How To Promote Your Blog In Four Easy Steps

You've created or revived your blog. Now it's time to focus on promotion. Blog promotion is the process of actively marketing your blog content to increase its visibility and attract a larger audience. While "promotion" can have a negative connotation for some, modern blog promotion is about authentic engagement, not outdated sales tactics. This guide covers how to promote your blog effectively. What follows are four simple ways to promote your fledgling (or well-established) blog without feeling like you've sold your soul.

Before we begin, a note on assumptions. We're assuming you're already creating exceptional, relevant, and engaging content for your audience. That means we also assume you know your audience and are targeting your content for them. People want to read your content because it helps them in some way. For example, if you write a DIY blog, your content is about rebuilding a sagging shelf. Or, if you write about health and wellness, your readers know they'll find tips on staying in shape or keeping their stress levels down.

We'll be covering some of this momentarily, so don't worry if one of our assumptions missed the mark—we've got your back.

1. Create and nurture relationships.

Let's start big. This blog promotion strategy is proven, time-honored, and takes the long view. Face it: A blog is not a short-term entity. You didn't create this content to bring in big money next week and shut it down next month, right? If you did, you might want to consider other options.

This strategy can take several forms:

• Email outreach. Email outreach is a strategy to recruit influencers in your niche by cultivating a genuine relationship. This is not about cold-emailing, which is an intrusive practice. Instead, effective email outreach involves reading an influencer's content, leaving thoughtful comments on their blog, and then emailing them directly with a specific pitch (e.g., guest posts, a mention, or sharing your content with their followers).
• Social media conversations. Building a following on your chosen social media channels is critical for blog promotion. This involves sharing others' content, commenting on their posts, and responding to comments on your own content. Once a relationship is established, you can ask an influencer for a share or direct your followers to an ebook, collecting their contact information for future campaigns.

Make these interactions real, be your authentic self, and remember not just to comment but to comment with context. "Great post!" has no context and sounds disingenuous and flimsy. "Great post! I especially love how you invoke Thoreau when you say…" This thought-provoking comment shows that you read and truly digested the piece and are now looking to start a conversation with the author. These comments create a lasting impression on the creator and ensure they'll remember you when/if you come to them with an ask.

This blog promotion strategy has the potential to pay off BIG TIME. Once you're a known entity, you can ask favors of other creators and position yourself as a new expert on your topic. This means followers will start sharing your content with their followers/friends, expanding your reach organically.

2) Create visual content.

Humans are visual creatures; take advantage of that fact in your blog promotion.

Creating infographics and other eye-catching images and graphics allows you to convey information on your topic or niche in unique ways that can draw more eyes to your other content. These new eyes will be folks who may not generally read longer pieces without knowing more about the author, or they may be new to your niche and searching the web for new content sources. Your catchy graphics are the eye candy that can lead them to find the rest of your content and become dedicated readers.

Bonus: You can reuse this content over and over and over without it losing its power. Let's say your blog covers the world of tabletop gaming. That market is taking off right now, so it's likely to be pretty crowded. Create a colorful infographic with your top 5 entry-level games, with summaries and a great image of each character.

Now, you can blast that out over your social channels, using relevant hashtags to attract those who would benefit from seeing it and linking it back to a longer piece you wrote a while ago that covers these five games in more detail. Then, in a month or so, you can use the same graphic for your email newsletter, encouraging your readers to invite their newbie friends to give you a follow. And then, in 3 months, you can use the same graphic for a content page where visitors can click through to request the ebook you just finished that outlines all the beautiful ways tabletop gaming brings joy and peace to the world. That last part might be wishful thinking on our part, but you get the idea.

These sorts of graphics are so helpful. As long as you have great evergreen content you can link to, it can be used repeatedly for varying campaigns and promotions throughout the life of your blog.

3) Do your research.

Thorough research may not seem like a direct blog promotion tactic, but it is a foundational one. How can you target influencers if you don't know who your content should target? How can you set up a PPC campaign (pay-per-click or banner ads) if you don't know your audience? Research is a critical step in the blog promotion machine, with several key aspects:

• Audience research. This research identifies who will benefit most from reading your content and whether there are untapped demographics you could reach.
• Keyword research. This is the process of discovering the search terms your target audience uses on search engines like Google. Keyword research allows you to tailor your content to match those queries, creating SEO value that helps your pages rank higher for chosen keywords.

The key to remember here is that without a firm research foundation, a solid idea of your target audience, and a plan to incorporate the keywords you need to find that audience for your blog—all of your other blog promotion efforts will be wasted. You need good content for things to work.

Content marketing is the process of creating relevant, informative content and distributing it to the people who need it most. To succeed in content marketing and promote your blog, you must do your research.

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4) Be social.

Admit it, you saw this one coming.

Don't worry, we won't inundate you right now... that's for another post on another day. For the purpose of blog promotion, you need to know that social media is here to stay and is an extremely powerful way to extend your reach and promote your content.

Posting is easy with the myriad of automation tools that exist. You can line up your content to be posted on a regular schedule. Then, using a platform like Buffer or Hootsuite, you can repost this content to your chosen social media channels. You can even schedule to repost these items several times over the first day or two, increasing your reach and promoting your content even further.

What you need to remember in all this automation is to be present. You want to interact in real-time with your followers. Should someone share your new content, you want to thank them for that same day to stay fresh and relevant in their minds.

Mutual promotion matters, so along with these tips, remember to like and share other creators' content relevant to your audience. This will expand your reach, improve your relationships, and multiply the impact of your blog promotion activities.