The web is flooded with blogs that manage to flourish while consistently publishing less than mediocre content.
You know what their secret is?
Stellar blog promotion.
If you know how to promote your blog, your brand, your posts, website traffic won’t be an issue.
Of course, traffic conversion is a different story. That’s where mediocrity won’t get the worm. However, the point of this post is PROMOTION, PROMOTION, PROMOTION.
The following are the exact steps I take to promote every single one of my posts, and you should consider taking to promote YOUR blog.
Yes, I do it manually and, since I don’t currently have an assistant, I do it all myself – because promoting your blog is THAT important.
Some of the steps below won’t necessarily get you the immediate traffic you crave for, but they will influence your long-term brand building without you even knowing it.
Just because you can’t see it, feel it, or touch it, it doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing, right?
Right-click on the image to save it to your desktop to use it to promote all your future (and past) blog posts.
Promote Your Blog: The Groundwork
Before we start promoting anything, we need a system to do it efficiently.
1. Bookmark Your Blog Promotion Venues
As a part of our blog promotion system, I suggest you create a bookmark folder for your future blog promotion “pit stops”.
That way, you’ll have all the steps at your fingertips whenever you are ready to give your blog post a traffic boost.
Here’s what I suggest you do:
- In your browser bookmarks, create a new folder; I call mine “Blog Promotion“.
- Bookmark all the sites you intend to promote your blog at.
- Time hack: group them to make it easier to copy and paste later – social media sites first, then social networking sites, etc.
- TIme hack: bookmark specific pages where you’ll be submitting your URLs to, not just the home page of a site. For instance, instead of bookmarking BizSugar.com, bookmark BizSugar.com/submit.
My list of bookmarked pages:
- http://www.blogengage.com/
- http://www.bizsugar.com/submit
- http://www.blokube.com/
- my Pinterest profile
- my Google+ personal profile
- my Google+ business page
- my Facebook page
- http://www.linkedin.com/
- https://www.blogher.com/node/add/blog
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/
- plus any Facebook, Google+, etc. communities/groups I am a part of.
2. Add Social Sharing Buttons
Social sharing buttons are good for business, period.
Not only do they give your visitors an opportunity to share your brilliant writing with their social media followers, but also, provide YOU with a great reminder to do the same.
Never thought of using those buttons to share your own content? Well, you should. Each time you visit a post on your blog make sure to hit that “Tweet” or “Share on Facebook” or whatever button.
Those buttons are also an easy way to promote your brand new blog post. More on that in a minute, but first, a few pointers:
1. Don’t hold back.
Ever read a great post that you wanted to share on social media, but found yourself scrolling up and down looking for social sharing buttons?
Don’t let it happen on your blog.
Give your readers an opportunity to promote your blog for you by placing social sharing buttons in 3-4 different places:
- DEFINITELY at the top of a post;
- DEFINITELY at the bottom of a post;
- optional, but recommended – to the side of your content (preferably the kind that stays fixed even when you scroll down);
- optional – add an extra call to action in the middle of your post, for instance how I did it in the screenshot below (to learn how to add a Tweet button anywhere in the post see these instructions).
[share]By the way, if you love this post thus far and think it would be a valuable read to your followers, tweet the ish out of it for me, would you?[/share]
2. DO hold back.
Yes, add social sharing buttons to several places on your blog, BUT…
Too many buttons cause confusion, slow down your site, and result in no sharing at all.
Stick with the ones that YOUR readers actually use.
For Traffic Generation Café readers, it’s the major ones: Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
For your blog, it might be Pinterest, or StumbleUpon, or Bizsugar.
If you are not sure, the test is simple: add the buttons and see if your readers start using them. If, after a few days, the count remains at zero or a low number, it’s time for that sharing button to go.
Here’s a good post if in doubt:
Too Many Social Media Sharing Buttons Make Your Site Less Social – Doug Antkowiak at searchenginejournal.com
3. Make sure you mind the length and add your Twitter @username.
In other words, avoid this:
When I want to tweet another person’s post and see this after clicking on their “Tweet” button, my only choice is to leave.
- The text is too long – adding a lot of branding info after the post title doesn’t do anyone any good;
- There’s no @TwitterID – fewer people will share the post if they have to dig it out on their own and even if they do share the post as is, the engagement on the post will be a lot lower.
Test all the tweet/share buttons on your blog to make sure the output is what you want your readers to see.
