Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Promote Your Books and Blog: A Look at Author Websites — Blog ...

<b>Promote</b> Your Books and <b>Blog</b>: A Look at Author Websites — <b>Blog</b> <b>...</b>

<b>Promote</b> Your Books and <b>Blog</b>: A Look at Author Websites — <b>Blog</b> <b>...</b>

Posted: 27 May 2014 08:00 AM PDT

The comments poured in on our last two posts highlighting new books by WordPress.com authors. We're happy to host such a prolific literary bunch! For those of you interested in using a website to promote your books, take a look at three authors on WordPress.com who do this well — each with very different designs and approaches:

H. G. Robert

We found H. G. Robert's website from a comment he'd left on a previous post. I clicked on his link and was delighted to find a simple, clean, and effective homepage for his self-help book:

The black-and-white design is crisp and stylish, and with just a few elements to focus on, you can't miss anything. A highlighted "Read more" button takes you to another clean, concise page with a book synopsis, excerpt, and reviews.

His menu at the top right includes just two links, to his bio and blog.

H. G. Robert uses the premium Portfolio theme, which offers a number of features; it's interesting to see how users interpret themes to fit their needs, including stripping them down.

Stewart O'Nan

Award-winning author Stewart O'Nan, based in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, includes links to his writing and important information in his header:

Screen Shot 2014-05-23 at 1.32.18 PM

Using the free Typo theme, Stewart includes a virtual shelf of his books right up top — it's the primary element you see when you first visit his site.

He also has a custom menu for various modes of writing — from fiction and nonfiction to essays and book reviews — as well as audio and interviews. In this space, Stewart offers navigation to everything you need to know. While he uses a traditional blog format — with his recent posts listed first — his menu displays the right details to follow all of his work.

Pandaemonium

The website of author, lecturer, and BBC Radio broadcaster Kenan Malik is visual and dynamic. Pandaemonium, which uses the image-oriented Gridspace theme, is a great example of a non-photography-focused site on a photography theme.

Reminiscent of book covers, the front-page thumbnails draw you in — the grid layout is professional, allowing Kenan to showcase images that complement his work. (On Gridspace, you can also toggle between a grid and list view — look for the icons near the top right of the homepage.) He also has a custom menu to his About and Events pages, as well as a Books section that echoes the layout of his front page:

Screen Shot 2014-05-23 at 2.23.11 PM

Here, the strong imagery and unified design create a cohesive website.

You can promote your books and writing in many ways. We hope these examples offer some inspiration to build your own website — or expand on your existing one.
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Friday, 23 May 2014

How to promote your blog? My tips and answers! | Problogging ...

<b>How to promote</b> your <b>blog</b>? My tips and answers! | Problogging <b>...</b>

<b>How to promote</b> your <b>blog</b>? My tips and answers! | Problogging <b>...</b>

Posted: 19 May 2014 05:00 AM PDT

Blog promotion is highly crucial to get your blog content in front of more eyeballs; right eyeballs. However you cannot simply blindly go about promoting your blog posts. There are quite a few things that you need to set right before you can think ...*

<b>How to Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> Posts Even Before You Hit Publish

Posted: 18 May 2014 03:00 PM PDT

Are you one of those content marketers who trip and fall when you have to promote your blog posts? With a few finely tuned tactics you can start to promote your blog posts even before you hit the publish button.

promote your blog posts, town crier

Content marketing is worth nothing if you don't make use of marketing and promotion. If you don't promote your blog posts then those finely crafted posts you worked so hard on, will not get any traffic and hold no benefit for your content marketing business.

The good news is that there are many ways in which you can promote your blog posts. In fact, you can take certain steps that will make it easy for you to promote your blog posts even before they are published.  It all comes down to building a tribe of followers who will help you promote your blog posts. After all, the more the merrier.

Start building relationships

Jack looked to me like he was wasting his time. His LinkedIn profile described him as a content marketer but all I saw him doing for a long time, was blog-hopping. Jack spent his days (and probably some of his nights) going from blog to blog within the interior design market and commenting on everything everyone else wrote. I couldn't understand what he was doing and thought that he was doomed to fail.

Before long everyone knew about Jack. If you posted something about interior design, you could know he would probably comment and then share it to his Facebook, Twitter and especially his Pinterest account.

Then came the day when Jack wrote his first blog post. By then the other bloggers in his niche were all following him back on social media. So when Jack shared his own blog post, it went viral within the interior design niche.

It wasn't an exceptional article but Jack knew something very few of us ever think about: relationships can take you further than marketing dollars.

Everyone was commenting on Jack's blog posts and sharing his posts to their own social media platforms. Jack's success was in the relationships he built.

If you don't know how to start to promote your blog posts, start by building and cultivating relationships.

