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. Join over 14,000 other bloggers and Get your Copy Today. |
I took the liberty of writing up a “blogging tips” post for my newest blog based on my comment on Bill’s question, above. In the interest of promoting a blog post, I’ll share the link here. :)
http://www.janetgreen.net/2009/04/08/are-your-blog-post-comments-scattered/
This site is an aggregator of my own original content from two other blogs, plus it’s the place where I intend to blog about social media. If anyone can help me hard-code a line break into that post title, I’d appreciate the help! :)
Also – could I ask one of my fellow “better blog” students to Digg and/or Stumble that post if you feel it’s worthy? Thanks!
Phew! That was a lot of comments to wade through, and I thought I was quick off the mark. I’m struggling to find bloggers in a similar niche / level. So if you are also on this journey please take a moment to review my site, or my post Eight Habits of Successful Bloggers – http://www.mikeslife.org/content/eight-habits-successful-blogger
Please comment there and I’ll come and look at your post and maybe we can help each other.
Something I often do when I write something I’m particularly proud of is submit it to a friend via Stumbleupon. I usually say something like “I’d love a Stumble if you find it worthy.” I did this yesterday to a post that wasn’t part of this 31 day challenge, and I got a Stumble out of it.
I also find I get a lot of traffic from promoting my posts on Twitter, but I try to make sure to participate in the conversation so I’m not just promoting myself all the time.
Good stuff, Darren! I’m really enjoying this challenge.
Only three days into it, Darren, and I have learned a lot already from this challenge, so a big thank you : )
Karen
I’m working on promoting this post. They are new pics of Angelina Jolie when she was a toddler and few in the blogging world seem to have picked up on it.
http://www.angelinajoliewatch.com/photos-of-angelina-jolie-at-23-months/
This is the “challenge” part of the challenge. Like many other bloggers, I’m hesitant to promote myself. However, I’ve been meaning to create a monthly newsletter email. Now that my new site is up, I have a theme to model the email after. Time to get moving on that front! I don’t have much of a subscription list, yet, though. Any recommendations for promoting a newsletter email or building a good list? I’ve seen other sites do giveaways. Has anyone found that to be effective as a good promotional tool?
Darren,
I must have been right on the money with this post because I had already planned on sending my list post from yesterday’s 31DBBB assignment to Digg and StumbleUpon. However, I am under the weather this week and it’s become difficult to keep on top of everything.
My list post, 5 Ways Bootleg DVDs Make Your Poor turned out to be much longer than I initially planned. I was then going to make it into two different posts but had difficulty figuring out how to do it and if it would work so I left it as-is.
It’s a much more comprehensive post than many other articles on my blog so maybe it will bring in additional traffic with the promotion efforts for day 3 of the 31DBBB
Off, to Digg I go……..
More than anything else, I hate the time-to-value ratio that social media takes. If you’re serious about it, it’s probably best to hire a specialist. I much prefer the networking side of things. It’s more enjoyable to build relationships than it is to add “friends” to digg. :)
Great post, as you said, the days of build it and they will come are long gone. It’s all about getting your post out there. I really like the idea of getting it to spread through sites like Twitter. If anyone out there has a blog related to Mobile Phones (or anything close) hit me up and we can trade links to our posts. We can also try the Twitter thing via the “retweet” functionality.
Yesterday’s Post:
http://trendycellular.com/blog/10-technologies-that-should-be-incorporated-into-cell-phones/
My twitter account:
http://twitter.com/trendycellular
Thanks for the post and the Challenge, Darren.
Today’s post had some great ideas that I will be working on.
So far, I’ve tended to use socialmarker.com for promoting my posts. It’s convenient and makes it easy to select the sites I want to post on. I select the “Best” sites, deselect a few I don’t like and add a few I do.
I seem to get more hits from Reddit than from other sites. Haven’t been as successful on some of the other sites. Still trying to figure out how to get more Diggs and Stumbles.
Search traffic is on the rise, though, so that’s a good thing.
I’m pleased that I’ve been implementing just a few of the points you’ve mentioned already, I will work on the others especially point 6.