3. Set Up a Bit.ly (or any other URL shortening ) Account
Bit.ly is a free URL shortening service that turns your long URLs into something a lot more manageable:
https://trafficgenerationcafe.com/how-to-promote-your-blog/
VS
http://bit.ly/LIng8ye
The advantages of using a shortened URL when sharing your post on social media:
- Maximize Twitter characters (you don’t want your URL to eat up most of your tweet);
- Make it more memorable.
Expanding on the last point: Bit.ly allows you to customize the last portion of your shortened URL to reflect what the link is about. For instance:
http://bit.ly/LIng8ye
VS
http://bit.ly/promote-your-blog
In my case, I went a step further and created a customized shortened domain for Traffic Generation Café, so my shortened URL for this post is:
http://tgcafe.it/promote-blog/
To learn how to set up your personal vanity URL, read:
6 Steps to Promote Your Blog: Use for ANY Post
Now that you’ve done your groundwork, it’s time to move on to blog promotion. You can read through the post, as well as follow this video as you set up your own blog promotion system:
You hit the “Publish” button. Your post is live.
Here are the precise action steps you should take to promote your blog post.
Step 1. Create a Summary of Your Blog Post “Vitals”
Before you can efficiently promote your new blog post, you need to gather the following information about it:
- Post URL.
- Post title.
- Short description – the kind that would make someone want to click on it.
- Bloggers who you linked out to/mentioned in your post (and you should link out in EVERY post you write!).
- Tags (keywords that describe your post).
Time hack: You’ll need all/most/some of these “post vitals” for almost every website you promote your blog at, so it makes it much easier to copy/paste when you have it handy in one place.
You can use:
- Evernote;
- Google Drive;
- Word;
- Text;
- just about any note-taking platform you prefer.
To help you choose/learn, here are a couple of tutorials about different platforms:
The Complete Guide To Evernote Notebooks – JasonFrasca.com
I keep a running text document that I add all my new blog post info to – that way I can go back and easily share my older posts as well.
Step 2. Load Bookmarks to Promote Your Blog
I like to open a new window and then open all my “Blog Promotion” bookmarks at the same time.
This way, copying/pasting the required info is a breeze.
Step 3. Promote Blog Post on Key Social Media Sites
Every social network is different, but the basics are the same: give value (boring, but true) and tell your followers about your new post more than once.
To make the process more efficient, I try to schedule at least 3 updates per post on each social network.
Considering the time constraints, I focus on the “biggies”:
- Google+
Also, always remember to tag anyone who was mentioned in the post, whichever network you are promoting the post at. The mentioned bloggers can’t promote your blog post if they don’t know about it!
Here’s are a few specifics for each social media platform:
I schedule 3 tweets about the post – one each day.
If you have multiple Twitter accounts like I do, make sure you RT the post to all.
Of course, your blog post promotion doesn’t need to stop there – you can use plugins like Evergreen Post Tweeter by Tom Ewer to do automatic retweeting of your older posts. Just make sure you are not retweeting outdated content.
Also, make sure to make the most of social media management tools like HootSuite. +Mike Allton has the post resources on how to make the most of HootSuite:
Everything You Need To Be Successful With HootSuite – TheSocialMediaHat.com
Don’t just publish a link to your post.
It won’t help your Facebook EdgeRank, few of your fans will see the update, and even fewer will care.
Schedule at least 3 updates focusing on different aspects of the post.
- Ask a question; link to the post with an answer.
- Upload an image from the post.
- Upload a video from the post.
- Post a comment with food for thought.
- Give your fans a challenge.
For instance, this is what I’d do for my Marketing Skinny posts:
Google+
Assuming that you have both personal profile and a business page (and you should), post the update on one of them (I usually do it on my business page); then find that update on your personal profile and share it there.
Just like this:
Result:
This way you cross-promote your personal profile and business page, PLUS your post gets shared twice.
I also share separate aspects of a post via different updates like I explained in the Facebook section above.
Pin all the images from the post.
Chances are you’ve got more than one Pinterest board.
So here’s what you do:
- Pin the image to the most relevant board.
- After the image is pinned, repin it to any other relevant boards.
Images are not the only thing you can share on Pinterest; remember to share your videos there as well.
Quick Tip: when pinning a YouTube video, the pin will be automatically linked to the video url on YouTube.
For added visibility/promotion, make sure to add your post url in the pin description.
The same goes for Slideshare presentations.
Additional image ideas:
- create a new image with your post title embedded;
- create images of some of the post comments, pin them.
