These days, it’s not enough to be a talented writer producing beautifully crafted content. While high-quality writing is undoubtedly important, just as essential is what you do with it afterwards.
In a world of information overload—and over 2.75 million blog posts being published each day on WordPress alone—promoting your blog post effectively is vital if you want readers.
This requires a whole different set of skills to writing. While creating a blog post is about connecting with readers through language, compelling them with your story and keeping them interested, promoting your blog post is more active. It’s about going out there and hunting down your readers, putting your content in front of them and persuading them to engage with it.
Without a solid set of blog promotion tactics, there’s every chance no one will see your hard work, no matter how praise and share-worthy it is. So, if you’re a small business wanting to use content marketing to drive engagement and sales, unless you promote your blog posts, writing them in the first place is a waste of both time and resources.
The good news? Most blog post promotion tactics are free and pretty straightforward. Check out our simple-to-follow actionable guidance to get you on the right track when marketing your blog content. Choose two or three tactics to focus on and watch how these easy tricks and tips can take your content to the next level.
11 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts and See Real Results
SEO
Including certain keywords in your blog post is one simple way to drive traffic to your page. This is slightly different to the other promotion techniques on this list as it’s less direct. Still, it remains the primary step in getting readers to your page.
If most blog promotion tactics are like door-to-door salespeople, SEO is more like setting up a shop selling products that you know for a fact are in high demand. It’s essentially about including certain words and phrases that people are likely to search for, allowing search engines to understand what your content is about and highlight it for potential readers.
Optimising your content for SEO is a bit of a balancing act. Too many keywords and you’ll be penalised by Google for keyword stuffing. Too few and you won’t appear in the rankings at all. What’s more, if you choose keywords that are too competitive, you won’t stand a chance against other more dominant platforms.
The best option? Target long-tail keywords—those search terms composed of three or more words that are more specific and less competitive.
Google Suggest is a great way to find these long-tail keywords while Moz’s keyword difficulty tool will indicate whether or not you could feasibly rank for the term. Opt for those keywords with less than 50% difficulty. Then include these keywords and variations of them throughout your content, as well as in the title tag, meta description, introduction, and image alt tags.
You can further optimise your blog in search engine rankings by ensuring that the page is secure and loads quickly.
This is one of the most effective blog promotion tactics as you’re essentially marketing your article to people that are already interested in you and your business.
The first step is to get people who arrive on your page to sign up for your newsletter. Then promote your blog to them in regular emails, establishing a group of regular readers who keep coming back to your articles and may share them too.
Make sure you send out any emails promoting your articles at optimal times of the day. Weekdays are best—particularly Tuesday and Thursday, and around mid-morning. Tell subscribers why they should read the blog post what they could learn. And make sure they can share it on social from the email directly using this Share Link Generator.
Social Media
Sharing blog content on social media is both incredibly straightforward and free. And so it’s worth sharing your post on as many platforms as possible as part of your social media strategy.
Different Captions for Different Platforms
Some of your readers will follow you on multiple platforms so you’ll want to change the caption for each post, so they don’t think you’re being lazy.
Plus, different platforms demand different styles of captions. Twitter only allows 280 characters, for example. On Pinterest and Instagram, the image is the most important element of the post. Adding images to your Facebook posts, too, can multiply engagement by 2.3 times. Just make sure it’s a high-quality image. Even better if you use a GIF.
Your caption doesn’t just have to be a reference to the article headline. Share content from the article itself or pull out insightful quotes. You could even share the subheadings from the article in the form of a bullet point list.
On Facebook, using emojis in your captions can increase shares by 33% but make sure to keep the text under 50 characters. On LinkedIn, the essence of your caption should be around 150 characters as the rest is truncated. Similarly, the most important points of an Instagram caption should be communicated in around 155 characters.
Don’t be scared to share your blog post on social media more than once, as long as it’s evergreen content that’s still relevant. On Twitter you can afford to be quite aggressive in republishing the same content—even up to 14 times a day, as the lifespan of a Tweet is only about 18 minutes. But on other platforms, try to limit republishing to once a week.
Include social buttons at the end of your blog posts to make it easy for people to share them there and then. You can also embed social media counts that show how many shares the post has already received. This functions as social proof, encouraging others to do the same.
Another option is to include Tweet Widgets within a particular section of your article or next to a quote that you think is particularly shareable. And make sure to include a link to your blog on your social media profiles too.
You can also use hashtags to reach a wider audience, although the use of hashtags varies depending on the platform. On Twitter and Facebook, for example, you only want one or two hashtags, while on Instagram, you can use up to thirty. However, we recommend going for around eleven.
Be Part of the Discussion
When people share your blog post on social media, make sure to thank them. Like and reply to any comments to keep the conversation going. You could also recommend other articles you’ve written that they might enjoy.
Partnerships
Establishing partnerships is tricky. It essentially involves reaching out to people who are more or less strangers and asking them to share your content, for free.
However, it can work when done tactfully. Here are our top tips:
Find Out Who’s Important
Start by looking for people who are sharing similar content to you. This is best done through a hashtag search on social media or via BuzzSumo, a tool that allows you to identify the best performing content in your niche and the influencers who are creating and sharing it. Look for people with an engaged following rather than a particularly large following.
Establish Contact
Next, reach out to the influencer and start building a relationship. Promote their content, comment on their posts, and add value to the discussion. Say what you found interesting about their article, agreed with, or disagreed with. Think of it like building a friendship. You don’t want to make it obvious that you have an agenda.
Then, at some point, they might link back to your blog to return the favour.
Name-Drop
You can also mention industry influencers in your blog post and let them know that you’ve featured them. They may then share your blog post—although it’s best not to ask them to do so directly.
