So you have spent hours researching, writing, amending, hopefully optimizing and then publishing your blog post – but it doesn’t end there! Now you have to promote your blog.

You absolutely have to have a strategy to promote your blog as it doesn’t matter how great your content is if nobody can find it! In this post I am going to disclose my latest strategy for how to promote your blog online, and this is what I am personally doing on each blog post for my new website:

Promote Your Blog

1) Social Media:

If you want to successfully grow your blog then you need to implement social media sharing strategies to promote your blog.

Action Steps:

Facebook: share your post on your Facebook wall, in relevant groups – ask for comments and feedback. Use adverts to promote it if you have a budget for pay per click or Promoted posts.

LinkedIn: Share as an update on your LinkedIn profile, and in relevant groups – ask for comments and feedback. You could also use adverts to promote it if you have a budget. Note: There are a large number of Groups on LinkedIn relevant to your Industry and they are easy to find – this makes it great for posting your useful content in them and getting your content seen. Some of these groups are huge so you should definitely use LinkedIn for additional exposure.

Twitter – Schedule a Tweet of your post twice a day for 7 days but change the title each day to gain more interest.

Pinterest – create a board on Pinterest for your blog posts and pin your blog post to the board. I have created 2 boards, one for network marketing and one for internet marketing.

Google+ – Share your blog post with your circles and publicly on Google+.

2) Email Marketing and Your Contacts

Email marketing is the best way to generate immediate interest and promote your blog. Promote your blog by continuously building an email list of blog subscribers. Not only is a list the best way to grow your blog, its also great for marketing your own products if you have them, building your brand and promoting affiliate offers. Email marketing requires an auto-responder account so If you do not have one of these then my advice is that you need one if you are serious about making money through blogging or online generally.

Action Step:

Tell Your List! (if you don’t have a list, get an auto-responder account and start building a list)

Every time you publish a new blog, send a broadcast message to your list telling them about your recent blog post. I also recommend installing an opt-in form on your website/blog through your auto-responder account so that people can subscribe for your updates. Get Response makes this process very easy to do and this is the auto-responder I use for my own email marketing. As your list grows, more people will be reading your blog posts and at the same time you will be increasing your credibility, personal brand and income generating ability. Remember that the more times a person views your blog, the more chance there is that they will comment, engage and share your posts to others.

Please note if you don’t have an autoresponder account and decide to get one with Get Response they are currently giving new customers a free $30 credit to their account. You can get that through this link: http://gr8.com/pr/3fK5

Promote your blog in your email signature:

If you are also sending other email broadcasts as part of your ongoing email marketing campaigns, you can add your latest blog post to your email signature which you can set up in your auto-responder account very easily. This also increases your visibility, keeps your emails content packed, and sets you apart from other marketers because few marketers take advantage of this strategy which will promote your blog.

Share in Forums and Groups:

Promote your blog by sharing it in groups and forums that you participate in and which are relevant to your Industry. I’ve had a great response from this strategy. Do not ever post a blog in a Group that is just promoting a product or service. People will view you as a low status spammer. Only post great content that is designed to help other people or solve their problems. You can also comment on other people’s blogs and in groups generally with an email link to your own blog. My advice is to investigate the group or blog you are targeting and read the rules of the forums to make sure what you are doing is acceptable.

Share on Better Networker.com

If you are in internet marketing or network marketing then this is a definite consideration to promote your blog! Better Networker.com is great because you can post articles, videos, podcasts and blog entries and it puts your content in front of thousands of targeted prospects. It gets ranked fast and highly by Google and each time you do post content, you also have an ability to capture leads with your own customizable lead capture form. Its free to register and there are some paid services for additional features.

3) Add Your Blog Post To Bookmarking Sites

I recommend that you add your blog post to the following bookmarking sites, many of which have millions of users and highly targeted readers. Most of these sites require you to sign up for free but this is relatively simple as you can use Facebook to connect. You can also use tags and key words to increase the potential visibility of your posts and all of these sites will get your post seen by more people and improve search rankings.

