Patience is not my virtue…
Good thing promoting my blog posts is entirely in my hands.
And with this practical step-by-step “promotion in motion” plan, your blog post promotion is within your reach as well.
Straight to it we go.
How to Promote Your Blog with Social Media
Social media is one of the easiest, yet perhaps, one of the most frustrating ways to promote your blog.
It’s easy because it takes but a few minutes to share your post.
It’s frustrating because you can’t control the results.
Let me show you how I maximize my social media promotion efforts and turn social media into my #1 referral traffic source.
Promote Your Posts on Twitter
Here are the necessary ingredients to successful Twitter promotion (in order of importance):
- Outstanding content (your top priority – goes without saying);
- Personal branding and reach (if people know who you are, they are more likely to promote your content);
- Quality of your following (how targeted your followers are);
- Quantity of your following (the more targeted followers you have, the more shares you’ll get).
Don’t get retweeted as much as you think you should?
Take a look at the list above… which one(s) do you need to work on?
My top ways to get more retweets
Automatic RSS Feed Sharing
With a little bit of upfront legwork, this method of getting RTs can be put on complete autopilot.
It’s all about twisting other bloggers’ arms to get them to automatically feed your blog RSS to their Twitter accounts.
The logic behind it:
We all strive to provide our followers with top-notch content, both our own and others.
The easiest way to do it is to automatically retweet other bloggers’ content by adding their RSS feed to your social media management platform of your choice, i.e.:
- Hoosuite
- Tweetdeck
- Buffer
- etc.
How to get others to add your RSS feed:
1. Ask.
Find Twitter influencers who have a responsive following AND like to share content in your niche.
If you don’t know how, read how I use Topsy.com in How to Create Traffic Magnets: Give Your Readers Bread and Games post.
2. Barter.
You can “exchange” the favors, if you are more comfortable to do it that way.
You add theirs, they add yours.
3. Mention it in your blog posts.
Make it a call to action in your blog posts every once in a while.
Something like this:
If you love Traffic Generation Cafe and think these traffic ideas would be valuable to your followers, you should add our RSS feed to your social media sharing platform of choice!
http://www.TrafficGenerationCafe.com/feed/
And don’t forget to add “via @AnaTrafficCafe” to your tweets so that I can come by and say thank you.
4. Mention it to your list.
Just follow the example above and ask your email subscribers to automatically share your stuff with their followers.
Triberr.com
Triberr is a blogging network designed to increase your Twitter influence through leveraging other bloggers’ Twitter accounts.
Let’s say I have about 1,900 Twitter followers in my @AnaTrafficCafe Twitter account.
With Triberr, I can find like-minded bloggers who also produce excellent content in my niche and form an alliance with them – a “tribe” in Triberr terms.
They share my stuff (if they like it, it’s not automatic) and I share theirs.
You can choose to create your own tribe or request to join others.
The main idea behind it is to find tribes with active members who write quality content and love to share each others’ stuff.
That’s how I am able to grow my reach from 1,900 Twitter followers to over 2M.
How to find tribes in your niche:
Once you create your free Triberr account, find the “Tribes” tab in the left sidebar.
When you click on it, you’ll be taken to the “Browse Tribes” section where you can add different categories related to your niche.
Once you find the tribes you’d love to be a member of, I suggest you introduce yourself to the tribe founder and ask them to add you.
How to actually make Triberr work to promote your posts:
As I mentioned before, sharing on Triberr is not automatic.
Your tribe mates need to choose to share your content with their followers.
Increase your chances of being shared on Triberr by:
- creating eye-catching post titles;
- sharing their stuff (I suggest to log into Triberr once a day and share others’ content; make it a habit; give and you shall receive);
- if you are a new-comer to the blogosphere, build relationships with your tribe mates; i.e. comment on their content, send them a personal note, etc.
Create your free Triberr account
JustRetweet.com
JustRetweet.com is another Twitter sharing platform, but has a big distinction from Triberr: you don’t need to form a tribe to get retweets.
This could be helpful to many bloggers who might have a hard time getting into an active niche-related tribe on Triberr.
How JustRetweet.com works:
- Sign in with your Twitter account.
- Earn credits by retweeting or liking the retweets from other members.
- When you have earned enough credits, then you can submit your own retweets into the system and have other members start retweeting YOUR content.
- You can also earn credits by following other members, referring new members, etc.
- JustRetweet doesn’t do automatic sharing; everything you share is entirely up to you.
- The more you give, the more you receive.
Create your free JustRetweet account
ViralContentBuzz.com
ViralContentBuzz.com is a fairly new Twitter/Facebook sharing platform that works off earned credits, very much like JustRetweet does.
However, here’s what sets ViralContentBuzz apart from other similar networks:
Our platform is called “Viral Content Buzz” which implies that we are looking to help push high-quality content that has a good potential to go viral. (FAQ)
All submissions to ViralContentBuzz are manually moderated, which ensures the quality of the submitted posts.
Another interesting thing about ViralContentBuzz is the fact that you won’t see WHO submitted the post from the dashboard.
I think that’s yet another way this site ensures that the QUALITY of submitted content takes the center stage; just the way it should be.
Thus, if you do create quality content, but are not known for it quite yet, ViralContentBuzz might be the perfect platform for you.
Create your free ViralContentBuzz account here
Additional comment from one of the founders, Gerald Weber:
“I would like to add that although right now we only support Twitter and Facebook sharing, we are going to be adding StumbleUpon, Google Plus and Pinterest in the very near future.”
Promote Your Post on Facebook
For one reason or another, it’s a bit harder to get people to share your post on Facebook than it is on Twitter.
Here are some suggestions to help you to promote your new post on Facebook.
Replace Facebook “Like” button with “Share” button
To tell you the truth, it wasn’t easy to find any evidence supporting my gut feeling that a Share button is better than a Like button.
