How to Promote Your Blog

By Joe Cunningham, Internet Marketing Manager
10/10/2013

Since we (I) have started blogging every day at Cowley, we’ve noticed a huge increase in traffic to the website by up to 500% with website conversions reaching a similar statistic.  I still have been promoting the blog in exactly the same way, just pumping more “blog” into the system.

I just wanted to share a few simple secrets as to how to promote your blog.  (This enhances my last post on “Blogging and Social Media.”)  Hopefully these tips aren’t that secret.

Secrets to Promoting Your Blog

These are just a few tricks I noticed helped us a lot.

LinkedIn Group Discussions

And you’re like, what?  First of all, you have to have a LinkedIn account.  Second, it helps to have a company page, if you are a company.  Thirdly, after you share your blog post on your company page and personal feed, click the “share” button and share it to groups.  That presupposes you are a member of LinkedIn groups.

If not, that’s an easy fix.  Search the available groups (I think right now there are 9.73426 billion ka-gillion of them in every imaginable category) and make sure to change your group settings to not receive a daily digest of all the discussions going on; unless, of course, you enjoy proverbially supplying the proverbial parakeet that lives inside your iPhone with more copy to proofread, if you know what I mean.

Make sure to title your group discussions as discussions, not: “Read this awesome, great, cool, radical blog post I just wrote!”  Change that to: “How to Promote Your Blog,” or “How Do You Promote Your Blog?” (better) to be more conversational.

You’ll be surprised how many people within these groups (often all over the world) will read and comment on your blog post.  And don’t just let it go: be active in their discussion to take it to the next level.  You will find you will spur on even more activity, learn something new, and maybe make new “friends.”

LinkedIn can be one of my top referral sites because of the “forum” feature.  So don’t knock it.

This presupposes you already post your stuff on Facebook, Twitter, etc.  Because that’s obvious.

The ConversationConversational Blogging

I suggested this while part of the “blogging” panel at the Social Media Breakfast Syracuse.  To “conversationally blog” you have to read other blogs that are in your blog’s genre.  Sooner or later, you will come upon a blog or comments feed that really interests you.  Either you have a post already written and published that fits into the conversation (“I totally agree…” “Actually, if you look at the statistics…”) or you can go write one up in answer to a query or to add to the subject.

Just don’t do it like those terrible SEO guys that write: “Hey check out my blog…” – when the last thing in the convo was: “But the J. J. Abrams version of Star Trek was definitely a solid reach to a younger, more hip generation.”  I know, right?  Everyone is like “what?”

Make Sure Your [Stuff] Is Good to Begin With

This is the pre-req of pre-req’s.  It’s safe to say that there are popular blogs out there that [are not great], but it’s probably more because they are well positioned to get retweeted by people who never read them.  They won’t last.  “Content is King,” as they say, in the internet world.  People will blow you off if you [stink] – plain and simple.  So do your homework, have something cool to say, and say it in a way that attracts people.  A good thing starts to market itself.  The iPhone for instance.

Talk About People

Here’s a best kept best practice.  If you interview, mentioned, link to, quote, etc. anybody – people are vain (there’s that song), especially me, and I love reading about myself.  Who doesn’t, really?  So you want to get retweets, comments, and likes?  Mentioned people and then let them know you did (use the “@” button, email them, etc.).  It’s magic.

(This is where I could just play the song Do You Believe in Magic?)

If a Tree Falls

I published my latest blog post “Integrity…” yesterday – because it was ready to go – but waited until this morning to promote it because I wanted to space out how many posts I promote at a time.  It was like a tree falling in the woods, though.  People usually don’t check back on our site for new posts, they like/follow us on social media and click through when they see something they like.

There is the off-chance that your blog’s RSS feed has been picked up by some random stranger and/or you have “followers” in the way that Blogger/Word Press and the like allow people to subscribe; but the point is, you don’t write online to not be heard.  Everybody knew that; everybody tries to promote their blog.  Hopefully these tips helped a little bit more in your efforts to do just that.

 

Feel free to add your own tips below.

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