post here yesterday, but today it will help me to solve todays task. Nice ey?
    Like so many else, my facebook status changes with the RSS feed from my blog. I use Twitter in the same way and bloggy.se (swedish twitter look a like) as well. I get some sporadic traffic from these auto-marketing activities. Of course I ping a couple of sites so my post shows up on them for a couple of seconds. For my list post I also used Pusha.se, “swedish Digg”.
    The post has already been linked to twice since it went public and another blog republished the whole thing on her blog, with link of course.
    The topic for the list post?
    “7 ways to use blogging in school as an education tool” (in swedish)
    http://www.ellwesfisk.se/2009/04/7-satt-att-anvanda-bloggar-i-skolan.html

  44. Thanks Darren for this series. I’ve wrote only my second ever list post yesterday and am very proud of the results.

    http://manvsdebt.com/33-ways-to-thwart-identity-theft/

    I have no problem submitting the article to social sites, as well as linking to the article in future posts. However, I’m a little afraid of sending the link directly to other bloggers.

  45. One thing that i find helpful is going through my database of posts once every 3-6 months and make a growing list of my pillar articles – my best of the best articles, and spend some time promoting each of these articles.

    I use some powerful spinning techniques to make a different version of each article and I submit them to a ton of different directories.

    I also send a RT(retweet) via twitter on a top article 2-3 times a month, enough to get some new eyes on the blog post, but not so much to make it an eyesore on the twitter timeline.

  46. I am wondering if anyone else in this large group of bloggers is in (or writing to) the training and development field (not personal fitness, but corporate learning/training/HR or related)?

    My audience: High tech industry equipment trainers (for example: medical, semiconductor, robotic equipment suppliers).

    Yesterday I wrote about “8 Gut Reasons to Provide Hands-On Practice in Equipment Training.” http://semicon-recession.com/2009/04/07/8-gut-reasons-to-provide-hands-on-practice-in-equipment-training/

    Any possible partners here?

    [Thanks to Barry Wright, III for idea to look right here.]

  47. When it comes to comments are there guidelines for effectiveness in terms of number of comments or their age for a post?

    I’ve seen advice that says don’t bother if it’s an older post or you won’t be on the first page of comments. However, I got a surprising handful of pingback referral visitors when I linked to a very old archived post on another blog when it was just easier than redefining a term. Although it was a blog by a popular author with a relative low volume of posts.

    I’ll admit my bravery wavers when I see huge volumes like the 629 currently on Day 2. Generally, is there sufficient return on investment to make that 630? I realize there’s really nothing to lose in this forum, but I’m asking more about making optimum choices with other blogs and posts.

  48. I use twitter (add me @krjx)frequently to promote blog posts from several blogs. However, finally with 300+ followers, I’m only now seeing any significant amount of traffic from it.

  49. Nathalie and others wondering about tweeting posts – one great plugin for wordpress is the Pingpressfm plugin. What it does is uses the ping.fm service to automatically send an update status to all your social networks this is a good way to get more eyes on your blog posts.

    I generally get 1-200 new hits to my blog just from each post that I post bringing in people from facebook, myspace, twitter, linkedin, etc via ping.fm

  50. Thanks for helping us that are new to blogging and using twitter. Very helpful! Thank You!

    http://sicknessanddisease.blogspot.com

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