In order to have a constant flow of traffic to your blog, quality content is not enough. You need to promote your blog posts and make sure they are visible at every corner of the web where your potential reader hangs out.
Are you worried about how to share your content, the right way at the right places? Look no further because in today’s post, I will tell you where to promote your blog post after publishing them.
1. Social networking sites:
a) Facebook:
Facebook, as obvious holds the top spot of social sharing channels. It alone sends 25% of all social referral traffic to sites. Most bloggers assume that sharing a post on Facebook just after publishing is enough, but here are certain strategies you can use to double or even 3x the referral traffic from Facebook.
1. Facebook groups:
Create a separate blog group for your audience. Use this group for interacting with them. Providing tips and asking help from them and engaging in other ways. Now whenever you share a post in this group you can actually see traffic flow to your blog.
Create a separate blog group for your audience. Use this group for interacting with them. Providing tips and asking help from them and engaging in other ways. Now whenever you share a post in this group you can actually see traffic flow to your blog.
There are also groups that have highly dedicated members. Just perform a search using “your niche keyword” + group on Facebook search bar. One such group for internet marketers is Pat Flynn’s.
2. Post Status updates that interest your audience:
On your profile, you can write a status announcing about your upcoming post and ask if your friends want to be tagged when the post is published.
This strategy alone drives a lot of anticipation amongst your audition and creates a scene where people wait for your posts.
It will naturally attract traffic when it gets published.
TIP: Use a URL shortener to measure the traffic Facebook sent you.
b) Twitter:
Twitter is a great source of traffic that can be utilized to promote your latest blog post. Here are some tips to make the most out of it.
- Use hashtags related to your niche
- Set up twitter cards for more conversions. Here’s how.
- Engage with influencers and your own followers.
- I have a detailed guide on twitter marketing.
c) Pinterest:
Pinterest is the visual social bookmarking site that can be useful if you have good graphics. Try to promote your pins on Pinterest with proper hashtags. Pinterest group boards are a great way to drive referral traffic to your posts. Use this link to search the best group boards in your niche.
d) LinkedIn:
LinkedIn users are professionals who know what they want to see and read. Sharing your blog post on such a network can give you real targeted traffic. Use LinkedIn groups to share your posts to even more targeted audience.
e) Google plus:
One of the most underrated social networking sites, Google plus is a gem for online marketers. More than 90% of users who use Google plus are online marketers and bloggers. It is the second largest social networking site after Facebook. Google plus recently launched collections, which is said to be a competitor of Pinterest.
It would be foolish of us to not to mine this traffic source for our blog.
2. Email Newsletter:
Your email newsletter is probably the most important place where your loyal readers reside. If someone has signed into your newsletter it means he is actually interested in what you blog and wants to read more of it.
Sending them your published blog posts increases the chances of conversion and shares. Use Auto-responders like MailChimp or GetResponse to send broadcasts to your email subscribers.
3. Quora:
Quora, the question and answer network, is a great tool for showing your brand and authority. You can also use it to promote your blog posts. Quora has a meaningful influx of users (nearly 1.5 million per month) who know what they are looking for. Answering to questions asked by users in a valuable way and adding relevant links to your blog can get a more exposure.
As Quora users are quite dedicated, many marketers and bloggers also ask questions related to their upcoming posts to collect ideas. If you have a convincing answer to their question, you can also land chances of backlinks.
Here’s how to use Quora:
- Use the search bar to type find questions related to your keyword.
- Omit threads with large number of comments. (not compulsory but long threads have low chances of CTR)
- On relevant threads, write a compelling answer and link back to your blog.
- Include multimedia if necessary.
Every time you publish a blog post, make it a habit to answer questions related to your topic on Quora. Here is a more detailed guide to make the most of it.
4. Reddit:
Reddit is a place that can make and break a site. Make in the sense it can give you tons of traffic. Break in the sense it can send you so much traffic that will crash your site. Reddit has over 174 million unique visits per month and here is how to tap on this never-ending traffic resource.
- Set up your profile, a professional looking one.
- Try to remain active in threads related to your industry.
- Also, find some sub-reddits (reddit has nearly 8000 of them) that are really large. You can use meta-reddit to keep a track of the best sub-reddits.
- Try to study how these reddits work. Are they allowing promotional content? Or how is the tone of the users there.
- Post your blog post with some fitting intro to it.
- Bonus: Read my guide to do Keyword Research using Reddit.
5. Slideshare:
Slideshare is the visual content marketing platform that happens to enjoy almost 60 million visitors per month. You can use this traffic volcano to warm up your blog by simply posting your blog post as a slide or PowerPoint PPT on it. Here are some tips to make the most of SlideShare each time you publish your blog post.
- Use images that stand out.
- Having less, but clear text on each slide binds up the user to your slide.
- Insert a link back (to the post you are promoting) in the last slide of your presentation.
- Here is how to grow your SlideShare traffic from 0 to 243K views in 30 days.
6. Youtube:
YouTube is like the video galaxy of the universe. Ironically, it is the second largest search engine after Google with over 5 billion searches per month. This is enough to get you share your content on this video platform.
The secret here is you don’t have to be a video maker or any multimedia course graduate to drive visits to your latest posts using YouTube. All you need is to be creative and use good visuals to create a presentation using PowerPoint. You can also convert your existing SlideShare ppt into video using PowerPoint. This can be uploaded to YouTube with links to your blog post. This way you are using both SlideShare and YouTube on one go.
Other alternatives of YouTube are vine, vimeo and dailymotion.
7. LinkedIn Publishing:
The one reason I ignored LinkedIn publishing in the social media section is this is not social media but a separate platform similar to blogging.
In LinkedIn publishing platform, you can write a separate blog post related to your just-published post and link it. You can also republish your recent post on LinkedIn with minor changes. Here are some tips from Gregory Ciotti who has been quite successful in the platform.
8. Link Round-ups:
Link round ups are when bloggers collect the best posts in their field and publish a weekly or bi-monthly post featuring them. This is very useful since the publisher doesn’t have to take extra efforts to create a new post. Similarly, the audience also is benefitted by staying on the top news and best resources that week.
You can however, use this strategy to promote your newly published post by emailing the publishers of these round ups. If you have a content worthy of linking back, they will surely feature your post. Link roundups benefit you by giving backlinks to your newly published posts an also giving it huge exposure.
Here is a list of over 60 blogs conducting round-ups that you can use to promote your post and get traffic.
9. Outreach:
Outreach is probably the best method to get influencers and other bloggers share your blog content. Additionally this can bring you backlinks that are valuable. Whenever you write a post, try to include quotes by famous bloggers or link to relevant content of authority bloggers.
After the publishing of the post, give them a heads up that you have mentioned them in your post. This process is also called ego baiting. Most (if not all), will respond to your message and either share your content across their social channels or link to your blog posts too.
I have gotten a few backlinks from trafficgenerationcafe.com using this trick. The traffic and exposure is a definite bonus.
You can also contact other bloggers to link to your blog post. Here is how I got a link from Swadhin Agrawal just after I published my post on image optimization. I contacted him and asked him to include my post on his post about increasing Google rankings and he instantly did so.
Why did I get success?
- It’s because I had built a relationship with him regarding our blogging.
- I suggested him a post that was valuable.
10. Social bookmarking sites:
Social bookmarking sites have never gone out of the scene. These are useful for getting more eyeballs on your recent posts. Some of the most popular social bookmarking sites are:
- Digg
- DoSplash
- Kingged
- Inbound
- Bizsugar
- BlogEngage