How to Promote a Blog
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When I first decided I wanted to start blogging, I thought that I would write and take fun pictures relevant to my topic, and the masses would come. Funny notion, huh? I was a little naive at the amount of work it takes to actually put your content in front of the eyes of the people you want to see it. If you are new to blogging, chances are you are wondering what to do once you’ve hit that magic “publish” button and how to promote a blog.
I tend to get a lot of questions about this topic and this is a reappearing question asked in blogger forums, so I’m sharing the process I go through with each blog post. I’ve also created a checklist that will show you how to promote a blog and will hopefully give you a good visual (ie. checklist) to ensure you are doing all you can do to get your content in front of the masses. Afterall, you’ve done the hard work of creating an idea, writing, editing, proofreading, taking and editing photos, and all the techy things that go on in the background. We want to make sure all that hard work is put to good use!
This is part 3 of 5 of my Beginner Blogging Series. This how to promote a blog post contains affiliate links. All thoughts and opinions are my own. See our disclosure for more information.
- How to Start a Blog
- How to Monetize a Blog
- How to Promote A Blog
- Photography Gear for Bloggers
- Instagram Growth Tips
So let’s dive into today’s topic: How to Promote a Blog. I’ve divided this into two sections, things to do before you hit publish, and things to do after you publish because there are certain things necessary on the front end that will benefit your ability for your content to be seen on the backend.
BEFORE YOU PUBLISH A BLOG POST
OPTIMIZE YOUR POST (SEO)
You have to optimize your blog post in order for it to be seen organically, one of the keys to promoting your blog. That means utilizing the most common SEO best practices. You can find unlimited training on this subject, but here are a few things I do for each blog post that any beginner can implement:
Download the Yoast Plugin
Use a long-tail keyword
Meta title & meta description
Keyword use in photos (both in title and alt description)
Keyword in first paragraph and throughout text where possible
CONTENT
You can’t effectively promote a blog post that doesn’t have the fundamental elements of good content. Stay true to who you are, and your passions. Be authentic, but don’t be afraid to be bold about your topics or confident in your knowledge, research or expertise. Consider your audience, but don’t post for the sake of your audience. The audience that relates to you, will follow you and you will get the best response from those who relate to the real you! Also don’t get lost in comparing yourself to other bloggers, their blog content or their journey. I like to lovingly remind people to stay in their own lane (and I’ll happily stay in mine). If you keep these things in mind, blogging can be so much fun!
Questions to ask yourself: Do you have at least 500 words? Even better 1000 words? Have you proofread and then proofread again? I often still find mistakes after proofreading multiple times on multiple devices (there are likely mistakes in this post!). Did you include internal and external links? Are all of your links working? Did you leave a call to action in your last paragraph? Did you include a disclosure in a highly visible place before any affiliate or sponsored link in your post? Did you use appropriate categories and tags? Do you have small paragraphs and headings of major sections? I wish I had known this best practice in the beginning. I’m currently going back through 50 posts to work on this.
QUALITY PHOTOS
Are your photos high resolution, crisp and clear? Are they watermarked (not required but important for copyright protection)? Are your photos at least 500 pixels wide? Did you create an eye-catching high-quality vertical pin? A lot of seasoned bloggers will have multiple pins per blog post (a goal of mine for 2018). Did you select a featured image? My new system for photos is to place the first photo after the first paragraph to help with my SEO (also going back through 50 blog posts to fix this!)
AFTER YOU PUBLISH A BLOG POST
The three primary drivers of my traffic are Pinterest, SEO and StumbleUpon. My regular viewers and social media are the next largest sources. So let’s discuss a few things in detail.
I have a blog board called Maune Legacy Blog. I share my pin directly from my blog to my blog board on Pinterest. I then repin that pin to all of my personal boards where applicable. Next, I share to the Pinterest Collaborative Boards I’m on. A collaborative board is a group of bloggers who have created a group board to help repin each other’s content so that content can have more reach. In order to become a member of a collaborative board, you need to have an invite from the admin which usually involves following them as well.
