6 Ways to Promote Your Blog

Yesterday I gave you my 5 tips on how to get a blog up and running.

Today I will explain what happens next – i.e., how to get anyone to care.

Here are my 6 quick and dirty tips to promoting your blog:

1)  Let your email list know. If it’s a blog that you created for work, send it to your professional email list. If it’s a personal blog, send it to your personal email contacts. (Send it to both if it’s a work blog, but not the other way around.)

However, don’t simply send an email saying “I’ve started a blog, click here!” Write a short, compelling email with bullet points as to why you started the blog, what you are going to offer, how often you are going to post and what readers can hope to get out of the blog. Then ASK people to visit the blog page, leave comments and feedback and to subscribe for future posts.

The key to a compelling blog plea via email is to directly ask people to do something – to leave a comment, subscribe, email you feedback on a post, something. Just sending around a link with no instructions and no introduction is not effective and will get your email deleted and ignored.

2)  Put your blog URL in your email signature, on business cards and all print materials. If no one knows you are blogging, then no one will read your blog. Put the blog URL everywhere you can – get creative! Showcase the blog address in your lobby/waiting room; print it on receipts; put it on donation forms; paste it to bulletin boards.

3)  Promote your blog through your social networks – Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, wherever you actively participate. Many blog platforms allow you to automatically update these sites all at once, but I recommend logging into each separately and sharing your blog post with a short summary (1-2 sentences). Tell people why they need to read it – what’s in it for them?

4)  Create good karma. Read other blogs and actively comment and subscribe to their posts. Commenting on other blogs is key – people who read that blog may be interested enough in what you wrote to visit your blog.

5)   Try your hand at guest blogging. Sharing your posts with other communities is a great way to build your own following. Look at the guest blogging policies of the blogs/news sites you enjoy reading. Make sure to follow their guidelines! If they say that the post must be 100% original and exclusive to their site, then obey that. If you can share your blog post with your community first, then do that. It is important to follow the rules as deviating can blacklist you and kill your online reputation quickly.

6)  Follow and learn from successful bloggers who blog about blogging. (Say that 10 times fast.) Neil Patel of QuickSprout and Brian Clark of Copyblogger are my favorite, but there are many, many others out there.

Do you have any other ideas for promoting a blog? What strategies and tools do you use? Please share your ideas and thoughts in the Comments section or email julia@jcsocialmarketing.com – Thanks for reading!