<b>Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b>: 10 Strategies To Skyrocket Your Traffic | Barrie <b>...</b> |
| <b>Promote</b> Your <b>Blog</b>: 10 Strategies To Skyrocket Your Traffic | Barrie <b>...</b> Posted: 22 Jul 2014 02:07 PM PDT If you build it, they will come. Well you've built a blog, but they aren't coming. You've created an amazing new blog, spent hours and hours writing informative posts, waiting expectantly for the guests to arrive at your party. But so far, you're just entertaining your parents and three best friends. The unique traffic to your blog is at a standstill or growing at a painstakingly slow rate, and you're wondering if you made a big mistake and don't have what it takes to be a successful blogger. One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is assuming once they launch their site and start writing, people will auto-magically find them and become devoted followers. However, once you create and launch your blog, the work of becoming a successful blogger with a large following is just beginning. This isn't complicated work, but it does require knowledge of the skills involved in marketing your site and your blog posts in order to drive your ideal readers to the content you have to share. Here are 10 strategies you can begin right away to promote your blog and skyrocket your traffic:1. Optimize your postsWhen you write a post, you want to strike a balance between reader-friendly, natural content and words and phrases that search engines like Google will notice. With every post, try to identify specific keywords and phrases that will rank well in search engines and potentially place your article on page one of Google for a particular keyword phrase. You want to use these keywords in your blog post title and within the body of your post. There are often hundreds of thousands of other blogs competing for the same words and phrases. If you want to rank well and grab the attention of people searching for your topic, then you need to spend some time researching keywords and phrases with a good number of searches (1000+) and minimum competition. Google's Keyword Planner tool is a free service that helps you get started with basic keyword research. Market Samurai is a much more robust program for finding those gold nugget opportunities in your niche. It gives you advanced strategies very quickly for finding relevant, high-traffic, high-quality keywords that will help your post go viral and build your traffic. You can test Market Samurai with a free trial by clicking here. With the trial, you'll get four brief "how to" videos showing you how to use the product to help you build your traffic. 2. Guest post on other sitesSpend some time researching bigger bloggers in your niche or in related niches. Review their sites to find out if they have guest posters regularly. Often blogs who invite regular guest posts will have a page with guest posting requirements. Here's the page on my other blog, Live Bold and Bloom. Carefully review the guest posting requirements or the style of writing and formatting of the blog owner. Then send a personal pitch to the blogger suggesting a blog post topic and offering samples of your writing. If it isn't outlined in the guest posting guidelines, ask the blogger how they want the guest post sent (HTML, a word document, etc.) and whether or not they want any formatting in the post. You might also ask if they want you to send a photo to accompany the post. Once you send the guest post, wait a week or so before you follow up to ask when it will be published. Established bloggers are busy, and often they will forget to respond or even forget about the post. Do follow up, but don't be a pest. 3. Write a "round-up" post or "top blogger" postCreate a post where you gather or "round up" the ideas or answers to a question from many other bigger bloggers — especially those with large social media followings. For example, if your blog niche is photography, you could email other bigger bloggers in the same field asking what their favorite photography subject is and why it's their favorite. As you write the post, put each bloggers headshot photo next to their comment and link back to their site. The more bloggers you include, the more exposure you'll receive. However, you don't want to overwhelm your readers with a 5000 word post. Try to keep the post under 2000 words. Once the post is ready, email each blogger to share the post with them, and ask them to share it on social media. You can create the same buzz by writing a post on the top 25 or top 50 bloggers in your particular niche. Once I wrote a post on the most popular blog posts by a list of other bloggers (as shown on the sidebar of their blogs). Be creative in how you define and present the content, and be strategic in who you choose to feature. 4. Be active on social mediaIf you haven't started already, begin building a presence on social media including Facebook (a fan page for your blog), Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram. Facebook has 1,310,000,000 active accounts. Twitter has 645,750,000 active accounts. LinkedIn has over 259 million. You get the picture. Social media is powerful. Share your posts on these sites every time you update, and be sure to to share other useful information and content relevant to your niche. Each media platform is unique, and there are different strategies for each related to building your followers and adapting the info you share to suit each platform. This topic deserves it's own post, which I will write down the road. But for now, be sure you have a presence on these platforms, invite people to follow you, follow some of the top blogs in your niche, and share useful content. Eventually, social media will become a