An easy tool for that: ShareAsImage.com (formerly PinAQuote). Their free version works just fine; the Pro version is only $6.99. All you do is drag their bookmarklet into your bookmark bar, highlight anything you want to turn into an image, and click on the bookmarklet.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create images with ShareAsImage, as well as some ideas on how to use it to get more traffic back to your blog:
Step 4. Promote Blog Post through Social Bookmarking Sites
Before I go any further, it’s important to address the effect social bookmarking may/may not have on your SEO efforts.
Side Note: Social Bookmarking in the post-Penguin World
Years ago, social bookmarking was about getting your content bookmarked on every possible sites regardless of quality or relevancy.
Of course, since Google Penguin introduction and Google’s latest quality guidelines, that way of thinking is (hopefully) long gone.
To get the results you want and avoid putting your website at greater risk, I recommend to keep the following in mind when using social bookmarking sites:
- Find quality bookmaking sites relevant to your industry, products and target audience;
- Create complete profiles when setting up your account as you would with Facebook, Twitter or Google+;
- Stop using automated Social Bookmarking tools;
- Don’t just promote your own content – bookmark content that will help other users;
- Be active – re-share other’s content, engage with people, ask questions and post comments.
Learn more about social bookmarking the right way:
Can you still drive traffic from social bookmarking sites?
Yes, IF you put due effort into it.
I find it that it’s much easier to “break into” social bookmarking communities for new bloggers than to establish a meaningful presence on a site like Google+ let’s say.
If time is an issue though and you really don’t feel like you can truly become an active member of a community, I’d suggest you direct your efforts to a channel that would have a bigger potential traffic return with the same amount of effort.
The three sites that I use to promote Traffic Generation Café are:
- BlogEngage.com;
- BizSugar.com;
- Blokube.com.
There are plenty more, of course – as mentioned before, you need to find social bookmarking sites that resonate with your industry the best.
To find such communities, check out:
50+ Social Bookmarking Sites – SearchEngineJournal.com
Step 5. Give Other Bloggers a Reason to Promote YOUR Blog
Chances are you pretty regularly mention other bloggers in your posts.
If you don’t, you most definitely should – great for relationship marketing.
Many bloggers I know make a mistake of relying on WordPress pingbacks to let those bloggers know that they linked out to them.
Don’t. Let them know personally.
As a result of my simple request, +Rebekah Radice kindly shared my post with her Google+ circles, which of course, resulted in more shares, comments, and plus ones for the post. Thanks, Rebekah!
Email them. Send them a tweet. Post the link on their FB page.
Once they know you mentioned them in your post, they are very likely to share the post with their followers, come by and comment, and might even return the favor in the future.
Side note: It really helps to know which social media networks the bloggers you mention prefer.
It’s much more beneficial and public to send a tweet or post the link to their FB page – you gain even more exposure that way.
However, if they don’t like Twitter or barely ever check their Facebook timeline, then your effort will be down the drain.
Step 6. Leverage Content Curation Sites
Content curation sites allow you to collect, organize, and publish information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest.
Examples:
Tutorials to help you:
How To Curate Content and Build Authority With Scoop.it – BasicBlogTips.com
A Flipboard Magazine Is Content Curation Made Beautiful – Virante.org
4 Steps to Promote Your Blog: for Evergreen Posts
Once again, follow the steps above to promote ALL blog posts you publish.
Make it a habit. Come up with a system to help you do it more efficiently.
It shouldn’t take more than 15-20 minutes to spread the news.
Is my strategy to promote my blog posts any different for my pillar evergreen content?
You bet.
That’s when I go a few steps further to ensure I do everything I can for the post to go viral or rank well on Google.
Step 7. Promote Your Blog Post by Emailing Your List
I don’t usually email my list every time I publish a blog post. Far from it.
My email communications are generally reserved for more important stuff, like sending my free Bite-Size Traffic Hacks email series.
Unless I feel that a particular post deserves my email subscribers’ attention that is and my pillar evergreen content is one such exception.
When emailing your list about your blog posts, you ensure one or more of these things happen:
- you’ll get traffic to your blog post;
- you’ll get more social media shares (especially when you add sharing buttons directly to your email for those subscribers who don’t have the time to check the post at the moment, but don’t mind sharing it for you if you make it convenient enough);
- it’ll get mentioned in your subscribers’ blog posts = you get more links and exposure;
- a certain number of your email subscribers will unsubscribe or send your emails straight to spam, no matter how much value you provide.