And finally, I add my pin to Tailwind – a scheduling service. I add my pins daily and the service pins them on behalf of me at key pinning times throughout the day. I pay monthly for Tailwind and it’s worth every penny! This service has increased my followers (100 new followers in a few weeks and still growing), greatly increased my repins, and has also increased traffic to my site. I also love that it includes analytics so I can see how my pins are doing which can help me be more strategic with my content. For a free month of this service, see here.
SOCIAL MEDIA
After I’ve handled Pinterest, I then prepare to share on my other social media channels which include Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon. I also like to share my favorite blog post photo on Instagram directing my followers to see the link in my bio to read the latest post. I’ll also share in my Instagram Stories with a direct link (using the swipe up feature that is given to 10K+ accounts and verified accounts). The direct link is a great source of traffic to the blog. You can also share on BlogLovin and Google+. If you are in need of a scheduler for Twitter, TweetDeck and HootSuite are both great options. I’ll have more detailed information about utilizing each social platform in the future.
PAID PROMOTIONS
There are three ways to boost your posts through paid promotions on Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. You can post with as little as $5 and it can be a great source of traffic to your post. I love that you can micro-target depending on a lot of different variables like gender, shopping preferences, location, hobbies etc. I have a small budget each month to boost my blog posts and I like to make sure I have at least one post boost running weekly.
ENGAGE WITH YOUR READERS
Be sure to respond to comments, follow up on any emails or other questions you have gotten on your social media shares. Utilize services such as MailChimp to get your blog post delivered directly to your subscribers.
ENGAGE WITH OTHER BLOGGERS
There are endless support groups you can find depending on your niche. You can share your blog post in these forums and your posts can be read, repinned, and reshared. This generates great traffic each month and increases my reach as others share my posts. I’ve found the blogging community to be so inviting and supportive, so find your tribe, love them well and support each other!
I’ve created a handy one-page checklist you can download and print to use as a reference, this is a great tool for those that love to check the boxes, and for those who don’t love to check the boxes! Ha! Sometimes you just need a list to keep you on track! Just fill in the information in the box below and you’ll have access to my checklist and other printables I have coming your way!
I hope you found this how to promote a blog post helpful. If you have more tips to add, please share in the comments below so others can learn from your ways as well! If you missed part 1 or 2 of this series, be sure to check out How to Start a Blog and How to Monetize a Blog. I would love for you to pin this for other new bloggers!
Thank you so much for sharing this! I will definitely be using these tips. Xo
So glad you found this useful!
I’ve been blogging since 2006 and it’s a definitely a daily effort! Great tips and tricks here!
Yes consistency is a must!
I really love that you focused on what to do BEFORE publishing the post, and not just how to promote it after publishing. The bloggers I really respect create content that’s both well written and visually appealing. I know it’s SEO optimized, but it’s not obvious because they do remain true to themselves when they write. And they write about their passions and interests. There’s way too much poorly written or stilted content out there, and too many people on social media promoting posts you can tell were just written to make money. We need more quality content – like this post!
Well aren’t you the sweetest?!? Thank you for the affirming words!! I work so hard so comments like these make my day!!
Love all this thorough information! I use Pinterest to promote blog posts, too, but I usually don’t pin the same pin to a bunch of boards at once because I feel like it looks silly on my profile when there’s the same pin over and over. Am I totally overthinking this?!
I thought this too but a lot of people don’t scroll through their feed like they used to, Pinterest is more often used as a search engine. But if it’s a recipe, I’ll pin to my blog board and then to my recipe board, same for parties and motherhood or travel posts. So it’s really only 2-3 pins at once.
I am loving your blogging series Jennifer! So many useful tips in this post. Question for you…how do you watermark your photos? Thank you!
Thank you so much for this. So helpful. I am wondering how you find the collaborative boards on pinterest? I have found pinterest quite baffling so trying to work out how to proceed there. Thanks lots.