tremendous funnel for new readers for your site. 5. Cross-promote posts with other bloggersResearch a list of bloggers in your niche. There are a variety of resources to help you find these bloggers. Alltop is a curated list of quality blogs in a wide variety of industries. To find blogs in your niche on Alltop, enter a keyword into the search field that describes your blog's topic. Use broad keywords (like marketing) rather than niche keywords (like email marketing). Alltop will then suggest a number of related topics to find even more potential blogs to connect with. Technorati is another great resource for finding quality blogs. Just click on the Blogs button next to the search field and enter your keywords. Once you create a list of relevant blogs, research the blogs to find out the name of the blogger and their contact info. If you can't find an email address or contact form, you can reach them through a private message on Facebook or Twitter. Create a tweet or Facebook mention for them linking to your latest post, and paste it into an email to each blogger. Ask them to share the tweet and mention on their social media sites, and ask if they have a post they'd like you to share. It's a win/win for both of you. Giving them the prepared copy makes it simply a cut and paste endeavor which takes just seconds. 6. Join blogger communitiesPromoting your blog posts on blogging communities will drive indirect organic traffic to your blog. These communities help connect you with people writing about your niche or topic. You can engage and help each other share content on a much broader level. Check out some of these communities: 7. Share content on bookmarking sitesBookmarking sites offer a centralized online service which enables users to add, annotate, edit, and share content. You can offer your content up to millions of potential viewers searching for content in your niche — so be sure you share on these sites every time you post. Some of the top bookmarking sites include: 8. Offer an incentive to bigger bloggersCreate a unique free product (like a report, quiz, ebook, or mini-course) you can offer to other bigger bloggers in your niche that they in turn can give as a gift to their readers. Bloggers love to make their readers happy with free material, so a well-done product will be appreciated. However, make sure their readers must go to your site to retrieve the gift. Set up a unique private page on your blog with a special welcome for the readers of the blog you are targeting. The headline could be something like "A Special Gift for Readers of Live Bold and Bloom." Don't make them opt in to receive the gift — just put the download link on the page for immediate access. The goal is to get them to your site. Then at the bottom of the page, offer them your opt-in gift as well in order to capture their email address. You can continuously offer this special product to different bloggers, simply changing out the message on the landing page. You will build more followers and subscribers. 9. Suggest a partnershipFind a bigger blogger in your niche who has a new product, course, or book to promote. Offer to arrange a free webinar with the other blogger as the featured speaker on the topic of his/her new product. Handle all of the details, and let the blogger know they just need to share the registration info and show up for the webinar. Set up a registration page on your site which captures email addresses, and ask the other blogger to announce the free webinar and registration to his blog and social media followers. You'll do all the work, but he'll send his followers to your site to sign up. You'll have more traffic and a bigger email list as a result. At the end of the webinar, mention your own free opt-in product or give attendees another reason to go to your blog. If the guest blogger has an affiliate program for the product he's promoting, you might make some income after the free webinar by offering a special on the product. 10. Write amazing content every timeWith every post, write such amazing, useful, powerful content that your readers are not only compelled to come back to your site, but also they're compelled to share your content. Nothing draws people to a site more than substantive, well-written, valuable posts. Don't get lazy with your writing or get stuck in a rut. Continue to improve your writing style and experiment with different formatting, photos, and headlines. Find other bloggers whose work is regularly shared, and see what they are doing right. Great content is the meat and potatoes of your blog, and you must make it your number one priority. Building a successful, high-traffic blog involves so much more than having a beautifully-designed site. If you want your blog to grow and eventually serve as a platform for a successful business, then you must put in the daily work of promoting your blog. You must find ways to entice readers to your site and engage them while they are there. Every post you publish should be promoted extensively, and in between publishing posts, find ways to drive new visitors to your blog. Over time, you'll see how your efforts pay off exponentially as your subscriber list grows and your unique monthly visitors keep climbing. Do you feel skilled at habit creation? Take the free test to see if you know how to create sustainable habits:
photo credit: Sascha Grant via photopin |
| You are subscribed to email updates from how to promote blog - Google Blog Search To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
There is more than one way to skin a cat – and definitely more than one way to promote an online business. If you want to be sure your business and website are seen by as many people as possible, this article may help you achieve that aim.