Be an active participant on social media

Millions of people are on social media. Unfortunately a great number of content marketers fail at promoting their blog posts on social media because of a lack of engagement.

If you want others to engage with you on social media, you need to show them that you are a real life, breathing human being. There are so many dummy social media profiles that it's refreshing when you find one who is active and willing to engage.

Like attracts like. If you are more active, then others who are more active on social media will soon engage with you. These are the people you need when you want to promote your blog posts. They are the followers who will like and share your blog posts all across social media.

Promote your blog posts with a social sharing tool

Have you ever found yourself on someone's website, reading an awesome blog post? Then, when you want to share it so your own followers on social media can share in this gold nugget you found, you can't find a sharing button anywhere. Even the thought of having to copy and paste headlines, make you cringe and you just click away.

This has happened to me too many times. I love to share other people's work but when I feel like I have to jump through hoops in order to do so, I simply don't.

Make it easy for others to help you promote your blog posts by making social sharing buttons readily available on your blog. It may be the best marketing tool you will ever have.

Give your readers a shareable post

Some posts share better than others. What is it that makes your blog posts easy to share? You should always have

  • a quirky headline that will attract attention,
  • a picture that is easy to pin to Pinterest and will look good as a thumbnail on platforms like Facebook and
  • a tweet this buttons next to marketable sentences.

Make use of hashtags

As a South African, I have been following the Oscar Pistorius trial. I can't always sit and watch the trial, so I use Twitter to stay on top of what is going on.

#OscarPistorius and #PistoriusTrial trend almost on a daily basis. I type one of the hashtags in my search box and voila, I have all the news I want. And of course I'm an active participant, so I favourite, reply and retweet the whole time I'm following the trial.

Many people search for hashtags when they look for something. Google+ uses hashtags to help others search for your posts, so why not make use of it?

It couldn't be easier to promote your blog posts than to add the relevant hashtags to get your posts seen by the right people.

If you don't use social media to promote your blog posts, you will soon find that you are writing your posts for yourself and nobody else. So go on, get active on social media, promote your blog posts and become a content marketing giant.
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How To Promote Your Movie With BitTorrent - Filmmaking Stuff

<b>How To Promote</b> Your Movie With BitTorrent - Filmmaking Stuff

<b>How To Promote</b> Your Movie With BitTorrent - Filmmaking Stuff

Posted: 22 May 2014 09:53 AM PDT

In this filmmaking article, filmmaker Bojan Dulabi shows you how to promote Your Movie With BitTorrent so you can sell your movie. ... This post was written by a guest filmmaker blogger. Please see more information about ...*

Sweet Electric : <b>How To Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> Posts

Posted: 18 May 2014 10:02 AM PDT

When you've spent ages preparing and writing a blog post, you want to get that post 'out there' for everyone to read. There are many ways in which you can do this, so today I thought I'd run through a few. 

I should add, when I write these type of posts, I'm not claiming to be an expert in any way - I've simply picked up a few tips along my blogging journey and think they might be helpful for those who are just starting to blog or if you're in the early stages of blogging.

SOCIAL MEDIA

I definitely recommend setting up social media accounts if you're going to blog. I've found its the best method for blog promotion. I'd say twitter is the main social media account you should consider as its really easy to share your blog link. Now, you could just tweet the links to your blog posts but I also think its a good idea to use hashtags so that people searching for popular hashtags will see your posts. Popular hashtags for blogging include #bbloggers for beauty blogs, #fbloggers for fashion bloggers and #lbloggers for lifestyle bloggers. 

If you don't have time for tweeting out links, I would suggest using a scheduling app so your tweets will be sent automatically. I personally use hootsuite but theres also buffer, tweetdeck... - its just a case of which one suits you best. You can also sync your bloglovin account to twitter so that when you publish a new post, it will tweet out a link to said post. If you use feedburner, you can also set it up to tweet out a link to your latest posts, though I find it really unpredictable to use as sometimes it can take a day or two for the tweet to show up.

Other social media accounts worth having are instagram - you could upload a picture from your latest post for example, pinterest - again you could pin pictures from your blog posts to your pinterest account and its possible these could be shared with other users if they happen to get repinned. 

When I first started my blog, I did set up a facebook page for it, but as I don't bother with facebook anymore I've left it alone. Facebook is a strange one. I've read several stories of facebook page updates not being viewed to their potential - Dana from wonderforest wrote a great post here on the subject. Saying that its free to create a page and again you can sync bloglovin to facebook so it takes little effort to update posts. It might be worth syncing posts but my personal point of view is that it might not be worth effort creating other status updates. 

Google + is a fairly new type of social media account. I'm still trying to figure it out to be honest but its very easy to share posts on there if you use the blogger platform. If your google plus account is synced to your blogger google account - i.e you use the same username/email and password then when you have written a blog post, an option is in the post section of the blogger dashboard to share your posts on google plus. As I said, I'm still figuring out google plus but it literally takes seconds to share so its worth doing.