Good Morning,
great tips on blogging so far. I personally chose Google Applications and uses for my blog yesterday. You would be amazing at the applications people did not know were out there. For example… how about Google Sketches. 3D sketching with out the knowledge of CAD! You should give it a quick look. Thee just night be something there you didnt know about! http://www.centralmasswebdesign.com/blog
Yea!!! Just getting started and I’ve learned that I’ve done something right!!
Every so often I “tweet” about a blog post.
So for today’s task of promoting your blog I stepped that up a bit.
To promote the list post from yesterday I…
made mention of it on my main site http://www.thecornerdesk.com
tweeted about it
made mention of it at FB
and
e-mailed the link to a few creative family members who, I’m sure, will pass it along.
I will not do that much promotion for every post, in fact there may be some that I really don’t promote at all, but I thought this was as good a time as any to kick it up a bit.
Now on with the rest of my day.
Good Luck All!
@ Lisa / lotusessence, thanks for your kind words and the visit, appreciate.
Here is a bit of feedback on things that did not work:
The twitter name you gave cannot be found & your blog does not list a twitter as well. I saw a lot (like 8 or 9) of twitter references to your post, congratulations on the promotion; not all had a link though.
The lotus14 you use to reply to comments is a broken link.
& I could not find the RSS…
And more feedback on things that worked:
I like the colors & design of your blog; I like what you post and the style & the writing.
What caught my attention was:
Raising Our Consciousness http://lotusessence.com/2009/03/25/raising-our-consciousness/
and your yesterday’s “list homework”
10 Tips to Master the Law of Attraction http://lotusessence.com/2009/04/07/10-tips-to-master-the-law-of-attraction/
The law of attraction is only one of the laws, there are others though.
I’d like to follow you on twitter & subscribe to your postings. Please send me a message via twitter @fredinchina or @TheTrimTab
Thanks.
I always use Twitter, and Facebook via Friendfeed.. so I have seen a small inpact of social media. I am not very good at promoting posts though. I have an interview on Saturday that will be promoted heavily.
Generally speaking, the people that follow me in my social networks- Twitter and Facebook- know that I’m a heavy user. I also know that all of the people I am connected to in these social networks are not always on. I ALSO know that a LOT of these people connected to me are also connected to many many others.
In promoting my post when it’s fresh I tend to use Tweetlater to schedule Twitter announcements of the new blog post. With the Professional version there is a feature that allows you to use spinnable text in order to not repeat yourself the same way. I personally like to just rephrase it my own way. I look to promote the article regularly- either every hour or half an hour, depending on how generic the nature of the article is. The more people I feel it can reach the more often i’ll promote it.
I have not received a reprimand from anyone yet. I may have lost some followers but I’m always losing and gaining followers- that’s the amorphous nature of social networking.
In general, regardless of how large your network is or how many messages you write, most people will only be on their social network for about 2 hours at a time before they have to move away from it. In that time you may see the same post promoted differently either 4 times or 2. Considering all the other factors that’s not a lot.
Not everyone leaves comments. That’s one way of measuring your success. I also use Retweets as a guidepost as well. Besides just tracking your @name, I would track the separate shortened URLs you know of as well as any general phrase that shows up often in your promotion, that way you can track it when others don’t attribute the post to you.
On any major post- especially ones I will be referring to again later on- I shorten the URL with a custom URL. For example- for my latest blog post for assignment 2- A Brand Strategy Checklist, the URL is http://thecauseisthehabit.com/guide-a-brand-strategy-checklist/ BUT my shortened URL that I will always use is http://tr.im/brandlist. Why use this instead? 2 reasons. 1, it’s catchy. I am more likely to remember this than some random shortened link… so will your readers. 2, the link shortener has a metric program that shows me how well the link is doing. Obviously numbers are relative so how I use the metrics are AGAINST each other. I gauge how well a blog post is received with popularity by checking how many click throughs it gets versus the other articles. This will give me a general feeling to what people like. That being said, it’s just a guide and not the end all be all.