Are you a member of any blogger support groups on Facebook? I’m a member of several and I’ve found groups there!
These are great suggestions! I’m about to print this. I need your organizational skills on my side 🙂 Thanks so much!
Thank you! So glad you found this useful!
I’m new to blogging so this is very helpful for me! I don’t think I’ve ever heard of StumbleUpon but I will for sure be checking it out!
StumbleUpon has been great for my traffic! Just be sure you are linking similar posts in your post AND you have related posts featured at the bottom so you decrease your bounce rate! XO!
I’ve don’t know much about stumble upon so I’ll have to check out! Thanks for all the info!
SEO is the area that I can always use help in. I never really thought to pay for boosting my posts or anything. I might have to do that one good time.
SEO is so big, but so important!! Hopefully that will help bring more traffic to your site!
This is great! I haven’t done any paid promotions yet, but it sounds worth it!
It has certainly helped bring new eyes to my blog!
These are really great tips. What a helpful series for beginning bloggers to use! These are great I use some of these already and will add some to my to do list!
So glad you found a few new things to implement, I appreciate your kind words!
Thank you for sharing this. With my new adventure I decided to start this week, it will definitely benefit to know these tricks.
I wish you the best on your blogging journey!
These are great tips! I wish I would have known more about SEO when I first started!
Me too, I wish I would have studied it from the beginning!
Thanks for sharing these tips. They are really great one though they remind me how much goes into making a blog a success.
Haha, so true. Blogging is certainly hard work!
These are great tips! Excited for the rest of this series! thanks for doing this
Thank you for your kind words, so glad you are enjoying it!
This is so helpful for the new blogger! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you!
Really learned so much from this post. Thanks for sharing these useful tips.
So glad you did, thank you!
These are wonderful tips. If you have a chance, it would be great if you could describe a little more your list of techniques for SEO that you mentioned.
Sure! I’ll add a description next week!
I’ve been blogging for many years but I’m still drawn to these types of posts because I always seem to learn something new! Thanks for sharing!
So glad you learned something new, thank you!
Great tips. These are very helpful.
Thank you, so glad you thought so!
Such great tips!!! I need to get better are using the SEO…. I’ve been going back and trying to update some of my older posts to include it.
I had to go back too! Wish I had just known these things from the beginning.
I really loved all of these tips! I do a lot of the same things when I post a blog!
Thank you! Appreciate your kind words!
I agree with using Yoast. Also scheduling social media posts is the best way to get your posts out there.
Yes absolutely!
Great tips!! Love this post, I do a lot of the same things the only change I do is I share the post for over 6 months using buffer and tailwind. I always find it funny it takes a few hours to put a post together, after of course the photo shot and the rough draft, but then it takes another 4-6 to promote one post right after it is posted!
Yes!!! I have a plan to recycle posts and re-share across Twitter, Facebook, Stumble and Tailwind. Such a great way to keep the content moving! So much work goes on behind the scenes to make blogging successful.
Promotion is key! It’s a constant push too to keep posts flowing through social media and bringing traffic to your content! I use to have the “if you build it they will come” mentality before I realized that I’ve got to get it in front of the people I’m hoping to attract first and then traffic will come!
LOOOVE your “if you build it they will come” mentality!
I run a fashion/lifestyle blogger & I always struggle with having 300+ words.
When I first started blogging I felt the same, but I’ve adapted my focus a little and I like to tell a story. It might be where I was going to wear the outfit, or an occasion it would be perfect for, or a meaningful or funny story about my husband, kids, or friends. Since then, my word count always works out without even thinking about it!
Learning to promote your blog is so important, especially when you are starting out!
Yes it is, thank you!
These are really great tips, thanks so much for sharing!
So glad you thought so!
I totally agree that twitter interaction is the best way to increase traffic! Thanks so much for sharing that list for us, I’m going to screen shot that, it will be so handy!
Thank you!