The main obstacle was the fact that Facebook seemed to be very much like Google – in a constant state of menopause: unpredictable with widely-ranged mood swings.
I did finally find a couple of posts written recently enough to still be applicable and by people whose opinion I respect.
So for further reading on the subject, check out:
- Ryan Hanley’s Share Button vs Like Button For Best Facebook Exposure (at BasicBlogTips.com)
It basically comes down to how Facebook determines whether and how many of your Facebook friends/fans will actually see your updates.
Just in case it comes as a surprise to you, the number of your Facebook fans serves as great social proof, but that’s about it.
Now you need to prove to Facebook that your updates are actually worthy to be seen.
In other words, you need to increase your EdgeRank.
What does it have to do with the Share button?
Here’s everything you need to know:
As a general rule, it’s best to assume Edges that take the most time to accomplish tend to weigh more.
For engagement Edges we generally say Shares > Comments > Likes > Clicks.
For content type Edges we’ve seen Videos > Photos > Status Updates > Links.
Since Shares take more effort, it’s assumed that the more Shares you get, the better EdgeRank your Facebook fan page will have, the more of your fans will actually see your updates.
For fun:
When you see the number of “Shares” in my social sharing bar to the right of this post, the actual number includes shares, likes, and comments on the post on FB.
If you really want to know how users interact with your post (i.e. what kind of reactions each post gets), use this somewhat complicated command:
https://api.facebook.com/restserver.php?method=links.getStats&urls=http%3a%2f%2fwww.trafficgenerationcafe.com%2fempower-network-thumbs-down%2f
Replace the first bolded text with your URL and the second one with your post slug, and paste the entire thing into your browser.
You’ll see something like this (this is how my 82 FB shares on my recent Empower Network bash parsed):
Yep, this is how I have fun…
Alright, enough about the buttons.
Use Twitter Tools Mentioned Above
I’ve already mentioned that both JustRetweet and ViralContentBuzz can be used to share your content on FB as well as Twitter.
Use them.
Promote on Other Social Media Networks
After I am done with blasting my newly published post on Twitter and Facebook, I turn to Google+ and Pinterest to add the cherry to the cake.
GooglePlus
Yes, GooglePlus is still very much alive and kicking.
There’s a lot of engagement going on there, and TGC consistently gets a fair amount of traffic from it.
A few pointers on maximizing your G+ promotion:
1. Add a description with a compelling call to action.
Posting your update without a comment is… well, a waste of a good opportunity.
Compare:
And:
Not only did SeachEngineLand include a short comment on their update, but they also mentioned +MajesticSEO AND included a hashtag.
These simple additions gained them more visibility on G+.
2. Know who to share with
This is my personal pet-peeve.
It seems like many bloggers are still clueless as to how to properly share their updates with the circles.
They end up overwhelming their circles with trivial updates and when something that’s actually worth reading comes up (like your newly published post), their circles just ignore it.
Here’s how to properly share your updates:
- Public: anything generic, as in “look at this awesome photo!” should be shared as “Public” only.
- Your circles/Extended circles:more important updates, like your newly published blog posts, should be shared with circles as well.
- Email your circles: my suggestion – DON’T do it. This is NOT your email list and you shouldn’t treat it as such.
Despite the fact that interest in Pinterest for marketing purposes is cooling off (unless you are in a cute cat or bacon business, of course), I still like to share my posts on Pinterest.
And yes, I still drive a decent enough amount of traffic from it.
I usually pin the same post onto several different boards using the following three methods:
- Promote your blog post
…by pinning it directly from post (i.e. using the “Pin” button to the right).
When you do that, the image will link directly to your post.
As you can see, I also like to add another link to the post in the description.
Reason: when you repin your pin, it won’t link to your post any longer (like you see at the top of the image).
Rather, it will link back to your Pinterest profile, like this:
That way your link will travel with the image no matter how many times it’s repinned.
- Promote your Pinterest profile (and your blog)
…by repinning the post onto several other boards.
After I pinned the post directly to 2-3 relevant boards (be careful, you don’t want your Pinterest followers to see the same image pinned to every board you have!), I’ll repin it to a couple of other community boards.
If you have no idea what any of it means, take a look at my post about driving traffic from Pinterest.
This is a great way to brand your Pinterest profile, whereas pinning directly from your blog brands your blog itself.
- Create social proof (and promote your blog post)
…by repinning what other people shared from your blog.
Here’s what you do:
1. See who has pinned your post(s) onto their Pinterest boards.
Go to: http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite.com/ (don’t forget to replace the bolded part with your domain name).
You’ll see everything that other people pinned from your blog, like this:
Huge THANK YOU to all who promote TGC!
Now let’s say I take Carolyn Mohr‘s pin from one of my post.
I’ll go ahead and repin it to my Zlistic community board and here’s the result:
This way I still got all my links (I added the one in the description when repinning it – for good luck 😉 ), AND got proof that I wasn’t the only person who liked Traffic Generation Café.
Note: It seems like no matter how many times an image gets pinned/repinned, it still links to the original source – your blog post in this case.
That’s good news!
Promote Your Posts by Promoting Others
I could’ve mentioned this invaluable tip in any of the sections above – you should use it no matter where/how you are promoting your blog/newly published post.
Generously mention/link to other blogs in all your posts.
That’s the biggest “not-so-secret” secret to successful blog promotion.
When you mention other blogs in your posts, you:
- Provide your readers with additional valuable resources;
- Show them that you are a giver;
- Build relationships with other bloggers without asking for anything in return;
- Increase your chances of being mentioned on other blogs.
In other words,
You end up promoting your own blog by promoting others.
Makes sense?
And yes, I’ve got a few tips up my sleeves to help you maximize your “return on promotion”:
Don’t go for the “big fish”
Sure you can link to the biggest blogs out there, but don’t expect to be noticed by them.
You are not the only one vying for their attention.
