Back to Rick Strater as we continue our Blogging Basics Series. And, since he’s the Co-Creator of 12 Minute Marketing, good enough time to talk about Promoting Your Blog.
Marketing Your Blog – Promotional Basics
Marketing your blog is actually easier than marketing a static website. This is partly due to the structural nature of the blog, and partly due to the fact that there are more promotional opportunities available than for static websites.
There are many marketing options you can explore – and then you simply decide what works best for you, and stick to it:
Guest Posting
This is the process of placing articles on other blogs with a link back to yours. Probably one of the most effective ways of driving visitors to your site, placing guest posts will allow you to be seen on blogs that are quite busy, allowing you to cash in on their authority that has already been established.
It is a very simple, yet effective technique that can – depending on the blog where you place the post – drive large numbers of visitors to your blog.
You can also find ezines related to your blog’s niche, and offer to write articles for them in return for the exposure. This way you will also be able to cash in on the reputation of the ezine publisher, and the relationship that he or she has with his or her list of subscribers. Same idea, different medium.
RSS Automation
This is where you submit your blog’s RSS feed to your Facebook and Twitter accounts for instant exposure to your followers and friends. This can easily be accomplished by using a service called “Twitterfeed“. Additionally, you can submit it to Feedburner – a service from Google that will re-distribute your blog’s feed to a number of different destinations.
Social Marketing
This is often marketing on forums and social groups – by contributing value to any conversation, it is possible to showcase your expertise to people and by extension lure many of them into exploring your blog. Don’t just leave a comment and move on, but become involved in the conversation. The more you do, the more opportunities you will have of being noticed, and attracting people to your blog.
Blog Commenting
Placing comments on other blogs can be effective – or not – depending on how busy the blog is, and how soon after the actual post you can place your comment. The sooner you comment, the better the chance that it will be seen by a lot of people, some of which will translate into visitors.
Don’t waste your time commenting on blogs that have very little commenting action… you want to see a minimum of at least a couple comments on any given post before adding that blog to your commenting schedule – or you’ll see very little traffic from it.
Warning
Don’t even think about using traffic exchanges. These are frequented by people simply looking for more traffic to their websites, or opportunities to make more money. If your blog targets any of these, create a simple landing page, and funnel them from there. Most people using traffic exchanges do not really want to work hard to view any page – they just want to run up some credits and get some traffic of their own. Really a colossal waste of time in my book!
There are many more options you can explore however – like videos, distributing documents, etc. Depending on the niche of your blog, some techniques will work better than others. You will simply have to experiment and keep the ones that work for you, throw out all the rest.
At the end of the day, it’s all about effort versus reward and taking daily actions to promote your blog.
So how will you market your blog today?
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