Learn more about successful list building here:
Also, my email marketing autoresponder of choice and why:
Step 8. Promote Blog Post via Link Roundups
Speedlinking, roundups, mashups – all roads lead to posts that curate the best content on the web.
I’ve built strong relationships with several bloggers as a result of being included in their link roundups.
Of course, you can sit around and wait to be noticed and included in such roundups, or be proactive in approaching the bloggers who publish them – IF you have an exceptional post to share with them.
Ignore that last part and you might land on a “Ignore” list instead.
I’ve got a tutorial on the topic and a list of some blogs that do link roundups:
Step 9. Promote Blog Post through Internal Linking
Most bloggers never think about doing this, yet it’s the single simplest way to bring readers to your new posts, as well as get some love from the search engines.
And the best part is that fact that you are in complete control of this technique.
Internal linking. Linking from your blog post to… your blog posts.
Like you see me do as you read through this post.
I include the links to other posts that compliment what we are talking about here, you click on the links, and bingo! – those posts get more traffic.
But why not do it in reverse?
Why not go back to some of your most popular posts and add links to your newer content?
The best candidates for internal linking makeover:
- If you have a “Most Popular Posts” widget in your sidebar, refresh those posts every once so often.
As a matter of fact, make sure you rotate those posts, preferably each time you publish a new one, like this: Traffic Boosting “Duh” Idea to Keep Your Readers Reading.
- Posts that currently rank highly on Google.
- Posts with high PageRank – this one won’t help you much with traffic, but it might give your SEO a boost.
Step 10. Publish Related Posts on Other blogs
Next: I write posts based on my evergreen post – they are shorter, more concise, and each addresses a specific point I discuss in the original post; sort of like articles, if you will, just a lot more useful.
There are several places you can submit these related posts to; for instance:
- BlogHer.com,
- Business2Community.com,
- EvanCarmichael.com,
- the new LinkedIn Publishing Platform (+Neal Schaffer explains how to do it here).
IF you write them well enough (remember you are putting your name to these posts; they’d better be good!), they can be published as guest posts as well.
Bonus Step: Leverage Your Blog Post Across the Web
My content leverage system deserves a special point here.
It’s actually not mine at all; it’s used by all top marketers in some shape or form.
The idea behind it is leveraging the content you’ve already written to get you more web traffic instead of constantly producing more and more new content.
I’ve been using the system successfully for several months now and have seen a lot of incredible results. Just take a look at this post:
Yes, it takes time. But constantly creating more content takes more time, plus doesn’t produce nearly as good results as leveraging tremendous amounts of traffic third-party sites like YouTube, Slideshare, Google+, etc can bring you.
Learn more about better leveraging your existing content here:
How to Promote Your Blog: My Trump Card
I am pretty good with blog promotion. Traffic Generation Café shows it, doesn’t it?
However, I am nothing close to what Kristi Hines of Kikolani.com knows about it. Most of what I know, I know because of her Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide.
Here’s what I thought of her course:
Once again, I strongly suggest you do the same:
==> Blog Post Promotion: The Ultimate Guide
How to Promote Your Blog Marketing Takeaway
Blog promotion never ends – whether your blog is brand new or well-established like Traffic Generation Café.
You might as well get really good at it NOW instead of blogging for a year without any readers to speak of wondering what you are doing wrong.
Have fun promoting your next blog post,
Hi Ana
Thank for you article, it is so amazing, i am a newbie internet maketter with product lauch, and i think this is helpful for my. but i think we must use our domain for instead of bit.ly to promte, because it make many people know out website.
You are absolutely right, Tony – using your domain name carries more authority and is the best practice overall.
However, there will be times when shorter is better. That’s when your personal reputation comes in. If your readers/followers know and trust you (since you’ve done nothing but help them, right?), they’ll trust a link from you even when it’s bit.ly. You know what I mean?
Wow, Ana, this is awesome; goes on for ever 🙂 , the positive side of info-overload!
As you may have deduced from my previous comments, I am collating information for my blogging strategy, and my first thought was that the information you give us in this post would complement what I already have. On the contrary, your content and that of another blogger who graces your pages is forming the backbone of my resource folder. Have only read the first few points and scanned through it so far, so need to read, digest, and internalize it. Thanks!
So honored, Ian!!!
I am actually working on revamping this post to reflect the changes in my promotion strategy; hopefully will go live in the next couple of weeks.