Focus on blogs that provide epic content, yet are still small enough to actually pay attention to comments, emails, and social media mentions.
They are much more likely to return the favor.
ALWAYS let them know
Don’t just assume that the other bloggers will somehow find out that you mentioned them in your post; TELL THEM.
There are three ways to do it:
- Via social media (include @TheirProfile in your status updates on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or Pinterest).
- Via a comment on their blog (leave a meaningful comment on their post and say at the end “by the way, mentioned you here….”).
- Via email (use their contact form).
I’ve noticed that different bloggers prefer different communication channels.
Some closely monitor their social media, some are religious about responding to comments, some will only pay attention to a personal email.
Some won’t respond no matter what you do.
Don’t take it personally.
Always open outgoing links in a new window
This is one of the biggest mistakes I see many bloggers make: they forget to force all outgoing links to open in new tabs/windows, thus loosing their traffic to the blogs they mention.
Allow my daughter Emma to demonstrate:
(What’s the point of having children if we can’t use them to promote our businesses, right?
By the way, this is nothing; you should see how I “utilized” Emma on my internet marketing tools page.)
This one is very simple: when you add a link to your post, make sure to check the “Open link in a new window/tab” box.
Side note: make sure ALL your external links open in new windows, including any ads you might have in your sidebar, links to social media profiles, etc.
ALWAYS link to a post, not homepage
I can’t believe I forgot to mention this – thanks to Danny Iny for reminding me in comments:
“One thing I’d add is that if you’re linking to someone, always link to a specific page or post, rather than the homepage – that way there’ll be a pingback to let them know.”
This is VERY important.
When you link to one’s home page, they never get a pingback notifying them about the link.
That’s why you want to make sure to link to a specific post; just like I did in every single mention in this post.
Thanks for the reminder, Danny!
Promote via Speedlinking Posts
Speedlinking, roundups, mashups – all roads lead to posts that curate the best content on the web.
“Best content” is, of course, in the eyes of the beholder, i.e. the publishing blogger.
The keys to promoting your content via roundups:
- Write stellar content (no one will mention it unless it’s worth its salt);
- Build relationships with the publishing bloggers (don’t just approach them with “how about mentioning my post?”);
- Only alert them to your best posts (don’t be the boy/girl who cries wolf).
Here’s a short list of blogs I know of that publish regular roundups:
1. Kristi Hines Kikolani.com
2. Anita Campbell SmallBizTrends.com
Best way to make SmallBizTrends roundups: be active at BizSugar.com.
3. Danny Iny FirePoleMarketing.com
4. Francisco Perez IBlogZone.com
5. Ryan Hanley RyanHanley.com
6. Nick Stewart NicksTrafficTricks.com
7. Laura Crest SEOCopywriting.com
If you know of others, let me know in the comments.
Other Ways to Promote Your Posts
A while ago, I published So You Published a New Post, Now What?, where I talked about all the steps I took to promote every new blog post.
With all the changes in the blogosphere and Googlesphere, I feel that a lot of that advice is now obsolete.
Sure you can bookmark your post with various social bookmarking sites like BlogEngage, BizSugar, Blokube.
However, without being an active member of those communities, your promotion effort turns into a useless bookmarking link that won’t bring any traffic and definitely won’t help your SEO.
The only other point that I believe is still very much relevant for promoting your blog posts is this one:
Comment on other blogs
Blog commenting won’t, most likely, result in a huge surge of traffic to your post, but it WILL do the following:
- make your face recognizable throughout the blogosphere (make sure you use your real picture for gravatar!);
- build relationships, not just with the blogger, but with their readers as well;
- might bring a few visitors, especially when commenting on CommentLuv enabled blogs;
- will build links to your content (won’t help you rank on the first page for a competitive keyword, but is good for SEO nonetheless.).
I, for one, always check out first-time commentators’ blogs, as well as click on interesting titles in CommentLuv links.
Bottom line: every time you publish a post, make it a habit to comment on 5 blogs (I prefer CommentLuv blogs since you can leave your newly published post link via CL).
This little habit could lead to great things for your blog.
WARNING: You should always, always, always check what a commentator is linking to before approving comments.
This will prevent you from linking out to bad neighborhoods.
My habit of checking out the websites before linking to them served me well the other day: an innocent-looking link and a quality comment lead me to a porn site.
Phewww…
Email your list?
Sure you can email your list (I assume you already have one, right? If not, click here.) to tell them about your new blog posts.
However, why waste the precious trust you’ve built with your subscribers by emailing them about every piece of content you publish?
That’s what RSS feed is for.
I’d reserve your emails for exclusive advice your subscribers can’t find anywhere else.
If you do that consistently, you’ll earn the right to let them know about your pillar content AND bring a good amount of traffic back to your blog.
If you’d like to see how I do my email marketing, feel free to join Traffic Generation Café email subscribers.
Marketing Takeaway
This is the bare minimum I do for every blog post I publish.
Looks like too much work?
I beg you pardon – writing this post was too much work; implementing the steps won’t take that long.
Plus, what are your options?
Put several hours into crafting a post and then rely on a blog fairy to get it discovered?
Riiiiight…
Get to work!
From Ana with
Hi,
Thanks Ana for clarifying most of us on this Hot Topic and most important all above mentioned Tips very useful actionable advice to Promote Blog Post and Get Targeted Traffic as well!
Thanks Once again for These Awesome Tips!
You are very welcome, Sandeep.
Tweetdeck is my favorite tool too, thanks for all the other useful tips you’ve shared here, Ana!
Haven’t used Tweetdeck for a while now… used to be my go-to Twitter tool!
Would you say that trackbacks and pingbacks serve the same purpose? I tend to think that trackbacks are bit sneaky and allows a backdoor into your native WordPress commenting system.
What are your thoughts?
Yes, Tony, they are just two different protocols design to do the same thing – notify other blogs about mentions. Trackbacks happen to be easier to abuse by spammers; that’s the main difference.
