You need to actively promote your blog posts
Let’s say you’re regularly posting content on your blog and you’ve realized how important it is to make sure that your content is of high quality and are now regularly cranking out exceptional content that is relevant, informative and helpful.
While this is an important step towards reaching some of the goals you’ve set for your content marketing campaign (from building brand authority to increasing your leads), you’re not quite done. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how good your content is if nobody is reading it.
This is because you need to promote your blog. Once you start getting your blog out there, you’ll start gaining more readers and your content marketing efforts will really start paying off.
So how exactly should you promote your blog? Glad you asked!
Branding your business is a no-brainer, but what about branding your blog?
Brand your blog
Branding your blog is important because it makes your blog and its content more recognizable to readers. Someone who has read and enjoyed one of your blog posts is more likely to click on a link leading to another one of your blog posts if they recognize that blog.
The following are a few tips for branding your blog:
Establish authorship – Make sure each post has the name and photograph of the author. Sign up to Google+ so you can use the Google authorship tool. This way, whenever content from your blog comes up, the author’s name and image will appear, making the blog more recognizable for previous readers.
Create a publishing schedule – Choose certain times of the day and certain days of the week to post to your blog. This will make it easier for readers to check for new content.
For example, it makes your blog’s brand stronger if your readers know that you usually release new content at noon on every Monday. They may even look forward to it whereas if they have no idea when you release new content, they may never visit your blog again.
Be helpful to the community – Join different forums that are relevant to your brand and provide helpful advice and information when participating in discussions. Readers will recognize helpful comments and will check out the link to your blog to see what else you have to offer.
Write about trending topics – Your blog will be branded as a relevant authority within your industry if you write about trending topics that are relevant to your business.
One of the most effective ways to get more exposure for your blog is by using search engine optimization in order to improve your blog’s page rankings.
The higher the page rankings are for certain keywords, the better the chances are that people will be exposed to links to your blog on their search results.
You’ll need to do a little research in order to figure out what kinds of keywords to use in your content. This requires an understanding of your buyer persona.
Additionally, it’s important that you use keywords in your blog content naturally – you don’t want the unnatural inclusion of keywords to hurt the quality of your posts, nor do you want to be penalized by Google for keyword stuffing.
It’s also recommended that you use long-tail keywords. Head keywords, which are typically only one or two words long, are incredibly hard to rank for because they are broad and vague. Long-tail keywords are much more specific and often contain three to four keywords. By using words that are specific to your industry and location, you’ll give yourself a better chance at ranking highly for your long-tail keywords.
For example, if you run a small shop in Orlando that repairs only Chromebook laptops, then “computer repair” is a keyword that you are not going to rank very highly for. However, a long-tail keyword such as “Acer Chromebook 15 repair in Orlando, FL” is going to be much more effective.
Human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text.
Not only are Internet users more attracted to visual content, it also helps to break up the text on your blog as well as provide context for what your posts are about.
Human beings are visual creatures.
Visual content, such as videos, pictures and infographics, are also more shareable than regular text posts, which means that they’ll draw more traffic. Many blogs will simply use stock photography found on free-to-use sites, but we recommend creating your own unique visual content in order to stand out from the pack.
For example 1:
Source: Ko’an Center
For example 2:
Source: Mayo Clinic
Know your target audience.
One of the most common mistakes that blogs make is to just begin posting content with no regard to who they are writing for. This is a big mistake.
There’s a saying that goes “if you’re writing for everyone, then you’re writing for no one.”
This means that if you are writing for a broad audience, then you’re not really writing for an audience at all since you’re not targeting anyone in particular.
Do your research and find out who your target audience is. This will help you pinpoint what their major problems are so that you can create content that provides solutions to these problems.
Additionally, knowing your target audience allows you to determine what kind of voice is appropriate. If your target audience is made up of retired women, then you don’t want to write in a voice that uses slang and popular culture references that only teens know about.
Nor would it be appropriate to use a sarcastic and humorous tone if you’re writing a blog for a funeral service. Once you know who you are writing for, you’ll also know who you are trying to promote your blog to.
Many blogs will try to promote their content before creating a relationship with their audience. This is a poor way to go about it, since your audience will have no reason to want to read your blog.
Take the time to establish relationships before you begin promoting your blog. This means taking part in group discussions on social media, engaging with followers, visiting forums and offering up good advice and sharing content from other blogs.
Once you begin promoting your own blog, the people you’ve created relationships with will want to check your content out. And if you’ve been sharing content from other blogs on your social media profiles, there’s a good chance those blogs will return the favor and provide links to your blog on their social media profiles and blog posts, thereby sending even more traffic your way.
One easy way to promote your blog – one that many people don’t think of – is to do it through your email list. The people that have opted into your email list are more likely to check out new blog posts than anyone else – they’ve already proven that they have an interest in your brand, after all.
One thing that you should do, however, if you plan on using your email list to promote your blog is to segment your recipients. This way, you’ll only promote a blog post if it’s relevant to the interests of the recipient.
For example, say you are writing a blog for a pet food company. You’ve got a new post on the best types of dog food.
Send personalized emails to your audience.
You don’t want to send an email linking to this blog content to recipients that are cat owners and not dog owners. If you make this mistake, your recipients will assume you are just blindly sending out emails, which means that may stop reading them in the future.
Consumers expect more personalized shopping experience.
Additionally, make sure that you use their name to make the email more personal to them. As you can see from the above, 75% of the consumers prefer retailers to use personal information to improve their shopping experience.
Also, bear in mind that your emails should be optimized for mobile use – people are checking their emails via their mobile devices at a much greater rate and the last thing you want is for them to be unable to read your emails properly because they can’t be viewed on mobile screens.
Before trying to mass promote your blog, target your promotion towards specific people, such as social media followers that have shared your content on previous occasions.
These people are more likely to read your new blog posts and to share them, helping you promote your content in doing so. You should also target influencers within your industry.
Reach out to influencers on Twitter and ask them to review your content – if it’s good, they’ll often post a link to it, which means you’ve just gained exposure from an important audience.
Make sure you promote your blog posts on social media.
Social media is useful for so many reasons. By promoting your new blog post on social media, you’ll not only make followers out of your new content (and if they are following you, they are already interested in what you have to say), but you also give it the opportunity to get shared by your followers.
When a post gets shared, the post gains exposure to the entire social circle of the person who shared it. Take full advantage of many social channels such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more. Don’t forget about other social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon and Reddit as well.
In order for your blog to be effective, you need readers, which means that you need to promote your blog posts. These are 8 incredibly effective methods for promoting your new blog content and attracting more web traffic to your blog.
Updated: 18/6/15
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