Last, anyone engaging you about the blog post ENGAGE THEM BACK. I’d even counter to ask the Retweeters WHAT they liked about the blog post, why they retweeted it, what didnt work for them. PROD them. Most will just blindly retweet. When you engage them most people will answer back. There’s a little part of someone that doesn’t want to be rude, so I’m sure you’ll get some sort of response.
Thanks for the tips!!
I use the social bookmarking site Tip’d quite a bit, also I think one the best ways to promote my post is to plug it right here as well as broadcast it on Twitter, I got quite a bit of traffic yesterday on my list post so check out my post today on Budgeting with GNUCash and if you like then Tip it
In focusing on content, I had kind of forgotten that my blog needs focused publicity to get new traffic. Thanks for this reminder!
What is working well for me at the moment: I am active in my blog and on social media (facebook, Twitter, WeFollow).
I reply to every comment/message and have a real interest in other people’s events, tweets & blogs. Publicity for me has been a fortuitous by-product.
H :)
Wow, love this! I do some of this with my authors so I’m familiar with some of it, but I had never thought about taking my list and sending it out to ezines (reworded of course)! Thanks, Darren…I’ll let you know how it goes by the end of the day, but I do want to report that my traffic shot up by 40% yesterday. Thank you!
Dorothy
Book Marketing Buzz
I have to say, so far, all this has helped my blog. I am really glad I joined! Thanks Darren!
TheHenry
http://thehenry.net
For Everything Technology
Hit a couple of the basics already, including tweeting it.
Since my blog is business focused, I’m not sure of the value of trying to get on Digg or Facebook or Stumbleupon. Do other B2B bloggers see much value there?
My list post was 10 Ways to quite wasting time in meetings. I think it’s a good post but not sure Diggers would have any interest.
I am going to look for good fits in other blogs and reach out to them. It doesn’t feel natural… but it’s worth a shot.
Hi Darren,
Really I am still a very novice blogger, and haven’t taken it seriously and well that is slowly changing but I am thinking how much do you promote until you get it looking exactly how you wanted?
I did post today. http://commoncentsmom.com/2009/04/08/what-works-for-me-saving-money-on-dental-care/
I then shared it in a carnival and on twitter. I also linked to an older post within my blog.
I have been letting my twitter and facebook networks know when I make a new post. That has definitely been the major source of visitors.
Dan
Bill, I like your post with the top 10 reasons you are learning Chinese… Sobre, concise, to the point & a touch of humour.
http://billglover.co.uk/archives/2009/04/07/1062
Good luck with the studies, the running & … the girl
I like the design & clarity of your blog as well
Thank you for today’s lession.
One thing I reccon should be on that list is that one should ping blog servers with an update.
Like:
Aitellu, Bloggnytt, Blogsearch Google, Feedburner, Nyhetsfilter, Nyligen, Tailsweep, Technorati, Twingly
Regards,
Fredrik
Självförsvarsbloggen
En blogg som hjälper vanliga människor att bli bättre på självförsvar
I do most of my promotion via Twitter. It is also a good place to build relationships with other bloggers.
I have done article submissions, but mostly linked back to the main site. I will have to try linking back to particular articles.
I would love to get some Digg or StumbleUpon traffic, but not sure if my appeal is wide enough. I think the best practice is to build up a following and build relationships with similar bloggers.
Done. Mostly points 3 and 6. With a post about an animated gif issue in Delphi 7, with legacy issues.
http://development.tobiasopdenbrouw.nl/post/2009/04/08/Animated-Gif-in-Delphi-7.aspx
Also, someone friended me, I think based on social group pushing my posts, based on an earlier 31-dbbb action. So it’s working, cool enough. Still not getting 100s of readers daily, though, so anyone who wants to come by, you’re all more than welcome! Also, let me know who you are if you’ve also just started blogging, are using ASP.NET, Delphi 7 and/ or BlogEngine.NET.
I promote my posts on Twitter every day.
I agree with Alan, that building profiles from scratch makes it a lot harder, compared to when you already have a social presence.
