No matter how good your content is, earning a regular readership requires promoting your blog to audiences who would find it useful. And that means doing some legwork to promote your blog in as many different mediums as you can to help readers find it.
As a blogging business, where should you be promoting your blog to help connect with readers and help them fall in love with your content?
Below are a few places to start.
- Email Signature: Include a link to your blog URL in your email signature so that every time you message a customer, vendor, new contact, colleague, or even friends from high school you’re promoting your blog and encouraging them to check it out.
- Email Newsletter: Already investing in email marketing? Why not incorporate some of your blog content to help customers catch up on what they may have missed? This may mean republishing posts via email or setting up a From The Blog section in your newsletter that provides a snippet of article text before driving readers back to your website.
- Print Promotional Material: Hey, just because that brochure or handout resides offline, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be using it to promote what you’re doing online. Make sure customers are aware you’re a business whose blogging by putting the URL and blog-related CTAs on printed promotional material.
- Customer Receipts: Whether they made a purchase in your store or through your website, put your blog URL on receipts to build awareness and encourage people to check it out.
- Packaging: Why not send customers home with something else to check out?
- Community Happenings: Sponsoring an event or just taking part in a community activity? Make sure to include literature that mentions your blog or direct people there during conversations.
- In Comments of Other Blogs: Have a list of blogs that you read and respond to regularly? Include the link to your blog either in the text or in the URL field as a reference point for who you are and what you’re knowledgeable about. You don’t want to get in the habit of spamming blogs with your blog URL, but if you’re adding to the conversation, it doesn’t hurt to leave it.
- User Social Profiles: Have a Twitter account? What about Facebook? LinkedIn? Pinterest? Google+? I bet there’s space to include a URL.
- Professional Communities: Don’t forget about professional communities. Whether you’re a small business taking advantage of a networking site like BizSugar, part of the local Chamber of Commerce, or other professional communities, share your blog!
- During Presentations: Speaking at a local or national event? Using a PowerPoint or a Keynote presentation? Don’t forget to mention your blog!
- On Business Cards: It’s not just for your phone number anymore. Include your blog URL + all social profiles!
- Press Releases: Have big news to reveal? Direct readers back to your blog for more information about what’s happening.
- Guest Posts/Contributed Posts: Get the word out about your blog by guestposting on authoritative sites in your industry. Not only will you get in front of their readers, but you’ll be able to point people back to your blog, as well.
- Syndication Opportunities: Are there any blogs or news sources in your industry that syndicate content? By making your blog a trusted source for them to pull from, you get your blog in front of a whole new audience!
- News Aggregators: Regardless of topic, get your blog listed in popular news aggregators to help people find it. For example, AllTop is a great source for looking up blogs on any topic where you can suggest your site be added.
- Industry Lists: If there are people in your industry blogging, there are others creating lists of their blogging. Seek out industry-specific blog directories and make sure your blog is added to the list. For those of us in the SEO community, the Big List created by the folks at Top Rank Marketing is an industry staple.
Above are just a sampling of places to help you scratch the surface. How do you make sure your blog gets seen?
Great reminders, Lisa.
I’m glad that you mentioned offline things like actually using printed brochures and handouts to promote our blogs.
And, getting on, or creating a top industry list of blogs is a win-win for all involved.
Thanks again.
The Franchise King®
Love the list, Lisa! I’d say guest blogging has really pushed my blog and blogging services tremendously.
Susan
Great list! Even though “promotion” gets a bad rap, you’ve got to toot your own horn sometimes or nobody will hear you.
Ileane
Hi Lisa, Great tips for getting the word out about your blog. In #10 you mentioned presentations – I would like to add make sure to upload any presentations to Slide Share and include your blog link on the cover page.
Hi Lisa,
These are really an amazing ways to promote your blog, some of them I know and I utilizing them daily but others I have never thought of like printing promotional materials and during presentation.
Thank you so much for sharing this great tips.
Jenn
I’m always pushing links on social media. This is a great list and has some great reminders, too!
Great list Lisa 🙂 We’re planning on reviving the weekly BIGLIST reviews in 2013.
On the topic of where to promote blogs, one of the most popular lists we publish is a collection of submit URL links for Blog and RSS directories. Not sure how useful that is, but people are hitting that page hard 🙂 Just Google: blog directories
I think one of the most useful places to post blog URLs is in Author bios for contributed articles to industry publications. If your article is interesting, readers will want to know more.
Ti Roberts
Great list, Lisa. #7 is a fantastic way to get traffic to your blog. You can comment on sites that how commentluv where you can leave dofollow links back to your latest post. This will automatically leave your links for you.
I like to look at blog commenting more than just a way to drive traffic and promote my blog, but as a way to build relationships with influeners in my niche. Building strong relationships have long-term business and traffic benefits such as JV’s and affiliate opportunities.
Thanks for sharing this list with our community. I appreciate it!
Ti
Great list – I like to think I have most of them covered but will check out the rest too. I often see blogs that aren’t promoting themselves at all – really doesn’t make sense to me.
Ces
This is one helpful list Lisa! Thanks for sharing!
Mike
Very helpful list Lisa,
One tactic I like to recommend with off-line promotion is the use of QR codes on promotional items such as brochures, letters, and business cards. QR codes are sort of tricky to use but this is a great way to use them. Especially if they point to a specific page on a website such as a blog
Like How about promotional items too? When your staff is volunteering at a community event, have them all wear t-shirts with the blog URL printed on the back. Or pens with the blog URL to leave all over town. The opportunities are endless.
promoting a blog is really challenging but this post really can help
Great list thanks. I got a few new ideas. I have found posting comments on relevant blog posts to be an effective way to promote my blog 🙂
Hi Lisa Barone, Awesome ways to promote our blog. I use only some ways from the above list and will surely try out the other ways. Thanks for Sharing!
Very nice suggestion today I have found in this post, I think this list will help me a lot to promote my blog. I specially like the point related to the email marketing, this my personal experience that email marketing could make your blog from zero to hero.
gaurav vichare
Great tip lisa! I am using only half of these techniques .. I will work on remaining . Thanks !
Thomas
we found a new blog search on http://www.yabusco.com may it helps anybody to promote the block
Chirag Dodiya
That was very detailed and up to the point information in the blog post. One of my favorite ones are Social Media Marketing and Guest Bloggin. they are one of the most proven ways to drive tons of traffic to any blog.
And of course there is the giant of the industry known as Google which helps to get the most of traffic.
Thanks for the informative blog post.
Amanda
Hi Lisa, outstanding post. A blog service you should include in your list is Blogionaire. It gives bloggers an opportunity to become famous instantly. But they will need your tips to stay famous and popular.
Martin Lindeskog
I am promoting my blogs, wearing hoodies, sweatshirts and baseball caps with my blog banners / logotypes. I walk the talk! 😉
Thanks for the list , helpful for the bloggers to promote their blog
You have mentioned everything for a blog but you did not mention about social media. These days people promote their blog on Social Media especially Facebook and Pinterst, and they generate visitors from social media.
That’s true, we shouldn’t focus only on the “easy” ones ; let’s be creative and think about other ways to get traffic.
Percy Macfarland
Informative commentary – I was enlightened by the analysis – Does someone know where my business might be able to get ahold of a fillable NY DTF ST-131 document to fill out ?
Victorine
Great and easy to understand post, there’s a few I wouldn’t have thought of! Thank you!
Extraordinary rundown! Despite the fact that “advancement” gets unfavorable criticism, you must boast now and then or no one will hear you.
Wow! Thank you.
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A great information which is helpful for my business.