Ana, thank you for these tips. I’m just starting out and feel lost some (most!) of the time. I have definitely learned that blog promotion is almost as important as the blog itself!
I certainly know how you feel, Matt – believe it or not, with all the changes we have to constantly adapt to, feeling lost never completely goes away. ? ?
You write a post and you are done. On the other hand, blog post promotion never ends!
Hi Anna,
amazing Content – I have bookmarked your site and will try to add your Promotion steps!
However, promoting Content to German sites is different – I will try and make it usable for the German market!
Thank you for sharing this Information – I will include you in one of my Posts in the future as well!
Absolutely, Simone – we all have to adjust what we learn to our respective markets.
Thanks for coming by, honored you found Traffic Generation Café useful.
Hi Simone,
I am running a startup Edu4Sure.com (Which is an Educational blog and very new) & have been fan of Ana’s content.
Just wondering how promoting content to German sites is different.
We have plans to write blogs on Study Abroad so wondering how promoting content to german is different.
Hey Ana,
Well, I’m really late getting by here to read this post although I’ve had it bookmarked for months. My best friend passed away at the end of July so I was pretty useless for a couple months. But I did want to make it by and check out what you do.
Okay, I USE to post to Blog Engage, Blokube, BlogInteract and Tumblr religiously with absolutely no luck whatsoever so I quit. I mean I don’t have to tell you that when you try a certain thing for months and months and get no results then obviously that doesn’t work and you move on to what does. Would you agree or not?
I’ve never signed up with BizSugar for this very reason. I also heard that Google devalued all blogging networks so I was assuming that had something to do with it toward the end. Although I’m more about the relationships I can build I didn’t find a lot of people very interactive there. What a shame.
I don’t claim to do all that you do of course but I do quite a bit. I see where I definitely have some room for improvement so I’m going to give this a shot. Some of it at least that I know I can be doing much better in. My traffic and comments are great but they can always be better.
By the way, Ian did a wonderful job with your theme. Very nice and very impressive. Great job and thanks for putting all this time into this post. Glad I finally was able to stop by.
Hope you’re enjoying your week.
~Adrienne
Want to add more , of course social media is the key for ultimate blog promotion but not everything , There are other ways too like going behind the scenes i mean sharply monitoring the promotion strategy of successful bloggers like Neil Patel and Tyler Cruz. They even focus on their design too like adding their own image in logo, comment author and many more. And your tips completely adds value to my knowledge. Nice written article.
Good points, Rohan.
Ana, your tweet button at the end of this post doesn’t work. I had to use the one at the top. Just FYI. The same for your other posts. Broken, so please fix! Thanks!
I see that it’s fixed now. Thanks! 🙂
When I saw the article title, I thought, it’s another 300words newbie blogger, boy I was wrong! Spent almost an hour reading this article and I wish I have read it months ago! I learned a lot of new stuffs here, I will be implementing them and let you know as I progress. Thanks for being kind in letting the cat out of the bag.
Glad you gave it a shot.
Ana, this post is absolutely epic! Thank you so much. This post alone is so valuable you could turn it into it’s own mini ebook.
🙂
“takes a bow” – thank you, Jonathan.
I just found your site and this was the 2nd post I read. It is full of excellent tips, I will be back. I did know most of this information, but I did ind some new bits such as creating the mind map of the post and the image hacks.
Welcome, Jim!
Love your “Aesthetic Pruner” self-description. 🙂
Hi Ana,
Thanks for the great information. I already implement a lot of these strategies but there are many that I hadn’t heard about or hadn’t considered.
I especially like the point about social media sharing buttons. I hadn’t considered putting them both before AND after my posts. When you think about it it makes sense as, so long as they’re not obtrusive or detrimental to your site performance, just like any type of CTA you want to give your readers as many opportunities as possible.
Also it made me reconsider which social media buttons I should have on my site. Currently I use a plugin that displays most of the social media buttons but I have to ask myself, how many of them are really getting used? I’m going to go right now into my WP dashboard and see what adjustments I can make 🙂
Kind regards,
Glenn
You are very welcome, Glenn, and yes, there’s been a lot of research done about social media button placement, and having them both at the top and the bottom of posts help sharing quite a bit.
I’d say for a blog like yours I’d stick with what I have at Traffic Generation Café: Twitter, FB, and G+. Possibly Buffer. Stay away from Digg, Delicious, etc; you won’t get much out of them other than negative social proof.