I do most of the things you recommend, but the only thing I am really resistant to, is asking other bloggers, like a cold call. I’d rather have people link to me because they like my content. I also thought that self-promotion on social sites like Digg is really frowned upon. I’ll look into it now.
What I really enjoy doing, is leaving meaningful comments on other blogs and establish a relationship. Linkbaks in posts happen way more naturally that way.
With that said, since we are a group here, I’ll take up on what Fred from The Trim Tab kindly offered. My blog is about higher consciousness, and I will propose to him one of my posts that I think is along the lines of his blog, and that is http://www.buddhatrance.com/artificial-intelligence-and-consciousness
Thanks for another great tutorial!
Good morning all! Day 3 and I’ve already learned so much. Thanks again, Darren … and the rest of you too!
Its reassuring to learn that I’m already doing many of the things you suggest. As a foodblogger, my greatest source of promotion to date has been commenting on other, more popular, food blogs. That is an invaluable tip!
Though I’ve only just begun to “tweet” … I must say that I haven’t found it as valuable, in terms of driving traffic, as I assumed it would be. I wonder if I’m doing something wrong? For those who have had success in gaining traffic from “tweets” … do you have any tips to share?
I’ve had more luck with Facebook links than I have with Twitter so far.
Here’s the link for my list post:
http://beacheats.blogspot.com/2009/04/special-report-diva-tells-all.html
… and its not strictly a list. Its written in my voice, my style, which is what my readers have come to expect and enjoy.
Cheers!
Diva ~
http://beacheats.blogspot.com/
I agree with Alan, that building profiles from scratch makes it a lot harder, compared to when you already have a social presence.
I do most of the things you recommend, but the only thing I am really resistant to, is asking other bloggers, like a cold call. I’d rather have people link to me because they like my content. I also thought that self-promotion on social sites like Digg is really frowned upon. I’ll look into it now.
What I really enjoy doing, is leaving meaningful comments on other blogs and establish a relationship. Linkbaks in posts happen way more naturally that way.
With that said, since we are a group here, I’ll take up on what Fred from The Trim Tab kindly offered. My blog is about higher consciousness, and I will propose to him one of my posts that I think is along the lines of his blog, and that is
http://www.buddhatrance.com/artificial-intelligence-and-consciousness
Thanks for another great tutorial!
I have a few linkfarming blogs on my own blogroll, and am aware of carnivals when they’re around in my section of the blogosphere. I just have to be more on the ball with posting, though I have managed to build up a network of friends who co-promote when it’s relevant, to carnivals.
I do most of these -including the use of twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com/) to auto-update twitter with my blog posts – occassionally I get a retweet for it and I’m sure I get readers I don’t get from the blog alone – and facebook. But the extra pointers are helpful. I’ve finally finished my list post and I think it’s worth the extra mile for promotion.
My promo efforts feel very inefficient. I comment on blogs and in forums, but it feels very needle-in-a-haystack. I’ve guest posted on friends’ blogs but didn’t realized that the one with the highest traffic didn’t link. I’m almost to the point that I’m about to ditch the whole commenting tactic and just produce more content.
Hi everybody,
I added a re-tweet banner on the end of my post, what seems to be very helpful. People who like the post just need to click on the banner (or button, however you want to name it) and their Twitter update is filled in automatically. They just have to hit enter and it’s done.
The post is: http://mario-live.com/blog/2009/02/doer-instance/
If you don’t know how to do it, just right click and look at the properties of the link. You can do it in the same way.
Have a nice day ahead,
Mario
wow. i feel inspired from this post!
i’ll practice it. thanks 4 sharing! =)
Darren,
Awesome information as always. I am currently promoting “ How to have an effective conference call” http://targetstars.blogspot.com on Twitter. I just posted this today and I find Twitter to be a great way to call attention to any product or service. I want to thank you for sharing Stumble Upon Advertising and BlogAds with me. I never knew about these services and can’t wait to start using them!