One final account I have is on stumbleupon. Stumbleupon is a website that lets you find new sites, photos and videos on a certain topic. You can upload your own blog pages to stumbleupon if you sign up to an account. I've submitted a few of my posts and had a little bit of traffic from there but if a user was to stumble across your post, it potentially could gain you a huge amount of traffic.

NETWORKING

A great way to get your posts 'out there' is to connect with other bloggers. A good way to do this is via social media accounts - leaving comments on other accounts and also leaving comments on other bloggers blog posts with a link to your blog. I wrote a post on how to leave a clickable link to your blog in this post.

I would say that if you're going to leave your link on another persons blog then the general feeling in the blogging world is to not leave 'follow for follow' comments e.g follow my blog and I'll follow you back, as most bloggers don't like this. Also leaving a link to a giveaway or such is generally a no no too. A nice way to leave your link is to write a nice comment about the writers post and then leave your clickable blog link underneath or to write something like 'I've just started a blog and would love some feedback if you have time' followed by your blog link - I just think thats a polite way of promoting your blog without being 'spammy'.

I would also consider getting involved in blogger chats on twitter. These usually last an hour and are a nice way of getting to chat to other bloggers and sharing your blog link at the end of the chat. Theres usually a chat on most days. You can find a calender for twitter chats here.

Face book also have several groups for bloggers in your country or region, which allows you to connect with other bloggers in your area. 

BLOG HOPS

There used to be more blog hops when I first started blogging, which really helped to get my blog seen by others. There doesnt seem to be as many these days but there are still one or two. A blog hop is a kind of link up, where by bloggers can share their link but also subscribe to other bloggers to. Generally, there is usually a rule where you have to subscribe to at least two or three blogs on the list before you can share your link. I've found some really great blogs on blog hops so its worth participating in. If you blog about beauty the bbloggers blog often run blog hops so keep an eye out for the next one.

ADVERTISING

Lots of bloggers offer advertising space on their blogs. I've advertised on a few blogs - some increased my traffic and some didnt. I'd say if you're looking to advertise on another blog is to firstly have a look at how much its going to cost and what you're getting for your money. Many bloggers offer different packages to suit a range of budgets. Also find out the stats of the blog you're wishing to advertise on. Most bloggers who offer advertising have a page on their blog with this information on. Make sure you pay with paypal and never share your bank details with another blogger. 

I didn't intend on this post being so long but I wanted to cover as much as I could. I hope this was helpful.

If you have any ways you'd suggest to share your blog posts then let me know in the comments and I'll update the post with your ideas!

Week 3 MOOC- Coaching Teachers: <b>Promoting</b> Changes That Stick <b>...</b>

Posted: 22 May 2014 05:43 PM PDT

I am in week 3 of the MOOC Coaching Teachers- Promoting Changes that Stick. You can take a peek at my sketchnotes from Week 1  and Week 2.

This week focused on the variable "Clarity of Instructional Vision". It was stressed that a "coach's job is not just to get teachers to change behaviors but to promote changes that will have meaningful impact on student experiences. The student facing rubric called "the Kraken" was introduced.  I like the term "student facing", because we can't forget that in the end the "greatest teacher" is not necessarily an effective teacher if their students are not learning.

[ The same type of thinking needs to apply when using shiny, cutting edge technology tools. We need to be looking at students. Do the devices or tools impact student learning? ]

coaching-week3
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Wednesday, 21 May 2014

3 Steps to Promote Your Blog on Pinterest and Facebook | Social ...

3 Steps to <b>Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> on Pinterest and Facebook | Social <b>...</b>

3 Steps to <b>Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> on Pinterest and Facebook | Social <b>...</b>

Posted: 19 May 2014 02:00 AM PDT

By
Published May 19, 2014 Printer-Friendly

social media how toWould you like to drive more traffic to your blog from Facebook or Pinterest?

Are you optimizing your blog posts for social shares?

Using your blog, Pinterest and Facebook together can amplify your social media signal tenfold.

In this article I'll show you how pin-worthy images and an enhanced Facebook update can increase your repins and blog traffic.

Getting the Formula Right

If you want to bump up your shares and repins, you need four things: useful content; a headline that grabs people's attention; an attractive, pinnable image; and a cross-posting plan.

In the Facebook update below, Peg Fitzpatrick uses this formula. She wrote an enhanced Facebook update that included an excerpt of her blog post, a pinnable image (including her headline) and links to both the post and the pin.

optimized facebook book tour image post

A combination of good content, a pinnable image and cross-linking can get you more repins.

With just one Facebook post, Peg is driving visitors to her blog post, pulling in more Pinterest followers and encouraging repins. Below you'll see how you can recreate this success for your own content.