Such a long and informative post. How would I go through all at once?
Had to bookmark it.
I had to bookmark this post. you really killed it Anna. I’ve been searching for ways to promote my blog post and you literally gave me everything I’ve been looking for.
Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you, Wilson.
Ana Hoffman, who are you and where did you come from? I have been searching in the dark for how to promote my posts and your article is by far the best I’ve read out there. I’ve got my work cut out for me but you’ve inspired me…thank you so much!
I’ve just mentioned you on twitter as well!
lol, Keith; you are making me blush.
You are very welcome.
Great post Ana,
I use most of these techniques for promoting my blog and I can verify that they all work well especially the likes of Justretweet and communities like Bizsugar.com.
Blog commenting has also been a source of good traffic for me.
Thanks for the thumbs up, Joseph!
Hi Ana,and thanks for giving me and others the chance to express our opinions as well as promote,Am a Marketer which loves to promote products which help with our businesses and a WordPress lover and currently building a Membership Product which Can Help us all with the traffic nightmare!
You are very welcome, Daniel; thanks for taking your time to come by.
Hi Ana,
I discovered your blog when looking for information to get traffic to my new project. Now I’m learning a lot from your posts and rethinking the whole strategy of promoting my website.
Thanks for your work.
Glad you found me, Manuel; see you around!
Hi Anna!
This is my first visit to this wonderful place and I feel like I have taken a vacation to Disney World! I have learned so much from this post. More than I have ever learned from one single post. Some of the items I never even knew about and I am going to start implementing them this new year. I don’t really understand triberr, I am going to look up more information. I am a new newsletter subscriber! Thank you again for such a wonderful post and sharing all of your knowledge!
Pleasure to meet you, Bobbie; back to work now! 😉
Hi
We have a blog which we use to talk about new products etc. and I have been amazed how well some articles on niche products do in terms of search and I believe this maybe down to the tags? more than the content as sometimes we get a first page result without the particular tag being in the body of the text. An example would be here we have placed a competitors brand name as a tag, but not of course mentioned their brand in our blog. I guess this is back to thinking of tags as keywords. By the way a question- can anyone stop you using a competitors brand/ product name as a tag? Guess its just like typing Mulberry handbags and an advert for Gucci bags comes up.
The company who look after our adwords campaign also do a lot of work for ASOS on blogs/ article writing etc. and they ASOS do very well on natural search (womens trousers, womens blouses) in some very competitive areas. They now have over 85 people doing nothing but writing articles etc. for their clients and recommend we spend £1K a month for a minimum of six months as it will give authority to our site and to all products. I am sceptical, but maybe its what the site needs to push it forward and could be cheaper than building a number of more optimised microsites for each product category. Have you any experience of this type of approach to blogs and offsite marketing?
Re tags and a prvious article : We split or products into 11 main categories, but can’t get my head around how we could limit the number of tags due to the diversity of our products. Okay with 5 for each but often they would not be repeated as would not have any relevance to any other product or category.
You brought up a debatable point, James: the use of tags.
There used to be a time when tags were awesome for search engine rankings; they could beef up your site in terms of indexed pages and bring in some extra search engine traffic.
However, now that Google prefers leaner, more subject-focused sites, I don’t recommend using tags for SEO traffic (I no-index my own tag pages). Rather for an ecommerce site like yours, they might serve well as an additional way for your customers to find what they are looking for.
Thanks Ana
I was just watching the podcast you did with Shaun and came over to check things out. Getting free traffic to my site is something I’m struggling with. I’ve bookmarked this post to come back to, am about to sign up for you email campaign.
Looking forward to running through things as they arrive.
Regards
Simon
Thanks for coming by, Simon; see you around.
Hi Anna!
This is a brilliant and educational post about blog post promotion. I’m an active user of justretweet.com and it has done wonders for the post I’ve shared there. Their system is awesome! I’ve had a triberr account for a while, but never use it to the max. I will be implementing your tips and advice you have stated to beef up my post promotions.
Thanks Again Anna!
Marc Bell
It seems like many people underutilize Triberr; I might need to do some training on it.
I think that would be brilliant, Ana. I’ve been following your blog for awhile, and have been making money online for awhile, and this was the first I’d heard of it!
Some training on programs like this would be awesome.
I handle list emails a little differently than some. Because I email frequently but also blog frequently, sending those blog posts daily to my list makes no sense. So, on Mondays, I send out a digest version (roundup style) of the prior weeks blog post, and include some snippet of unique info at the top of the email as well. This leaves the rest of the days of the week for me to work with actual email marketing stuff.
I like that idea, Kim – I used to do that as well, but got too lazy. 😉
Hey, that was really an interesting read Ana! I usually make the title like a “call to action” for getting social media traffic, and it has helped me ofcourse.
Always a good idea, Nikunj.
Thanks Ana, It is great to be able to see how promoting your blog is really done.
So… many… things.. to.. do… lol. Awesome post. FB has started to work for me and my posts are getting liked and shared a lot. Twitter is something I never really used though so I’m still struggling with it. I’ll check out the twitter platforms you mentioned to see if I can use them. thanks.
Ana really awesome tricks for newbie bloggers like me.I had missed a lot of these to do items.
Will try to complete ASAP
Thanks ANa
wow!! adding my own thanks to the original comment own to say a BIG thanks to Ana for this amazing article, social is indeed a good way to get traffic to your blog, facebook is quiet easy but twitter: still struggling with it .
Thanks again
Not every platform works for every business/personality, Damilare. Twitter is an annoying nut to crack, but worth your time, IF your audience is there. Otherwise, Facebook will do just fine.
Wow that is a lot to digest, but every word of it is gold! You really do know how to harness social media in to raw firepower. Many of the methods you describe I have never even heard of and I thought I was pretty knowledgeable lol. Anyhow, It seems I will be back to this post a time or two more to try a few methods out at a time. Thanks for taking the time to share these marketing methods.
