The job isn’t over when a blogger publishes a blog post. Indeed, for some it has only just begun. Many bloggers will try to maximize the exposure for each post through submitting the post to various social media sites. I will be talking about social media a lot but before that there are also a number of other ways I promote my site and posts.
Write eye-catching titles!
The most important thing about your blog post is the post’s title. Not only does it’s HTML mark-up mean it contains most important words on the page search engine-wise, but also it will be the point of reference on the various social media sites. So write a title that people will want to click on.
Make them short, snappy, descriptive, interesting and “¦ put numbers in them(!) Strange, but true. People click on posts with numbers in the titles. My most popular post through social media was 10 things I wish I had known about web designing 10 years ago. This got 7,000 visitors through StumbleUpon in only a few days and the visitors continued for weeks to come.
Optimize your site for search engines
A well optimized blog will mean the blog post being indexed by Google within a few hours of publishing. Try Googling the title of your post the next day – it should usually come up on the first page!
RSS and ping!
Use FeedBurner to burn your feed so people can subscribe to it.
Use ping services to notify blog directories that you have published new content on your blog. WordPress is set up to automatically ping Pingomatic but you can add more blog directories to be pinged every time you publish – in the WordPress admin panel go Settings > Writing and at the bottom add directories in Update Services and Save Changes.
Other bloggers
Visit and comment on other blogs within your community and niche. I don’t mean you should promote individual posts in other blogs! Write constructive comments on other blogs and you’ll develop win-win relationships with other bloggers. If you’ve written a particularly good post, you could even email bloggers with good reputations and give them the link to it.
Discussion forums
Similar to above, participate in forums within your community and niche. There may even be a discussion where you could post a link to a specific blog post if it was absolutely pertinent. Otherwise, of course, put your blog link in your signature so it’s there every time you post on a forum.
Newsletter
Invite your users to subscribe to a mailing list and send newsletters to them regularly. This builds a community around you, develops a relationship between you and your readers and, if you inform them of some of your latest posts, it can drive more traffic to your site. Make sure each newsletter you write also contains valuable information that your readers would be interested in as well as links back to your best posts.
Email signature
Put your blog link in your email signature. You may also want to put a link to the RSS feed, a newsletter sign up page and even links to your profile pages on your favorite social media sites.
Social media
I left the biggie until last! All of the above are important for getting your blog posts noticed. But social media can send literally thousands of visitors in a way that will put all the other techniques into shade.
However, I would urge against spending too much time with social media and to treat it with respect and caution – engage with the community, don’t just shamelessly promote your posts all the time.
And, don’t forget to add social media buttons to your posts to make it easy for people to bookmark them on all the various sites.
Timing: I tend to do this in the morning UK time as this means the posts will gathering popularity in Europe and then America as the day progresses. I also think it’s best to do it on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Here’s what I do:
- Twitter: I was slow to get going on Twitter but I have got much traffic from a tweet! Encourage people to follow you by adding your Twitter link on your blog and email signature. Tweet your latest posts as well as other good material in your niche. Feel free to follow me on Twitter.
- LinkedIn: I look on LinkedIn as the thinking person’s Facebook. The key to LinkedIn is joining groups. You may join as many as 50 groups. So join groups in your niche and you can send your link to all of them at once as a discussion. Again, I would urge caution here. Make sure the post is relevant to the group and interact with the group personally as well. Used correctly this can bring in loads of targeted traffic. Feel free to connect with me at LinkedIn.
- General social bookmarking sites: I have profiles on and regularly post to: StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, DZone, Reddit and Delicious which are some of the biggest.
- Niche social bookmarking sites: These sites can often be a better bet than the big boys. It’s easier to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond so at the moment I post to WebBlend which then offers further links to CypherBox, FaqPal, ZaBox, DesignBump and DesignFloat amongst others. Posting to one and following the links to others means you don’t have to fill in all the post’s info multiple times which can get tedious.
- Other social media sites: Of course it doesn’t finish there. As there is also FriendFeed, Google Buzz and Facebook. But I think that’s enough for now.
- Form alliances with other bloggers: I get by with a little help from my friends. Sometimes it only takes a few votes to secure an prominent position on a social bookmarking site. So you can say to other bloggers in your niche, “if you think it’s worthy, please vote for my post at such-and-such a site” and send them the link to make it easy. I have created the Designers’ Social Media Partnership for this purpose – any newcomers are most welcome!