Just a quick note about this article: There are multiple articles on writing a good post and crafting catchy headlines so I won't cover that here. Instead I'm going to help you create a cross-posting strategy that delivers traffic, repins and followers. Let's get started!

#1: Create Pinnable Images

Much of your cross-posting success relies on the image you share.

Your goal is to entice people to click through and read your post when they see this image, so make it attractive and interesting.

It should include an eye-catching picture or graphic and the headline of your post in a large, easy-to-read font. You can also add a small watermark with your business name (or domain name).

You can create a pinnable image with easy-to-use online photo editors like PicMonkey, iPiccy and Canva. Make your new image at least 400 pixels wide.

pinnable book tour image

Make your shareable image eye-catching.

When you insert your new image into your blog post, place it in the upper half of the post so visitors see it right away—the closer to the top, the better.

#2: Start the Repinning Process

The first place you want to share your post is Pinterest. To make it easier to pin your content (and others' too) add the Pinterest "Pin It" bookmarklet to your browser's toolbar.

By sharing your article on Pinterest first, you can get your new post in front of your Pinterest followers and start the repinning process.

When you pin your article, choose the board that's the best fit—or has the most followers or repins—and pin your post's image (making sure it links back to the original blog post, of course).

Each pin on Pinterest has its own URL. When you've pinned your blog article, go ahead and copy the URL of your new pin. You're going to need it in a minute when you cross-post to Facebook.

copying a pin's url

Copy your pin's unique URL.

Pinning has a domino effect: As your pin is repinned by your fans, their Pinterest followers see it and may repin it as well. That can result in a lot of traffic back to your blog where visitors can read more content, sign up for your email list or buy a product you're selling.

#3: Create an Enhanced Facebook Post

Cross-posting both your blog post and pin URLs on Facebook is your secret weapon. Of course, you can't just post the links—no one would pay attention to that.

To get attention, repins, followers and traffic, you have to create an update with your pinnable image, a carefully chosen excerpt from your blog post and, of course, your post and pin URLs.

Your blog post excerpt makes up the main part of your update, so it should be compelling and interesting.

The goal here is to leave people wanting more so they'll click over to read your post or repin it to read later. You can use an excerpt, a quote or the opening lines of your blog post; whatever works for you and your audience.

Keep in mind that Facebook is finicky about carriage returns in their status updates. If you cut and paste text from your blog or WordPress, the spacing may be off in Facebook, making your update look sloppy.

To avoid that, copy your excerpt into Word or a text editor (or better yet, just write your post in Word or your text editor). Then copy the excerpt from your editor and paste it into your Facebook update.

At the bottom of your Facebook post text, add Read it now: on its own line and paste the URL of your original blog post (you can see how Peg did it in #1 of the image below).

Go to the next line and type Pin it for later: and paste the URL of your Pinterest pin (see #2 in the image below).

call to action links on facebook image post

Strong calls to action and links encourage repins and traffic.

When you're ready, click Post to make your enhanced update live on Facebook. You're done!

Conclusion

Looking for ways to promote your blog? Cross-posting your content on Pinterest and Facebook works because you're making it easy for your users. When you have a strong call to action (read it or pin it) and an easy way to complete the action (providing the links), people are more likely to follow through.

Include a pinnable image with a compelling description to make your social updates even more eye-catching, both on Pinterest and Facebook. That same image draws your established readers into your blog post.

You'll end up with more Pinterest followers and some awesome traffic for your blog.

What do you think? Have you used Facebook and Pinterest together to market your business? Do you have any advice to share? Share your thoughts and comments below.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

<b>How to Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> Content to Get 1000 Social Media Shares

Posted: 16 May 2014 09:54 PM PDT

Do you want to promote your blog post to more readers? Are you wondering how to get your blog content shared all over the social media?

 

Creating quality content is important but it's more important to make sure your content gets seen. The folks at Canva and RazorSocial have created an infographic loaded with tools and tips that will help you achieve 1,000 social shares for your every blog post.

 

Some key takeaways are: Create a compelling title, Make it easy to share, Optimize your blog for Google and social media use Twitter cards, Open graph data and Rich Pins etc.

How to Get Your Blog Post Shared 1,000 Times - #socialmedia #marketing #infographic
Top image credit: uberflip.com.