Ana, I was just reading Pat Flynn’s blog post on being anywhere and I thought this might also apply to this blog post. Promote your brand offline. There are so many inexpensive ways to do this. One idea might be to give away free pens with your logo and website on them at a blogging conference. I think pens would be the best based on data I found at this website.http://www.unitwin.com/websitepublisher/blogs/when-you-need-corporate-promo-items-consider-what-will-be-seen-the-most.html It looks like of all items pens are seen the most and I am pretty sure you can get pens cheap. Just an idea.
Thanks for the link, Chris – I am sure many of my readers could use a few offline promo tips.
Thanks Ana, this is wealth of information and resources. It is great to be able to see how promoting your blog is really done. Now it’s time to get to work on promoting my blogs.
Nit sure how effective CommentLuv has been so if you have the opportunity give us a look and leave us a few tips…
I have written a few posts about CommentLuv, Glenn; here’s just one of them: https://trafficgenerationcafe.com/commentluv/
There are way too many bloggers out there, especially fresh off the boat ones, who are too happy to just get a comment to begin with, Kevin, and never even think about checking out the source for the comment.
I really appreciate that fact that you welcome my emails in your inbox!
Hey Ana! I gave you a mention in my latest article!!
See, I’m putting it into practise LOL .Awesome article as usual 🙂
Thanks for the shout, Lisa!
Left you a comment, although it might’ve ended in spam….
This is what i call a awesome post and i can imagine how much time you have taken to create this awesomeness. I have learn so much from it (taken little more time to read in compare to other blogs). Keep It up will e looking for more posts like it.
Hey, that was really an interesting read Ana! I usually make the title like a “call to action” for getting social media traffic, and it has helped me ofcourse.
Simply Amazing post, Took me time to read the post but it was really amazing.
Its awesome, I really tried to use tribber the other day, but i really didn;t get the hang of it.
But i use justretweet alright.
I plan to use more of the tools you just mentioned in the post.
Triberr isn’t doing it for me either, I think a tutorial for us dummies is calling your name Ana!
Triberr is getting so big, it’s hard to ignore. Maybe you are right, Lisa; there might be a post brewing somewhere in the vastly unchartered cells of my brain…
Hi Ana
Thanks for an awesome and very long blog post 🙂
You must really have been on fire. I use a lot of the tips you shared in this post already like: Triberr, JustRetweet and CommentLuv Premium. The promoting others work is also a great tip that for sure does work. I still don’t have an e-mail list..! I know that I should, but have not really found the right way to get started without buying expensive software.
Where does most of your traffic come from, Thomas?
It is without doubt from Google
That’s what I thought.
Now imagine if Google cuts you off one of these days? What will happen to your business?
List building is the new SEO in my opinion. It’s the plan B quickly becoming plan A.
I use Aweber and it’s not that expensive; about $20 per month for a while. I think it’s definitely worth the investment. Then again, it shouldn’t be a matter of choice. It’s like hosting for your site – you HAVE to have it.
Hope this gentle kick in the rear moves you in the right direction, my friend.
Thank you for your advice Ana. I know you know what is working so your opinion is important to me.
Hi Anna,
I think promoting a blog on social media sites is a good idea but first knowing which social media has the potential users/groups of their niche and how much they are effective should be done.
Certainly, Naina; no one is suggesting that we should blindly promote out sites on every single one of these networks.
I was wondering about blogengage. You said it will not bring SEO love. Yet that is what they promote. Is this dead?
With all the recent algo changes, I don’t believe Google thinks much about low-quality (since they can be easily acquired and manipulated in mass) links like social bookmarking, Phill.
What a great post Ana! I will definitely put all your ideas in place. Thank you so much for always providing useful information.
Wow. What an amazing post. Thanks for all the valuable information. It’s really tough getting to all the marketing strategies, but as you mentioned it’s necessary. I’m lacking in a few areas you mentioned, but will be working on them. I’ll definitely look into ViralContentBuzz.
Thanks again. I shared this post and will also be linking to it.
And thanks so much for sharing my posts, Karen!
Amazing post Anna, this is a quality post and should become one of your most popular posts. I am implementing your tips now and hope to receive a lot of traffic. Thanks!
Hey Ana, thanks for the awesome resource (JustRetweet.com).
Wow. So much great info here. I need to bookmark this and come back to over the weekend. I saw this on g+. Thx for all the tips
GREAT tips at the right time!!! Thanks, Ana – I’ve started implementing step-by-step as I read along. Good to see I’m doing a few things right already. Added you to my TwitterFeed too. Have an awesome weekend!
Thanks for adding me to your feed, Lizette!
Hi Ana,
Comprehensive post on promoting your blog. I love the tip on asking people to share the feed on social media platform to get automatic traffic and backlinks.
Though it takes time and effort to find a deal, it will worth the time spent. Do it once and enjoy forever 🙂
Good stuff,
Cheers,
Ming
It definitely takes some established authority to get people to tweet your content automatically, Ming, but if your content is consistently great, you shouldn’t have much of a problem with it.
Great post, Anna. However, perhaps, a bit long. ¿What do you think about length of the posts with respect to get and maintain traffic?.
I ask you two questions:
Isn’t ther a non-written rule about posts of 200-350 words in order to make easier the reading?. And, don’t you think is more useful to divide long post into several posts for different days?
Sorry my bad English!.
Kind regards
I don’t feel like sugar-coating my reply, Carlos, so here it goes:
1. There’s not such unwritten rule.
2. There are no rules in blogging.
3. Those who think there are rules, fail.
4. If readers don’t want to read your long posts, it’s time to find new readers.
5. I don’t use 3445 words to say something I can say in 200.
Anna, maybe, I haven’t explain myself enough or we are just disagree… perhaps too…
Because, if there’s no certain rules in blogging you couldn’t give your advices… ¿don’t you think?. That’s the reason of the changes of your blog. You improve it because of something.