Conclusion
I’m sure every blogger has a little routine of what they do. I would love to hear what anyone else does!
After writing a blog post, the main thing which I do is comment on other blogs. For this, I also take advantage of the CommentLuv plugins on those blog to give more exposure to my latest post. Then I promote it on Twitter. I am also a member of some blogging communities like Blog Engage, BloggerLuv….so I try to promote it there. And then comes the social bookmarking sites.
Hi Rob. Great article; I picked up on a couple of pieces of into I didn’t know.
I liked this advice on “Write eye-catching titles!” including numbers. My next post title is going to be:
“100 ways to design 100 logos in 100 minutes”
Seriously though, it’s a great piece of advice 🙂
I have found that none of these techniques have worked well for me. I have tried Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon — what little traffic I’ve seen has been fleeting.
Twitter pretty much ignores me. I set up a fan page on Facebook for one of my sites — at least my sister is a fan.
I spend too much time commenting on blogs (like this), posting in forums, tweeting, etc. and I don’t spend enough time actually writing the blog posts and articles that I want to write.
I’ve decided to step back a little bit and focus on the writing — blog posts, articles on HubPages and EzineArticles, articles on my elearning site. I’ll still use Twitter and Facebook but mostly just for fun. And as I find interesting articles I’ll stumble them, etc.
But I am not going to spread myself too thin any more and I want to focus on writing, so those promotional tactics that line up with that is what I will focus on. We’ll see what happens.
Oh yeah, I also want to do some fun video stuff so that might be useful!
Hi Rob,
I have just started realizing the importance of social media marketing and this article was definitely helpful. I signed up in few sites you mentioned.
I liked your tip with numbers in titles i will try it soon.
Hi Rob,
Great tips, from above method, I only use social bookmarking and blog comment, but it not working as I want. Then I try using article marketing and I can see small change in my web traffic. But when you use article marketing make sure post a high quality and unique article.
Hello Sourav, I forgot about CommentLuv – I don’t do much of it but it’s a great thing to do. Interesting you go around your community first and then the social bookmarking second.
Hello Andrew, “100 ways to design 100 logos in 100 minutes” would receive some interest! I look forward to seeing a post from you with a number!
Hello Sourav, I forgot about CommentLuv – I don’t do much of it but it’s a great thing to do. Interesting you go around your community first and then the social bookmarking second.
Hello LoneWolf, I would just say that you should keep going as you are. I remember spreading myself thin over social media and wondering what all the fuss was about. But concentrating on the writing is definitely the most important thing. Let’s not forget that! Good point.
Hello Sourav, I forgot about CommentLuv – I don’t do much of it but it’s a great thing to do. Interesting you go around your community first and then the social bookmarking second.
Hello Riddhi, let us know how you get on.
Hello mohan, similar to what I said to LoneWolf, I would just keep on and concentrate on the content and the social media results will come. Your words “high quality and unique” are spot on! I try to use the time I have to create the content and not to spend too long on the publicizing.
Thank you everyone for your comments.
Good summary of key items to be used to promote your blog. Using a number of the freely available sites to PING your blog is important and saves a lot of time.
Hi Rob,
This was very helpful. There are things I forget to do so it was a good reminder of what works. Didn’t think about the Google thing. I went straight to Google and googled my last post and there it was right on top! Very cool.
I use Twitter the most to publicize my posts and it works well for me. You need to be consistent tho’. Another great way is to find folks you like and RT them, if they see a few RTs from you they will be begin to reciprocate.
Thanks again!
Hi Rob,
I’m into commenting, forums, blogger communities plus Twitter and Facebook. This leaves me to pings. What services would you recommend?
Thanks for sharing this. Have a good one.
I’m not too sure about those Pinging services. I used to have that useless Maxblogpress ping-o-matic plugin, or whatever it’s called, that supposedly pings once rather than everytime you publish a new post. Without it, the plugin claims it would leave you vulnerable for being banned. I think it’s a load of rubbish.
Thus, I deleted it. I mean, if pinging is so valuable, why hasn’t everyone downloaded that plugin? Pinging has no value whatsoever. Focus on Google instead, and you’ll sleep better at night.