Wow, this is exactly what I was looking for Ana, thank you so much! I now have a ton of new blog promotion strategies to implement 🙂
You are so welcome, Tehmina; promote away!
By the way, loved your site design.
Hi Ana
This post has wowed me so much! not surprised though, you’re just the best! I’ll b sure to put that infographic on my desktop as a check list, it will come very handy for my coming soon blog.
MMMMhhhh loving the new design, I smell and see coffee every where! It’s very beautiful Ana.
Oh, There is something wrong with the plugin you’re using, the one that “redirects” links to external web pages. It is causing a page not found error on all links outside your blog. I also saw your cute 404 error page, love the spilling coffee 🙂
Nice work, wishing you nothing but success Mrs Hoffman.
Much appreciated, Siya!
Thanks for letting me know about 404s – I guess I really wanted everyone to appreciate my new 404 page… Kidding! Will fix it.
Have you ever looked at what “Flare” does to your on-page SEO. I installed it, made a blog post, and then checked the word density of my post using SEO Quake. Flare added so much garbage text to the post that my page was no longer optimized for what I intended it to be. I switched to WP Jetpack Share and all garbage text was gone.
Anybody experience/have any thoughts on this?
Ryan
I never checked, Ryan, but there were plenty of other features that I didn’t like, so I took it down at Traffic Generation Café. Thanks for letting us know though; I’ll keep it in mind.
Hi Anna and thanks for the list. What wordpress plugin do you suggest to add social media sharing on top and at the end of your post? Would really appreciate!
There are so many of them and they all do the same thing, Stefano. Mine are hard coded into the theme, but the ones I’ve used in the past are DiggDigg and Flare.
but if you are in affiliate marketing then we know that the people coming through search engines are the most valuable to your website. thus not attending all these steps you have mentioned here in this list and i am sure if any one of us, will follow all these steps traffic is bound to come on his/her blog. but i am also very sure the traffic which is coming through social media and other sources are not forever. That type of traffic dried very soon, only the traffic coming to your site through search engine remains forever. Am i right anna? Waiting for your kind response
You are right, Rakesh – some of the best traffic you can get to affiliate reviews, for instance, would come from the search engines.
However, all these steps, even though they are indeed more social media/networking oriented, will still boost your SEO standing since social is becoming a much bigger player in SEO rankings.
So these steps will have a long-term SEO affect, as well as might bring in some short-term referral traffic.
Great stuff as usual Ana and loving the new design.. Way faster. Have to admit that you got that “blog promotion” steps way under control. I think what’s missing on my end is to get “organized”, lol. Liked the process on using “evernote”..
OFF, topic. How did you go about “moving” your SEO meta data from Thesis to Genesis? Plugin?
Thanks, Francisco.
I believe Ian used SEO Data Transporter to transfer my SEO details.
Ana, you are correct. I did use a plugin called SEO Data Transporter and it is available in the WP plugin depository. While it doesn’t work for all plugins/themes, it will work for many of the most popular ones and it is very easy to use.
Thanks, Ian.
This is my NEW, very FAVORITE “Ana” post!
This one actually takes the reader by the hand (this is especially true if we go and look at the associated video at http://youtu.be/ZgCdGza7mI4 ) and walks through the steps of an incredibly effective, yet simple process.
I was in the middle of creating a checklist/cheat sheet like this for myself, but I’m tossin’ most of my ideas and just replacing them with this PROVEN checklist.
Score another epic post for traffic generation. Ana, I may even do a case study of how my traffic increases after 30 days of doing this. I CERTAINLY will be doing a feature post.
Whew. Sorry to write ya novel. Time to sip some of that coffee you inspired me to make with yer silly coffee-cat post… and get to work.
Keep Stepping,
Kurt
I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to see you do a study like that, Kurt. If you mentioned me enough times, I’ll include it into my free web traffic report to prove my points. 🙂
You’re ON! I’ll make a detailed report of how I used your method, mention the “ish” out of where I got the tips, tricks, techniques, and track the impact it makes on this blog (Shoestring101) and another that’s already solidly established. Shall we agree on a start/end date? I’m rarin’ ta go NOW…
Keep Stepping,
Kurt
Sure, Kurt; since you’ll be doing all the work, I think it’s only fair that you set the rules. lol
I think you should give it at least 2-4 weeks to see the results; would you agree?
How ’bout both?
I’ll track the results and letcha know how it goes after 2 weeks AND 4 weeks.
I’ll start on Monday. It’ll take me that long to come up with one post each for Shoestring101 and RadioActive Trading.