<b>How to Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> | Startup College

Posted: 14 May 2014 02:01 PM PDT

If you're blogging to market a product or service, you will of course need people to read it. If no one sees your blog, it has no value. Below are some blog promotion ideas that can help grow a blog following:

1. Produce for Different Platforms

Create content in different formats to tap into new networks. Each of the below networks are like miniature search engines. People go there to search for, browse, and consume content. By producing content for the below platforms you can reach their different audiences.

a. Youtube

YouTube is the second largest search engine, and the third most visited site globally. To get results with YouTube, produce content that's valuable to your target audience. Use the right keywords so they can find it. To get traffic from YouTube to your blog, mention your blog's URL in your video, and include a link to your blog in the video's description.

b. SlideShare

On SlideShare, users can upload PowerPoint, Keynote, PDF or OpenDocument presentations. You can think of SlideShare as "YouTube for presentations." To increase the chances of viewers navigating to your blog, make a link to your website accessible to viewers. Include a link in your profile, in your presentation's description and within your presentation.

c. Udemy

Udemy is an online marketplace for video courses. Anyone can produce a course on any topic and publish it to Udemy. Over 2 million students use Udemy to search for and consume educational content. Create video courses on topics related your blog's topic and relevant to your target audience. Mention your blog in all of your lectures and include links to relevant blog posts within the notes for each lecture. You can also make announcements and send promotional emails to your students with links to your blog posts.

d. Podcast

A podcast is like a radio show for the Internet. The Podcast marketplace is like it's own search engine. Podcasts can be subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device. Start a Podcast on your niche. Mention relevant blog posts through the show and include links in the show notes.

e. Quora

Quora is a question and answer site with a lot of active viewers. Answer questions that are relevant to and followed by your target audience. Provide strong, detailed answers that provide value to your target audience. Link to your blog in your Quora profile, in your bio line for the answer, and within the answer if appropriate.

f. Amazon

Amazon has a massive network of users that search Amazon for products. By self-publishing a book on Amazon you can tap into a proverbial fire house of traffic. The book can be as short as long as you'd like and you can set the price as you'd like. Self-publish a book on the topic of your blog. Link to blog posts and your primary blog domain within the book.

2. Social Media

a. Twitter

i. Share

My typical tweet structure when sharing a blog post is "[post title] [link] [relevant hashtags]." For example, "How to Use a Blog to Market Your Business http://qr.ae/thBLo #blogging #contentmarketing". I will also quote key points from the blog post and include a link. I typically tweet each blog post about 3 times after publishing it and sporadically after that.

Do some searching on Twitter to determine which hashtags to use. Some hashtags have active conversation and many people following or engaging.

If you mentioned anybody in the blog, or if there is anybody in particular you think would benefit from reading the post, mention them in the Tweet by including their @handle. By mentioning them, they may be more likely to respond or retweet, giving you more exposure.

ii. Find People Expressing a Need

Use Twitter's search functionality to find people using keywords relevant to your blog. Engage with people who fit your target demographic. When appropriate, reply to their tweets with blog posts that might be helpful. For example, if someone tweets that their building a landing page, reply with a blog post your wrote on landing page design. There are a few great apps you can use to search Twitter for relevant conversations quickly and easily. Check out this video course to learn more about them: 13 Twitter Apps: Automate and Optimize Your Twitter Marketing.

b. LinkedIn  

There are great two ways to get more views from LinkedIn: status updates and groups.

Status updates will be seen by your connections and the connections of anyone who "likes" your update.

Groups are great regardless of how many connections you have. Search for groups related to your industry, your target audience, or the topic of your blog post. Join them. Share your posts in those groups. Add some personalized commentary.

c. Google+

Share your posts as a status updates. People who have you in their circles will see them.

Post to communities. Start by finding relevant communities (similar to LinkedIn, above). You can post directly to communities from the share container on your home screen.

You can add hashtags to your status according to the topic of the blog to increase the chances of someone finding it when searching.

Also…and this is a big one…per Moz's Search Ranking Factors, the number of Google +1's a page has is the second most influential factor for how it will rank on search engines!

d. Facebook  

Share your posts on your personal profile or business page. Posts that have a picture will stand out a lot more.

Also check out Facebook groups that pertain to the interests of your audience. For example, if I were to distribute a blog post about promoting a blog post, I would think about who would want to get views on their blog posts. Who uses blog posts to promote their product/service? Many do, but I would focus on some the Facebook groups I'm most interested in and already a part of — i.e. authors/book marketers, Udemy instructors/course marketers, etc.

3. Niche Social Networks

Who is your target customer segment? Who are you trying to reach? Where do they hang out? Go where your customers go.

For example, photographers might be hanging out on Instagram. People who travel a lot might be on Airbnb.

Many industries and interest groups have online forums or discussion boards. Think about what social networks your target audience is likely to be active on, especially the networks that pertain to your product area.

4. Content Distribution Networks

Reddit is a "social news" site where registered users can submit links and users promote the articles they like. The most voted articles get promoted on the front page of Reddit, which can lead to massive exposure.

There are a few other article distribution/link sharing networks that I use that pertain to startups: Hacker News, Quibb, and Growth Hackers. There are probably others for different industries that you'll want to search for.