Hey Tony, that’s a very good point. Pinging doesn’t have much voice on the interwebs which is why I didn’t focus on that much. Google it is, mate.
Thanks for sharing. Have a good one.
Oh, Rob, I wish we can directly reply to others’ comments. A little request please? Unless you have a good reason why it’s not a feature on your site.
Thank you, Sven, interesting that you mention the ping services – others who’ve commented here aren’t so sure but I think it’s worth the effort.
Hello, Yolanda, thanks for the Twitter advice. I really need to have a go at that and set up some automated Tweets and RT a few people that’ll hopefully do the same to me!
Hello, Gines, here is a WordPress ping list. Thanks for the feature request. I’ve always thought that looks quite messy on other blogs. I would like to see an example of comment replying that looks really good before I set it up.
Hello, Tony, I would say focus on Google and social media rather than pinging. Pinging only takes a few minutes to set up and then you’ve done it and I don’t think it can do any harm. I know how annoying it can be to spend ages on a plugin for it not to work, and I’m all for sleeping well at night!
Thanks, everyone, for the comments!
Hi, Rob-
My situation may be different from that of some here, as my blog is neither monetized nor in support of an on-line business. However, I recently got involved in a fund-raising campaign for a girl suffering from cancer, so I started paying attention to promoting my blog. First, I added the Google toolbar, which allows one-button uploads to most social media. Then I also added TweetDeck, to facilitate communication between accounts of the various people working on the drive. For the everyday blogger, I highly recommend the G toolbar… you sign into each SM account once, and from then on, it’s a one-click exercise. For the power-blogger, TweetDeck is probably a good addition to their toolbox.
It would be even sweeter if TweetDeck could interface with all of the major SM sites… right now, it’s limited to Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, and LinkedIn.
@Rob Think Vitamin does threaded comments well: http://thinkvitamin.com/dev/the-perfect-development-environment/
Hello Doc Campbell, thank you for the great advice for the Google toolbar with the social media buttons. Which browser do you use that with? I’ve tried to load it on Google Chrome for Mac (my favorite browser) and they hadn’t created it yet. Also, I was unaware that TweetDeck works for LinkedIn and Facebook, etc. Thanks for all the tips!
Hello Tony, you’re right those are great threaded comments. I need to sort out the look of my discussion area. It’s a bit basic at the moment!
Great post, Rob!
I’ve recently launched a blog on public relations and new media. Although I’ve been really enjoying writing for it, I’ve been really trying to wrap my mind around developing ways to grow a CONSISTENT audience.
Your post gave me some fantastic ideas that I’ll put to use right now! Also, I must say, I really like the simple layout and design of your site. Well done!
Hello Robert, I’m glad you liked the post. Growing a consistent audience is one of the hardest things but you’ll go someway towards it by being consistent yourself, I think. And thank you for the kind words about my site’s design.
I am very thankful to this topic because it really gives useful information .~-
Hi!
I’m re-twit you post: to my @juxamist twitter
Its like you read my mind! You appear to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with some pics to drive the message home a bit, but instead of that, this is fantastic blog. An excellent read. I’ll certainly be back.
I’m into commenting, forums, blogger communities plus Twitter and Facebook. This leaves me to pings. What services would you recommend?
Pingler, Pingdom, Pingomatic, the usual ones. I’m not a big expert on Ping sites, Jason, I’m sorry. 🙂
Thanks for the tips. I’m planning to open my blog, so I will read your steps carefully..
That’s great, Ahmed. Best of luck.
Nice thread. I was wondering can you suggest some plugins for starters?! I’m planning to start my blog with wordpress, because that should be the easiest, right?
Plugins to do what, Rickyy?
He probably mean all the plugin which help to publicy your blog post to the audience. I would recommend you to use “simple facebook connect” (not sure if this is the right name). It sends all your posts to your facebook fanpage.
Ah, thank you, Rudolf. That’s probably what he meant. I automate my posts to Twitter but not to Facebook. I believe you are more likely to be seen on Facebook if you post manually.
I should connect my site with twitter as well.. How do you do it?
Do you mean to tweet out your latest posts, Rudolf? You can do that with http://dlvr.it/
handy tips as always Rob, I’ve just started my blog and digital marketing journey
So I see, Louie, best of luck. And keep going.