When I say rules, I mean as well reading habits and things like that. Not necessarily something fixed. Rules for today tomorrow don’t work…
In my humble opinion, shorter posts means more attention of your readers in each post. If a topic is long I prefer to divide it in a series of posts with numbers because my readers are going to catch the information in little pieces better than the other way.
Of course, your real readers, the loyal ones, are gonna read every thing you give them even if it is long (As me!), I recognize it to you, but the no loyal ones are worth it as well.
Just that!
I certainly see your point, Carlos.
I think as we grow as bloggers, our egos grow proportionally.
SO if in the beginning of my blogging career I was concerned whether my readers prefer longer posts to multiple shorter posts, now I just think that everyone should read my posts the way I right them. 😉
It’s the sort of entitlement mentality that actually makes blogging fun.
Lisa is definitely an incredible resource on anything marketing-related, Peter. Thanks for sticking with my long post (and the thumbs up on FB)!
*puts on the coffee machine & pours any takers – let’s read again, shall we?*
Love it! I actually needed to go over the post again as I couldn’t remember if you mentioned twitterfeed.com or not! 🙂
I need to ask a few to return the favor but I’m a shy boy, right? Found this to be an excellent way to retweet excellent content.
Word of caution: Make sure you ABSOLUTELY trust the content from the feeds you add LOL!
Epic ‘good stuff’!
That’s exactly right, Ruan – using Twitterfeed is a great way to provide constant tweets to your followers, but then you are blindly relying on that content being good.
Brilliant one Ana,
Blog promotion has being one of the most challenging task for bloggers, although this post will go a long me if only we are ready to actually put what we have learnt into practice, you know what i mean.
However, my social media traffic has been very low, i just have to follow your tips and improve more on it.
Thanks for crafting out such a long and Interesting post Ana.
Regards to your family.
Hi Ana,
Thanks for putting this massive list together! I don’t have time to read through all of it right now, so I’ve pinned it to come back to later.
I’m finding that Triberr is a really effective way to drive traffic. It bounces around my top 3-5 referrer spot. Also Twitter is my number one source of traffic by a long shot, no doubt as a result of Triberr. My reach is nearly 30 million! One of my recent posts has 285 tweets. Triberr works.
What a creative way to put your daughter to work for you! She’ll be a young entrepreneur in no time! 🙂
I agree, Stacy – to really test out any traffic strategy we have to give it some time to start working. Once I gave Triberr a chance, I realized how to make it work for me.
As far as my daughter is concerned, being entrepreneur is trailing behind being a princess, ballet dancer, vet, chef, out of work spinster with multiple cats planning to live with her parents her entire life… I think I do it all.
Fantastic Post Ana – and timely too!
I was just sitting here thinking about how much the blogging world has changed in the short time that I was away (like Pinterest did not exist for eg and Triberr was nothing like it is now)
This post will give me the catch up that I needed to know where blogging and social media/sharing was and is headed so I know where I need to have a presence if I am to keep up….
Man… this post actually makes me wonder if I really DO want to catch up at all LOL – think I am better off going back to the quiet of building sites and ranking them…
Great Post Ana – truly
Crawling back into a hole always sounds like a great plan to me, Alex…
Too bad the world doesn’t take breaks on the account of us wanting to take a break from it. 😉
How’s the ranking part going with all the Google changes? And what happens if Google decides to send all your sites down the drain?
Hi Ana
I came here from a link in your email titled: “Should you email blog updates to your list?” and I’m so glad I did.
This post is 3445 words of pure nuggety gold and, like the Yukon gold rushers of yesteryear I’m going to have to make a claim and keep on coming back.
I’m going to share this post on my favorite forum – if that’s OK by you as I think it would really help quite a few of my fellow forumites.
I’ll be back!
Kindest
Dominic
Sharing of any kind is strongly discouraged, Dom… No, really…
Well, since you are my email subscribers (thanks for trusting me with your email address, by the way!), feel free to share it this one time… 😉
So you’re saying that you shouldn’t share anyone’s posts on things like forums? I have done this and didn’t realize it was a bad thing!
I was sooooo joking, Sheila!
See, that’s how my sense of humor gets me into trouble; doesn’t always translate very well in the written word.
Share, share, share!
Haha…I thought you were, then I wasn’t sure…you had me totally confused for awhile! You are so funny!
Brilliant article. I only just discovered about proof via source for pinterest yesterday and now you mention the same amazing strategy here today. I can’t wait to follow up on all the other new strategies you have mentioned here. You always provide excellent information and even the people you mention like Danny Inny also provide top quality useful information too!
This is such an awesome post that I am going to have to ignore most of it to do it justice!
Being in a fair state of overwhelm after reading it I am going to take 1 or 2 actionable tasks and do them and then come back for more!
That way I’ll get (most of) it done…
However long it takes me!
Perfect plan, Alex; one bite at a time.
Now that is a full and proper and detailed How To. Love the way you explain natural and good content is best. Triberr is the only thing I personally dislike out of all as I have found that this just creates an unnatural same people just sharing each other scenario and then they become less social. A couple things above I have not looked at. So glad I popped in here thank you. P 🙂
Thanks, Paul.
I’ve been with Triberr from the very beginning, but didn’t really learn how to use it properly until very recently.
Now I am getting a steady flow of traffic from it, as well as some traffic from the tribe members’ RTs.
Hey Ana,
Once again you’ve delivered some great content. Kudos to you!
I’d like to touch on the part about emailing you list. I don’t think it’s “wasting trust” if you’re writing kick ass content (like this) and/or they’ve raised their hand and said they want to receive your blog posts.
I’m of the opinion that sending your blog posts to your list is a good practice as long as they said they want it. It helps nurture the relationship further and drive loyal traffic back to your site.