5. Direct Outreach

While sending specific people blog posts one by one may not be a scalable traffic acquisition strategy, it can have big payoffs over time, and is often needed when first starting. Sending blog posts to people directly can ensure that your target audience sees it. Below are a few types of people who may benefit from your blog posts:

i. Audience

Email your blog posts directly to your target audience. If you blogging about marketing for small businesses, email your blog post directly to a small business owner. You're not being annoying if the post is truly valuable.

ii. Influencers

Email your blog posts directly to influential people who could help share your blog. For example, I wrote a blog post about the higher education bubble and sent it to a popular economist who hosts a radio show/podcast and often speaks on CNBC. He then shared it on Twitter to all of his followers.

iii. Curators

Email your blog posts directly to people who curate content and share it with their audience, such as newsletter editors and bloggers with "resources pages."

6. Guest Blog

Guest blogging is when you write a blog post and have it published by another blogger. Most blogs who accept guest posts will allow you to include a link to your blog in your profile line of the blog post, or to link to other relevant blog posts within the guest blog post. Guest blogging can help you in two ways: a) When your article is published on someone else's blog, that blog's audience sees it. b) Having your domain linked to by another domain (link building), improves search ranking on Google.

7. Search Engine Optimization

Many, many people go to Google to find stuff, blog posts included. Therefore, you want to make sure your posts appear when someone enters a search term that you have a blog post in. Check out SEO 101 via Slideshare to learn more about SEO.

8. Blog Commenting

Search for blogs and blog posts related to your blog and blog posts. Write value added comments on the blog posts you find. For example, if you wrote a post titled "How to Promote Your Blog" search for blog posts about blogging. Add tips or your opinion about the blog posts you find and then offer your blog post to help the author and the readers with what was recommended in the blog post.

9. Build an Email List

By allowing people to opt in to receiving your blog posts by email, you increase your potential to get traffic on your posts. Every time you publish a post you will have a list of people to email. Mailchimp or Aweber are some of the most popular email marketing products. I use Mailchimp.

To learn more about blogging, check out "The Ultimate Guide to Blogging."

<b>How to promote</b> your <b>blog</b>? - Problogging Success

Posted: 14 May 2014 06:00 PM PDT

In this post I talk about the important stuff you need to take care of before starting to promote your blog. Without these your blog promotion efforts will be wasted.*

<b>How to promote</b> your <b>blog</b>? My tips and answers! | Small business <b>...</b>

Posted: 20 May 2014 01:49 AM PDT

Hi Jane,

Great article specially the part of "Embrace social media". With all types of social media nowadays, we have the temptation to do all of them but after a period of time we realize that it's impossible to manage all of them. I liked your tip to choose 3 social media that are bringing the most traffic and work on them, the others we can outsource :-)

Again, thank you for writing this great article.

<b>Promote</b> Real Music in BigFest on PS Vita – PlayStation.<b>Blog</b>

Posted: 14 May 2014 10:31 AM PDT

Revealed at Gamescom 2013 for PS Vita, BigFest is about building your own festival that will promote real, unsigned bands. Players will go on a journey with the bands with the goal of building their own thriving festival and ...

How to Use Content to <b>Promote</b> Your Event | Constant Contact <b>Blogs</b>

Posted: 15 May 2014 06:02 AM PDT

If you host events on a regular basis, you probably have a pretty good idea of what it takes to make sure people show up.

From hanging posters to sending invitations and sharing event information across your different marketing channels — there's no shortage of promotional tactics to try out.

But even with so many ways to promote your events, you may still find that things can start to feel a little repetitive when promoting events on a regular basis.

Event invitations, reminders, and save the dates are great, but if they're the only thing your email subscribers or social connections see, they may start to tune you out.

One of the best ways to overcome this common problem is to introduce content your audience will like into the mix.

By creating content in support of your events you will not only address one of the most common marketing challenges — how to create interesting and engaging content on a regular basis — but you will also provide a much more enjoyable experience for the people you're try to attract to your events.

Here's how that strategy could work.

Let's say a yoga studio is hosting a series of summer classes to help connect with current customers, and to hopefully attract new clients, as well.

They know the summer months are a busy time for people, so they want to create a more compelling promotional strategy to get people's attention and hopefully generate some buzz about the events.

First, they need to come up with some content ideas.

One of the easiest ways for them to do this is to get together with their staff and brainstorm a list of topics.

Because the content needs to be relevant to their event but also interesting to their audience, they may decide to send a survey to gain insight into what their audience is already reading, and what type of challenges they can help them overcome.

For the yoga studio, this list of topics might include:

  • How to fit yoga into my daily schedule
  • How to learn more about yoga outside of class
  • How to add excitement to a to a yoga routine

Now, they need to outline their content plans and set some deadlines.