Roundups and Interviews
Another option is to create an ‘expert roundup’ where you compile quotes from a number of different influencers in response to a particular question. Influencers may be keener to contribute to your round-up once they know that there are other high-profile figures contributing, so let them know who else you’re asking.
Then, once you’ve published the article, you can ask these influencers to share it.
Similarly, you could conduct an interview with a high-profile figure in your industry. They will then share the interview with their followers, boosting your readership.
If asked, take part in interviews conducted by other bloggers. Or reach out to see if someone significant wants to feature you on their podcast.
Guest Post
You can also offer to guest post on other related blogs—ones with significant followings but not so much bigger than your blog that you appear irrelevant. Pitch ideas that will appeal to them based on their previous content. Then, once the post is live, include a link back to your blog in your author bio.
You could also ask influential bloggers to contribute to your blog. This will allow you to take advantage of their following when they share the post.
Use Specific Platforms
Triberr is a social networking community for bloggers where you join a ‘tribe’ focused on your specific niche. Tribe members can share their content and others will like it, comment on it, and share it.
This boosts engagement and traffic and provides an opportunity to create productive relationships and partnerships later down the line.
Up-Vote Communities and Forums
People go to sites like Reddit or Quora for answers to specific questions. Users can up-vote or down-vote different content depending on whether or not they like it.
Search for a subreddit or Quora question related to your particular niche and make it a regular practice to provide answers. Make sure your replies are genuinely useful. Rather than linking to your blog there and then, provide a link to the blog in your profile instead so it’s less obvious. You can get banned by the community—or at least down-voted—if your content is too sales-y.
You can also look for other forums related specifically to your industry. Engage in the conversation, answer questions, and provide valuable content. Don’t just push your product or services.
Facebook and LinkedIn groups are other good options. You can even set up alerts to see when certain keywords are mentioned. Then you can get involved in the discussion and include a link back to your article if relevant.
Paid Promotion
Paid promotion can take different forms, from banner ads to sponsorship deals as well as paid product placement. A popular option for content promotion is social media advertising, offering highly targeted ads based on the user’s interactions on that specific platform.
Each platform uses a different format for paid advertising, and you want to focus on those platforms where your audience tends to hang out most. Ensure your ad includes a clear call-to-action to get people straight to your blog post.
Obviously, the downside to paid promotion is that you have to pay. But the upside is that it frees up a lot of your time. Posting answers on sites like Quora or establishing relationships with influencers requires a lot of effort.
Ask Your Employees to Promote Your Content
This isn’t as mercenary as it sounds. All that’s involved is asking employees to include a link to the blog post in their email signature. You can also ask them to share blog posts on their social media pages too if they’re happy to do so. This can be very effective as people are typically more interested in content from a real person than a brand.
Indeed, employees’ social accounts generally have 5x more reach than corporate accounts so it’s definitely worth taking advantage of your team’s social connections. You could even consider offering incentives or rewards for those who share content and get engagement.
Link Building
Link building is when you create links on other websites to drive traffic back to your site. These inbound links point to your site, indicating to search engines that your content is valuable, establishing you as an authority by connecting you to other reputable sites. It’s a great SEO strategy, helping your blog post to rank higher on Google.
The best way to encourage these backlinks is by creating quality content that people naturally want to share and promote on their websites. Don’t worry about generating tons of backlinks. Just focus on establishing a few links from some authoritative sites.
You can also reach out to customers and partners to see if they could link to your blog. Ahrefs has a link-building tool that is useful for assessing your links and their SEO impact. It will also show you sites that link to your competitors but not to you.
Add Infographics
Infographics are exceptionally shareable. In fact, they’re “liked” and shared three times more than any other kind of content on social media. And so, if you can, turn the information in your post into an infographic with a call-to-action to encourage people to share.
The trick to a shareable infographic is investing in a beautiful design. You need it to look good and catch people’s eye, which might mean hiring the services of a professional graphic designer.
You don’t want to overload readers with too much information so stick to around ten data points. Brainstorm creative ways to present your data that goes beyond the traditional pie or bar chart. Finally, remember to list any references at the bottom.
Republish On Other Sites
This is also known as content syndication and basically involves republishing your blog article on another more established platform. You can syndicate all kinds of content, not just blog posts. Infographics and videos can also be recycled.
It’s a mutually beneficial tactic. You expand your readership. The platform gets free content. But the trick to content syndication is to find relevant partners to re-publish your content. You want these platforms to be influential among your target audience. And make sure to include links back to your blog.
We also recommend waiting a few days after first posting the article on your own blog. This gives Google time to index your post before you reach out to a wider audience. Backlink to your original content as well just in case Google decides to rank the republished version higher because it’s on a more authoritative platform.
Split Test Your Promotional Techniques
Test every tactic you employ. For example, try out different captions on social media. Try out sharing at different times of the day. Segment your email list and try different formats. Experiment with everything and see what works best. This is the easiest way to hone your strategy.
Keep an eye on analytics to see how your tactics are performing. Google Analytics gives you access to traffic reports to monitor engagement and other activity. Google Search Console will even tell you which keywords people searched for before clicking on your post. You can also use social media monitoring tools to see how much traffic is being driven to your blog from the various platforms.
The Final Push: Promoting Your Blog Posts
Start off with two or three tactics and try to nail them. Make small adjustments and see what happens. Consider blog promotion as a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time to build solid foundations and relationships and establish a core of readers who are happy to share your content.
Identify those sources of traffic that are performing the best and then focus on optimising them. That means those traffic sources that offer the strongest engagement—not just the highest number of clicks. Which visitors are spending the longest on your page or leaving the most comments?
And, of course, none of these tips and tricks will work if your content isn’t outstanding. Writing amazing blog posts that speak directly to your audience and offer something of lasting value is one of the best tactics you can employ to keep readers returning for more.
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