I give subscribers the option to pick what kind of content they want to get from me. On my opt in forms I’ve added checkboxes that allow me to segment my list according to their content preference.
I think the key is finding out what works for each segment and delivering accordingly.
Just my two cents…
Thanks for the info!
I think giving your subscribers a choice of what kind of updates they want to receive is very smart.
How do you do it from the technical point of view? And what happens if your subscribers don’t check either box?
Sending blog post updates is absolutely fine, as long as you tell your list that’s what they are getting. In my case (and most other bloggers do the same), I tell my subscribers that they’ll be getting exclusive traffic tips from me; that’s why I don’t like to email them with simple blog updates.
Well from a technical standpoint it’s just a matter of adding additional code to sign up forms so the data is captured by my ESP, segmenting my list as subscribers come in.
If by chance someone doesn’t check a box, they will receive an additional email asking them to select which content they want. If they still don’t select they will remain on my main house list and receive all content.
Even for those on my blog post list, I’m currently testing sending all posts versus just those “epic” ones to see how they perform.
This is a spectacularly useful post, Ana. Many thanks. I’m so pleased I subscribed to your newsletter and received notification of this. I’m going to put as many of these suggestions in place as soon as I can.
You are very welcome, Stuart; thanks for trusting me with your email address.
Now all I have to do, following a spectacular PC crash and the necessary recovery, is to actually re-read and then act on your advice!
Life happens…
Hi Ana,
I liked your post and I need to re-read some parts of it 🙂
What I completely disliked is your piece of advice regarding Google+ option of emailing your circles. In your circles there are people who added you to their circles BUT… also people who do NOT care about you & your posts and decided NOT to add you to their circles. When you email them, that is definitely SPAM. I always report such emails as being what they are: spam. If you add me to one of your circles it doesn’t mean that you have my permission to email me! This is exactly like harvesting email addresses from websites and sending emails to them.
Finally, I’m not 100% sure, but as far as I know you CANNOT email a circle unless that circle has less than 50 persons. Therefore YOU actually won’t be able to send an email to your circles 🙂 That’s why the spammers and the newbies following such pieces of advice like yours create more limited circles. I hesitated before posting this last piece of information – but I guess that G+ spammers don’t waste their time reading comments 🙂
Adrian
Good point, Adrian – I didn’t mean to make it sounds like it’s OK to treat your circles like your personal email list.
I changed the post to reflect that.
Since I’ve never tried to use this feature, I don’t really know how small your following needs to be to send out an email; of course, since I told my readers not to do it at all, it’s a mute point.
Hi Ana and Adrian
I use Google+ quite a bit, but I am no means an expert. I do use the email to your circles option. Because in my opinion Google would not put it there, if we wasn’t supposed to use it.
I have never to my knowledge. Used this feature in a self promotional way. and I can count the number of people in my circles who have complained on one hand.
And the only reason (in my opinion) why they complained was that I had to many of them in multiple circles. Which mean’t that whenever I used the email feature.
They would receive the same message multiple times.
And Adrian… The maximum size of any circle that you can email. From my own personal experience is 100.
Hi Paul,
Collect some email addresses from random websites, get a Gmail account from GOOGLE and start sending to these addresses marketing messages every time you want (note that for one single message there is a LIMIT for the number of email addresses that can be inserted in the To, CC, BCC fields). Google provides you the tool for spamming and won’t block your emails. What’s the conclusion? Your emails are not spam because Google brand & tools were involved there? 😉
Well… the answer to the above question is NO. Smart persons and organizations don’t stop the potential bad guys by restricting the rights of innocent people. Shall I say it twice so the right people notice this statement? 🙂
I don’t know for sure why Google lets you email some circles having a LIMITED number of members (note the word limited). But we can assume that you’re allowed to do that because when someone has a circle that includes relatives or REAL friends, sending an email to your dad or to your very good friend is not something very unusual. And that it’s not spam.
As for the insignificant number of complaints you receive… nothing unusual. Anyone who is not very new on the Internet knows that a spam message must NOT be reported to the spammer but to someone else 😉 It’s not good to reply to a spam message. Why? Because that way you let the spammer know that the email address is active and there is a strong reason for the spammer to keep sending the spam! The same on Google+
Finally, let me repeat something from my previous comment. Maybe you didn’t notice it: when you add me to your circle while I don’t care about you and your posts by not adding you to my circles, you do NOT get my permission to email me. Adding me to your circles is similar to opt-in to RECEIVE info FROM ME. For example, outside Google+, if you opt-in to RECEIVE my emails, it doesn’t mean that I opted-in to receive YOUR emails 😉
Not sure what Google’s thought behind this was, Paul, but I do agree with Adrian – personally, I’d find it too annoying to be getting emails from my G+ circles.
Thankfully, no one seems to have figured it out or wants to use it so far; I haven’t gotten one such email from anyone. lol
Love it, thanks for the great advice Ana! I gave up on Triberr a while ago, but I haven’t tried JustRetweet or ViralContentBuzz. Definitely going to check those out now!
You are very welcome, Keri. Stopped by your blog; very inspiring!
Thanks so much! =D
Incredible post as always. And I agree with Dino…this should be required reading.
I love all the little details I can always pull out of your posts. In this case, for instance…I had no idea how to check how many times something has been pinned/re-pinned from my site.
So, being intrigued, I went and checked. I was pretty surprised to see how much the content has actually been pinned. I almost never use Pinterest. I may have to give it a bit more focus though.
Thanks so much for coming by, Eugene.
I ignored Pinterest for a while until I realized that my readers WERE there and many other bloggers ignored it as well. That alone gives us a competitive advantage if we can figure out how to use it in our favor.
Hi Anna,
When I was only half-way down the information, I’d already found several things to use on my blog. I need to take a whole day (or more) to really dig into this post and put the things into motion.