LaTosha
One of the ways I used #1 when I was a brand new blogger was by trying to provide scoops to the larger blogs. If I broke a frugal deal on my blog, I was eager to share it with the larger blogs and would send to 5-6 at a time, who would then link back to me. I wasn’t just asking for a link, I was providing them with enough info to do their own post, and in my niche that works well. I’ve received emails from new bloggers that seem so impersonal: “Hey, look what I posted!” and I tend to ignore those. The same thing applies when advertisers send me PR stuff; if you read my blog and can include some evidence that you know me or my audience, I’m more likely to take your request seriously.
Blog Carnivals are also a big source of traffic and way to build a new blog. I participate in several regularly, and I’ve been looking at blogs outside my niche as a way to draw more readers in.
Great tip Mario! I actually use the Sociable plugin on Freelancedom, so that there are links to a number of social bookmarking sites at the end of each of my post.
http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/
Does anyone know if there’s a way to track its use on your blog?
Another great tutorial Darren! I’ve just done my list post and just submitted it 10 minutes ago. (http://myblog2day.com/2009/04/12-attitudes-a-successful-blogger-should-have/)
1 more traffic tips but not sure whether is it working, I submitted my URL to ping sites, I just dropped the URL and left some related description of my post. I did get few traffic everytimes after I’d submitted it. :)
Regards,
Lee
If your content is strong enough, people will link to it, comment on it, submit it and re-tweet it for you…
i was fortunate enough to have a couple of re-tweets yesterday for a little extra exposure…
Commenting on the links within the comments here is a fantastic idea; something you should try to do a few times a week if possible.
As for promoting yesterday’s post, I sent the post out via Ping.fm to help drive traffic – that post received the most traffic yet.
Thanks Darren!
Eric
Although I don’t have a huge following on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve been using them to promote my posts for a while with limited results. Recently, I’ve been having much more success with StumbleUpon. On Monday, I received 1,900 visits from StumbleUpon for this Cholesterol article. While that may not be much traffic for some of you, my blog is still relatively new and this is certainly much more traffic than I’ve been able to get from Facebook and Twitter.
Stephanerd,
I use this share-this button under each post. Is this comparable to this yoast plugin?
Oh, before I forget. I don’t remember how I did it but every new post is automatically posted to Twitter. I really can’t find what I did to make this happen. Anyway, it works.
C u soon guys. I like this challenge.
Regards,
Mario
I comment on alot of blogs so now I try and put my latest post or my one i’d like to promote as the link on that comment – for example my one today should take you to my list from yesterday (which got published this afternoon)
I have two blogs that I am working on through this challenge. I usually use twitter whenever I post new material. I also use twitter when I list new items in my art shop.
I used stumbleupon for a while until I read on another site that this is frowned upon because you should be stumbling other’s sites and not your own. So now I’m very cautious about how I promote my blog and my art.
Mario – ShareThis seems comparable to Sociable. It’s always good to nudge your readers i the right direction. :)
Dear Darren,
This was one topic I wanted someone to discuss. I use a lot of promotion for my blog.
It has its own twitter handle with an autopost enabled @threetips
I have a technology blog so can I use SU and Digg to promote my posts without running the risk of being banned?
Again my statistics say that most of my traffic comes from Google search engines. How do I optimize this?
I have been interlinking within and trying a few SEO tips.
I suppose what I have been missing on is commenting on Social networks, forums and other blogs.
*note to self: begin this now*
Anyway, I did learn a few things today.
Take care.
Shantanu.
http://www.threetipsaday.com
@threetips
I’ve got two list posts for my two blogs. I’m planning on promoting via Facebook and a Blog Catalog message — those seem to be the places where I have been able to start networking.
Please check out the two posts and let me know what you think! I can be contacted via either blog.
http://wintheweddinggame.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/this-never-gets-old/
http://justcallmemsfrizzle.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/fis/
Thanks for everything that you do for bloggers Darren. I am promoting http://distancetips.com/2009/04/07/10-items-to-include-in-your-online-class-introduction-post/ on Twitter and Facebook.
I had actually already promoted the post to both my twitter and facebook sphere yesterday :). Today I will promote it via Active Rain (industry related community in which I have a blog presence).