Action Steps:

Promote your blog by posting your blog to the following:

Delicious.com

Digg.com

StumbleUpon.com

Reddit.com (please note if you post within the category of “networking” then you need to add all your text to the site by cut and paste – i.e. you can’t post a link)

Technorati.com

4) Ping It Baby!

If you are not familiar with Pinging, if you send a Ping it notifies a number of services that your blog has been updated and they then crawl and index your site, publishing your blog content and increasing your visibility. Its as simple as entering your URL into a box and clicking Ping! This is recommended and a great way to promote your blog.

Action Step:

Ping at one of these sites:

http://www.Pingler.com

http://www.Pingomatic.com

http://www.Pingoat.net

5. Guest Blogging and Blog Commenting

It’s important for your blog’s growth to be strategically targeting people who are within your target audience. I previously discussed the importance of knowing your audience with particular relevance to the MLM Industry here.

The way you profile your audience is largely the same across all industries. Once you have a clear understanding of who you are targeting you should focus on building a community of subscribers around your blog and a further strategy to use is Blog commenting and Guest Blogging. Many current blogs across all industries have a significant number of subscribers who will be interested in reading your content and you can “piggy-back” on their success by offering their readers great value.

Action Steps:

Comment on Other Blogs

Promote your blog by Subscribing to and regularly visiting other blogs within your niche and which have a good following. Actively participate in each blogs community by posting valuable comments on their own blog posts, and you can even post a link to your current blog in your comments or signature. Please note: Do not ever spam somebody else’s blog with your product or opportunity link. The purpose of engaging in another person’s blog is to offer their readers value so they will also subscribe to your own blog and read your content.

Write Guest Posts or Invite Guest Bloggers

Another strategy to promote your blog is to offer to write a guest post for another person’s Blog. This should be a Blog within your niche with the same target audience. You can simply contact the Blog owner and ask them and you would be surprised how many will say yes! Always provide excellent content if you do this and make sure you provide a link to your Blog in the content. You can also invite Guest Bloggers to post on your Blog and this is a great strategy because they will also share their post with their own social media community meaning that you will also gain visibility and enhanced credibility. To do this you can create an additional page on your Blog explaining how it works and the benefit of guest posting with a submission box. As your website traffic increases more people will want to do this, but if your Blog is relatively new then you might need to ‘link build’ to increase your page rank before guest posters will be interested.

6. Link Building

Link building is the process of getting external pages to link to your website or pages. Link building is extremely important to your online visibility so if you want people to read your content then you absolutely need to obtain traffic from the search engines. Please see my post here for more information on how link building should be approached in 2013 and contact me if you have any questions.

7. Syndicate Your Content

It is now very easy to syndicate your content out to a large number of networks, at the click of a button. This really can boost your visibility and promote your blog to large numbers of people. There are various sites that make syndicating content to a large number of networks very easy:

Action Steps:

Review and Consider these top syndication sites to promote your blog and research for others on the internet:

IFTTT.com

EvanCarmichael.com

Networked Blogs.com

Scribnia.com

Join TribePro

If you have a budget and don’t have time to spend hours syndicating content, Tribepro is a must and is what I personally use as well as many of the industries top earners.  It’s a group of like-minded entrepreneurs created solely to promote your blog, and to spread your blog posts, videos, content and website to their already built social networks to expand your brand, create social buzz, and increase traffic. I highly recommend this method to promote your blog.

Promote Your Blog – Final Thoughts

If you consistently apply the strategies above then you will greatly increase your chances of  developing a loyal following for your blog over 2-4 months and beyond. The key to success is providing great content that helps and interests people, and consistency – both in regularity of blogging and in following through as you promote your blog. 

So, my friends, there we have it. A long blog but hopefully it gives you some ideas and a structure for how to promote your blog. If you got value from this post, please feel free to like, share and as always, get in touch.