First they look at their current email schedule. Because they are already sending a weekly email announcing upcoming classes, they decide to publish one blog post a week, over the course of four weeks.

Not all of this content has to be written. For one of the posts, they may decide to shoot a quick video of an instructor offering his/her advice.

Using what they learned from the initial brainstorm, they come up with a list of posts and assign dates:

  • June 1st: How to Find Time for Yoga During the Summer Months
  • June 8th: How a Weekly Workout Schedule Can Help You Stay Healthy and Happy
  • June 15th: A Summer Reading List for Anyone Who Loves Yoga
  • June 22nd: [Video] 4 Tips to Prepare for Outdoor Yoga Classes

At the end of the video and each blog post, the studio will want to add a link to an event homepage, where people who enjoyed the posts can sign up for summer classes.

After all, their goal isn't just to get people to read or watch; it's to get people to sign up!

In addition to including the posts in the email announcing the classes each week, they also use the blog posts to create content for social media.

Let's say their social media strategy is focused on three social networks: Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Facebook: Having used Facebook for awhile, the studio knows that images and links to helpful resources have always gotten them the most attention from fans. Using a tool called PicMonkey, they create a word image from one of their favorite tips, and share it with a link to the post. Later in the week, they share the post again, but instead of including a picture they encourage fans to read and share tips of their own.

Twitter: After seeing the photo got so much attention on Facebook, the studio decides to share it on Twitter, and also creates a few more word images with different tips. Because Twitter allows for a higher volume of posting, they could also share individual tips without an image, or even just include the post's headline and a link to read more.

To take things a step further, they can use Twitter search to see if anyone has shared the post, and reach out to say thanks.

Pinterest: With a bunch of new images, the studio decides to create a new board on Pinterest where they pin the word images, and link to their blog. They also perform a search and find a ton tips from other yoga studios, and add those to the board as well.

As the yoga studio rolls out its new promotional strategy, they'll want to keep an eye on how people are responding.

By linking their content to an event homepage and collecting registrations online, they will be able to easily keep track of how many people are signing up.

But there are also metrics related to their content that they'll want to keep an eye on.

If they are including a link to a blog post, along with a link that goes directly to their calendar of events within an email — they can look at their reports, and compare to see what is getting the most clicks.

On social media, they can look at the different engagement metrics — including likes, comments, shares, or retweets — to see what type of content is working across their different channels.

All of this information helps make better decisions, and allow them to improve over time!

To recap:

  • Brainstorm content ideas that are relevant to your event and interesting to your audience.
  • Coordinate your content with your current marketing schedule, and make sure that the content you create drives people to take action.
  • Use your content to fuel your social media posting strategy.
  • Track your results and look for opportunities to improve over time.

Don't be afraid to start small.

For your first event, you may want to set a goal to write one blog post designed to promote your event, add it to your invitation, and share it on social media. If you don't have a blog, try creating a video and share that instead.

Content is one of the most important pieces of any successful marketing campaign, and could transform the way you think about how to promote your next event.

Want to learn more? Check out our full list of event resources.

<b>How to Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> - ImageWorks CT|Business <b>Blogging</b>

Posted: 30 Apr 2014 07:20 AM PDT

How to Promote Your Blog

how to promote your blogBusiness blogging has become a critical part of inbound marketing and is definitely something that you want to make sure your company is succeeding in.  According to Hubspot, in 2011 about 65% of businesses were using a blog, making companies that aren't blogging a significant minority and according to ignitespot 77% of Internet users read blogs.  Blogging has proven its success by being able to effectively turn traffic into leads.  A business blog promotes your company and its products in the online community by establishing trust and consistency amongst your viewers.  As long as your company's blog is properly placed and shared on the Internet, blogging can be a great way to share your expertise while generating profits. 

So you have put in the time, effort and consistency into your blog and your still not seeing results?  Wow, there must be something really wrong.  Just kidding, the solution is very simple; you need to learn how to properly promote your blog.  Here are three ways you can promote your business blog:

1.  Social Media

Social media seems to be the key for many marketing solutions these days, and it certainly plays an essential role here.  Initially after creating your business blog you need to make a public announcement on your social medias pages that will let all your viewers know about your blog launch.  From there you need to make sure you are consistently using these social media pages, which should include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and email newsletters, to post links on them, which will direct your viewers on these pages to your blog.  Additionally, it's not a bad idea to pick 5 or 10 friends or family members and ask them to help share your blog a couple times on their personal social media pages.  This will expose your blog to a whole group of new viewers and potential customers, which will further expand your online presence. 