I will post 2-3 times a week in each, use YOUR promotion checklist and see where the chips fall.
This is exciting! Off to the drawing board, gotta outline my post ideas now.
Keep Stepping,
Kurt
Sounds good, Kurt; look forward to hearing from you.
Not sure what you mean by bookmarks. Reddit is often called a bookmarking site. what about Digg? Do you cinder Digg bookmarking?
I have those buttons on my blog posts + Pocket, Pinterest, LinkedIN, Facebook,twitter,Google+’StumbleUpon, Tumblr. Those are the buttons WordPress offers.
Your article is interesting and helpful. I manually share my blog posts as well and always want to learn new ways to share and promote posts.
I’ve mentioned the word “bookmarks” in a couple of different places, Marie; not sure which one you are referring to.
Generally, I meant the bookmarks you add to your browser.
I can see all the extra sharing options after your posts; in my opinion, you should get rid of some like I recommended in the post.
Anna – this is a really helpful checklist – thank you for sharing your personal tips.
A suggestion I would make in terms of using Pinterest is to schedule the re-pinning of your article to your own boards and Group boards that you participate in so that you get advantage of traffic over time and also so that you do not fill the feed with re-posts of your own content which may result in some people unfollowing you.
I’ve never heard of scheduling re-pinning, Krishna; how?
Anna – if you are going to share your blog post to different boards and want to use a scheduling tool there are several paid tools and enterprise solutions available. If you are looking for a free tool then you can check out Gopixel.me or Repin.ly. Then you can schedule the same post to be sent to different boards over time.
I have not come across scheduling tool yet for re-pinning a post you have already pinned so in that case I suggest that you keep a record of when you pin originally and then the dates and times and the board you plan to repin your own content.
I hope this helps.
Thanks for the tips, Krishna!
What a great list of resources. Thank Ana. I have just signed up to Blogher and I am looking at the Shareimage site. Love that you can create quote images so easily.
Good to see you in the videos too. This was a first for me. I have only seen the slideshow presentations previous.
Thanks again 🙂
You are so welcome, Victoria; thanks for coming by.
I am not too comfortable in front of camera, but I’m trying.
An excellent guide on promoting blog posts! I finally learned after 2 years that I need to spend more time on promotion (Thanks to Derek Halpren & Chris Brogan). I am seeing the differences, but my promotion strategy is not nearly what you have laid out.
This post will be a great guide when I publish my next post. Again, thank you for this!
Yes, indeed: promotion is that important.
As a matter of fact, one of suggestions I’d make for newer bloggers is to spend less time writing and more time promoting.
Lot of good stuff, very thorough, but I think it still boils down to your social and search status that determines the results of the promotion. Everyone is promoting their articles and blogs, but not everyone is getting the same results. People that have built their following or had luck with SEO are the one’s that are really going to benefit from the promotion.
I’m not trying to take anything away from this post, it’s a good one, and things that I do everyday, but it all comes down to results. As you said, even new bloggers are promoting, but are they getting the results? Write about that and you will have really helped someone, lol, how to get the results you get in traffic.
You are very right, Wade – not everyone will get the same results.
However, I started doing this kind of post promotion back when no one had ever heard of Traffic Generation Café. Sure I got much fewer shares, responses, less traffic, etc. But each time I shared a post, I got more and more engagement, which eventually grew to where this blog is today.
The important thing is start. Then continue. Then persist. Then be amazed at how much your business had grown in the past month/year.
Fantastic as usual, Ana!
For #1, where or how can you find relevant sites to promote your posts (e.g. BizSugar) within your industry?
Sites like BizSugar and others are very multi-faceted, Kimberley; I am sure your writing tips would be much appreciated there.
Other than that, I’d look up some groups in your niche, like on Facebook and see what communities they are using.
Thanks, Ana! I’ll do a little more research and see what I can find. 🙂
Wow! You got everything covered here, Oksana.
I like your idea about using post summaries for web 2.0 sites. I have lots and lots of these supporting mini-sites, but I still don’t have Tumblr (no idea why). I guess it’s time to create one.
Never heard about blogher.com. Is that a relatively new service?
Is this all you do for your new posts?
Also.. I wanted to ask something. I saw this article on bizsugar.com. Do you know why none of my articles are published there? Does it take a lot of time, or mods are very picky about new submissions?
And thank you for the post!
Best wishes,
Aleksey
Thanks, Aleksey.