I plan on doing this when I get back from vacation, and will monitor the results. I’m so glad there are bloggers like you who share this important data with us. Thanks so much and will let you know how well these work for my site. I’m always willing to try new things. I plan on being a successful writer & blogger! Sally
Thanks so much, Sally. I do realize this is quite a bit, but who said blogging was easy!? 😉
Great read Anna. I’ve been sending you several messages (Twitter) in order to invite you on several SF network outings. But I see you are super busy… Let me know when you can breath? 🙂 Would love to continue our discussion.
Thanks so much for coming by, Gabriella.
I am ALWAYS up for a get-together! I just don’t check Twitter as much as I should and definitely never check DMs.
Would you email me please?
Wholly Cow that’s a lot of info! Thank you so much for this, I’ll need to review it several times to make sure I get every point down pat.
I know it is, Jenn, but it gets easier with practice.
Awesome post Anna!
I just LOVED all that you shared, and yes, we need to do all these things to get our blog posts out and in-front of people.
I really had no idea about JustRetweet and ViralContentBuzz – something that I would be checking out right away. Yes, I’ve heard a lot about whether one should go in for the Like or Share button (Facebook) and have heard most people say it should be the Like one, though I’m glad you have a share button here. 🙂
I still need to follow the Pinterest trick you mentioned – it surely is a great way to get more backlinks to your blog.
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful resource of information. 🙂
“Like” button is usually easier for the readers, Harleena; press it and you are done.
However, the updated “Share” button can work the same way (just click it and you don’t have to add anything else), but is better for the blog and traffic.
Of course, I still have the “Like” buttons at the top and bottom of all posts.
Anna,
Really great information here. I can see why you generate so much traffic! I honestly had no idea about the automatic RSS feed sharing. That is great to know and thank you for providing examples and quick explanations of each. It will take time to digest all this great information, but definitely a helpful post. Thanks again.
Oi! This is epic ish, Ana. I love that Facebook api thingie. I’m going to delve into that a bit deeper, see what’s what. Have you any resources that you can point me to to direct my research? Specifically, tools that actually parse that XML feedback? I could do it myself, but I don’t want to reinvent any wheels.
Cheers,
Mitch
Wasn’t easy to dig out anything on the topic, Mitch, but you can start here: http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2009/10/26/extending-facebook-share/
Thanks, Ana! I’ll study this and now, I have some keywords for further research.
Cheers,
Mitch
Spectacular post Ana! Great analysis on the share vs like button. Thanks so much for the mentions too! 🙂
Your post at SEM-group was definitely the best on the topic, Kristi; glad you gave me some solid grounds to base my research on.
PS You are looking a lot rounder and as beautiful as ever!
Thank you Ana. 🙂
This post is a treasure. Hmm, maybe more like a treasure map. No, that’s not it either, I know. A treasure and a map to find even more treasure buried deep in the internet.
Does it sound like a lot of work? Kind of. Is it important to do so that we can get the traffic and readers that we are looking for? Absolutely, 100 percent Golden Yes.
A list and a guidebook with best practices, the “ish” post is spot on. 2 thumbs up. 🙂
Much appreciated, Michael.
This post should be required reading for new bloggers. Great work, Ana, and thnx for mentioning Triberr.
Dino
Founder of Triberr
O M G Ana…
You hit it outta the park — again.
This is it. This is what I wanted to know when I first started blogging. You cover so much ground and give people a leg up on promoting in the channels that suit them.
I’m particularly interested in ViralContentBuzz because everyone everywhere praises my content as some of (and sometimes THE :P) top-quality content on the ‘net — but I’m not sure how well-known I am for it.
Thanks so much, and I’ll gladly direct any blogger I know here, because there’s so much nuts + bolts + basics of promotion for various channels here, with a nice dose of strategy as well.
[hug]
Are you sure they are not just buttering you up about your content, Jason? 😉
Thanks for the shout!
Oh it’s very possible, praise is a funny thing, Ana 🙂
Don’t matter though, cuz *I* know it rocks, hard, no matter who says what 😉
Ana,
Absolutely AMAZING article… there is so much to digest… Also Thank you very much for the shout out.
One point that I would love to find out more about is the “Email Your Circles” option. As a consumer I actually find this option to be a little annoying. I think once in a while on some really powerful content you could use it but every article might be a bit much.
I’ve actually blocked people on Google+ because every article they send out I also get an email.
What are your thoughts on that?
I agree, Ryan – that’s why I mentioned that I’ve never used that feature before and not planning on using it.
No post is worth loosing followers this way.
The idea of the post is great. You have mentioned an essential step by step guide on how to get traffic, and this what every one needs “maybe like me”.
Just waiting for more from you.
I second Ryan’s praise, and his question. 🙂
Curious 😀
Really love this article 😀
My answer to Ryan was a definite NO: I’d never send out an email to my circles.
Hey Ana, great list, and thanks for the mention. Also, I appreciate the heads-up – way to practice what you preach. 😉
One thing I’d add is that if you’re linking to someone, always link to a specific page or post, rather than the homepage – that way there’ll be a pingback to let them know. 🙂
I always make sure to link to individual posts as well, Danny; can’t believe I forgot to mention it!
Added your tip to the post; now you’ll get another pingback from me. 😉
great tip, Danny … and thx for the great post, Ana. Bookmarked 🙂 Agree with Dino Dogan … should be required reading for bloggers!
Thanks, Rhonda!
Ana,
Thanks a million for the VCB mention here! Ann and I really appreciate it. I would like to add that although right now we only support Twitter and Facebook sharing, we are going to be adding StumbleUpon, Google Plus and Pinterest in the very near future.
Also we are constantly making updates and changes based on user feed back so please let us know what you think and/or things you might like to see.
Thanks again! 🙂
Added it to the post, Gerald; look forward to the new features!
Thanks for sharing this Ana. I plan on checking out Triberr for sure and will also look into some of these other sites you linked this weekend.