2.  Become more active within the online community

Have you ever moved to a new town and felt like you needed to introduce yourself to your neighbors and attend community events in order to get to know everyone? Well you can treat this step very similarly to that.  Simply establishing yourself online isn't enough.  You need to find other companies and bloggers that post similar information to your blog and check out their posts.  You can step in where it is appropriate and add in your opinion in their comments section.  This is a way for you to be able to voice your opinion and share your expertise with new viewers.  By doing this you will boost your online presence by increasing your exposure and allow more people to see you online.  Just like introducing yourself in a new town, you will slowly start to make new friends and create connections. 

3.  Google-fy your blog

This step essentially revolves around becoming search engine friendly.  There is no better search engine to make sure your blog is thriving on than Google.  In order to achieve this step you must target your customers by finding out what they are really interested in.  You can use Google analytics to see how people are finding your blog now and if a certain subject is driving the most traffic.  Once you know this information you can focus on it in your blog posts.  Additionally, you must use keywords in your blog titles and within your content in order to increase your SEO.  Other then that, good content and social shares (ie. Facebook likes and Twitter re-tweets) will also help boost your rankings on search engines.  Another important tip that isn't always utilized is that you should also be adding relevant keywords to the images you use in your blog posts as images pop up on search engines too. 

<b>How to Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b> Posts Effectively - Business 2 Community

Posted: 27 Feb 2014 07:15 AM PST

How to Promote Your Blog Posts Effectively image blogging 233It is great that you are blogging for business. However, it is not enough to merely write your blogs. You need to promote your blog posts as well so that you get the most mileage out of them and so that you are able to leverage them effectively.

Building in the desert

Undoubtedly, it is critical that you write a top-quality blog. However, it is not enough if you don't share it with the appropriate target audience in the most effective ways possible. After all, you not only want your target audience to read your blog posts but you also want them to share it with other people they know and trust. Promoting your blog posts properly will require some time and effort on your part. However, it is definitely worth the effort.

Writing a great blog post without promoting it properly is like building a casino in the desert. It may be the most wonderful, exciting, fun casino on earth. However, you won't get any visitors because nobody goes there. In other words, you need to place your blog post where other (appropriate) people will be inclined to read it. Of course, there are several different ways in which you can go about promoting your blog posts. You will find that some are more effective than others and you will just have to experiment with them to determine which ones work best for you.

Promoting your blogs on the various social media channels

It is critical that you to understand how important it is to promote your blog posts on your chosen social media channels. The various social media channels will make or break your professional success online. You should consider the following:

Twitter: The first thing that you should do on Twitter is to post the actual blog article. After that, you will want to set up a schedule of tweets that are connected to the blog post throughout the course of the week. The next week, you will repeat the process. You should do that for as many blog posts (and at whichever frequency) you choose. A great way to hold your followers' interest is by either changing the title of your blog post or turning the title into a question. People love to answer questions.

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Google+: First and foremost, Google+ is a wonderful social media channel for posting your blog articles. It is effective when it comes to search engine optimization and it will enable you to form relationships with new people online. The more you interact with other people, the more willing (and excited) they will be to share your blog posts with others.

Pinterest: Pinterest is really hot right now. The graphic aspect of content is so important and it generally attracts a large volume of people for the simple reason that many people are visual. They respond much better to content that at least has a graphic (visual) aspect to it. There are several tips that may work for you if you include Pinterest images in your blog posts.

  • Stay away from human faces.
  • Use images that have a plain white background.
  • Try to make sure that the color red is somewhere in the image.
  • Use "portrait" rather than "landscape."

It is very important that you carefully scrutinize your graphic images for maximum effect. You would be surprised to learn how and why your target audience members react to what they find in your graphic images.

Facebook: Facebook can be an extremely effective social media channel for your blog posts. It is a good idea for you to post your blog article and them inform all of your professional Facebook connections through a profile status update. This is also your opportunity to put in backlinks.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is at the top of the list of most effective professional social media channels. With that in mind, it is an excellent opportunity to share your professional knowledge through your articles. Of course, if you are going to post your articles in LinkedIn groups, make sure that you are well aware of the group rules first. That is very important.

YouTube: Videos are a great way to share your content (or videos embedded in your written content). You can do a "how to" video that is connected to your blog post. People generally love that. The video should be brief (15-30 seconds). You can then lead your viewers to your website so that you can get to know each other better.

Instagram: Instagram is a wonderfully effective way to promote your blog posts. You can post an image with some sort of caption, ask a question, leave a comment, or make a provocative statement that people are bound to respond to positively.

Conclusion

Your blog posts are a very important part of your social media marketing strategy and you should make sure that you use them to your fullest potential. There are many effective ways that you can do that. It is a good idea to do your homework so that you have a clear understanding of what is available and what works best for you and your business. The bottom line is that you need to do whatever it takes to get people to notice that your blog posts are valuable and enticing. Remember to share your blog posts with your social media communities at every possible opportunity (whenever appropriate).

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a complimentary assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee .

How to Promote Your Blog Posts Effectively image cofee11

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