I do a lot of promotion for all supporting content I add to a post. For instance, when I add a video to a post, I promote that video the same way I promote the blog post itself with links back to both the video and the post. That way I get a lot more promotion without constantly promoting the post itself.
I’ve never had trouble with Bizsugar, so don’t know what to tell you. If you want to find out, it’s best to contact them directly.
As a matter of fact, I just submitted one of your posts and it was published without a glitch: http://www.bizsugar.com/Marketing/is-your-online-marketing-business-mobile-friendly-what-are-your-options/
I see.
Thank you very much, Oksana! I really appreciate it. I will return the favor! 🙂
Looks like something is definitely wrong, I’ll contact their support.
Thanks again.
Best wishes,
Aleksey
Always my pleasure, Aleksey!
Hi Ana,
Awesome post indeed 🙂
I’ve bookmarked it because I WOULD be linking this post for sure to my blogging series that I recently started on my blog as it’s got everything you need to promote your blog anyone would want to know!
I think I am doing most of what you mentioned, so I won’t go into those details, but I still need to start working on videos, podcasts, slideshares, which are all on my to-do list – I just hope I can make the time for them now.
Loved the post, and I think I read it twice already, and now I need to share it ALL over 🙂
Thanks for sharing this with us. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Always appreciate it, Harleena; if you think of anything I should add to the post, let me know!
Ana
This post is gold to any up-and-coming blogger, who’s scratching their head trying to work out how to get the word out.
Love the phrase ‘time hack’. And here’s another one:
You know when you’re doing all that copying and pasting of your blog vitals. It’s such a bind. So I’ve just found a new way that saves me so much time it’s untrue.
What I’ve done is to download a little Mac OS application called ClipMenu. Then what I did was to save all my essential details (such as previous post titles and URLs, Twitter handle, name, email address, hashtags and so on) as snippets.
Then when you want to paste something somewhere, such as your latest blog title, you simply select the snippet you want from a dropdown menu.
There are quite a few different clip managers around, but ClipMenu is not only free but works a charm.
Thanks for the thumbs up, Kevin.
I can see why you like ClipMenu; I use TextExpander for Mac for similar tasks. I can actually compose long sentences I use over and over again, ebook titles, like my free ebook (I’d kill myself if I had to type it over and over again!), even email responses I have to send often.
For this particular task though, for me personally it’s much easier to click Command + V over a drop-down menu. Love it that you have your own time hacks!
Yeah, Ana, we should always be on the lookout for ways to improve, save time or make our efforts go further. And TextExpander looks good I gotta say.
One other thing – I noticed that you usually tweet posts 3 times. I usually only tweet the once – because I don’t like followers getting the same thing repeated.
But when you think about it, most people only dip in and out of Twitter and only read a small proportion of messages in their feed. So, yep, 3 times over consecutive days makes far more sense.
Twitter is a bunch of white noise and most of your followers will miss your first tweet. I also change the text a bit each time I tweet it.
What a list Ana! You really have excelled yourself there. (Not that you don’t always publish very valuable content.) I always wonder how long it takes you to put these incredible posts together, and where you find the time to do all this promotion of them especially if you don’t have an assistant.
I am sure that if bloggers only did half of these they could see an increase in traffic.
You are right about the share buttons. You really don’t want them to be obtusive. I hate the ones that cover part of the left side of the page so you have to find the little cross to close it down before you can read the post.
Would love to post your infographic on my blog. You have suggested it for some others you have posted and given the embed code. I don’t see any mention of it here. Let me know. Thanks Sandy
It takes a while to write a post, Sandy, plus it takes even longer to produce all the supporting content, like images, infographics, plus I am putting together a video and an audio for the post at the moment.
All in all, an average post takes me 8-10 hours to put together; a post that’s above average takes twice as long. lol
Thanks for the reminder; I totally forgot to add the embed code for the cheat sheet. If you come back to the post (and I hope you will), you’ll find it under the image.
Thanks Ana, I will embed on my blog very soon.
Hey Ana,
The embed code for the infographic does not work for me. I tried to embed onmy blog and get the word How appearing. That’s all!
I have made sure I have all the code and tried it several times. Not sure what the problem is. Any ideas?
thanks
Sandy
Yes, Sandy – WP tends to mess up the embed code when I move from HTML to visual post editor. I am working on a permanent solution to this; will let you know as soon as I post it.
Thanks for the effort!
On the other hand (silly me!), I’ll just email it to you so that you don’t have to check back.