Most people assume that promoting your blog is either complicated or spammy.
And thus, they don’t often do it. However, the problem is that just writing great content isn’t enough.
If you don’t promote your blog, you’ve got to ask the question: How is anyone going to see it?
To us, spending hours of hard work on creating content that generates no traffic just doesn’t seem worth it.
Therefore, this article is going to show you how to promote your blog with 10 simple and non-spammy ways. Here we go:
How to Promote Your Blog With Email Marketing
1. Build an Email List.
If you’re not already building an email list, it’s definitely something you need to start doing today.
According to HubSpot, 99% of people with an email account check their messages on a daily basis. While 73% of Millennials say that email is their preferred method of communication from businesses.
Additionally, many studies have shown that marketers average a $44 return for every $1 spend on email campaigns. Indeed, that is a 4,400% return!
So, how do you build an email list? You’ll need three things:
- A platform to build your list. Try Mailchimp (Free) or ConvertKit (Paid).
- An easy way for people to join your list (a signup form on your site).
- A compelling reason for people to join your list (‘lead magnet’).
2. Send Plain and Simple Emails.
Once you have a few emails on your list, the next logical thing is to send them an email.
Of course, you may be wondering: What should this look like?
- Should it have fancy images?
- Should it include a logo?
- Should it be 1,000 words or more?
In fact, no; research shows that plain and simple emails work best. If you simply write as if you were writing a letter to your friend and then add a link to your latest article, you’ll find that you get the best Click-Through Rates (CTR).
3. Resend Emails to Non-opens.
How many people do you think usually open up your emails after sending a campaign to your list?
30%…
40%…
50%…?
Wrong! MailChimp tells us that the average open rate for email marketing campaigns is 22.71%.
So, if you have 1,000 emails on your list, effectively only 220 people are actually going to open your email. Of course, that’s well over half of your list that you’re not going to get back onto your blog or build a relationship with.
However, we’re going to share with you a simple two-step solution:
- Take the SAME email you originally sent and CHANGE the subject line
- Send it again TO ONLY YOUR NON-OPENS after 5–7 days
What you’re going to see from this is at least a 10% increase in total opens just from a minute’s worth of work. Indeed, it really is that simple. Therefore, there’s no excuse not to be doing it.
How to Promote Your Blog With Social Media
According to Orbit Media, 94% of bloggers are using social media to drive traffic to their website.
Therefore, using social media to promote your blog is not only the easiest method, but it’s also the most saturated.
Without an effective strategy, you’re basically going to see next to no increase in traffic.
However, there are a few research-driven tactics that actually work:
4. Post Content Worth Sharing.
The thing is, no tactic or strategy is going to be a substitute for creating quality content. If you’re posting blurry selfies on Instagram, you can’t be surprised if they’re getting no engagement.
Likewise, if your blog posts are full of grammatical errors and look like you threw them together in 5 minutes, then maybe that’s the reason you’re not gaining any social presence.
So, work on creating quality content and then carry on.
5. Post at the Best Times.
Really, it’s a no brainer if you can post to social media at peak times, you can get more clicks, more views, and consequently, more conversations.
In a previous article, “The Best Time to Post on Social Media,” we mentioned that each social media post has a limited lifespan in which it’s actually shown to your audience.
For example, the lifespan of a tweet is 15–20 minutes, a Facebook post has organic reach for 5–6 hours, and a LinkedIn post averages a lifespan of 48 hours.
Thus, posting time matters. If you would like to learn more about the best time to post on social media, see the full article here.
6. Post on the Right Platforms.
Most people have good intentions. They begin by taking a piece of content and sharing it on all platforms. However, you can’t just put the same thing on all platforms and expect to see results.
See, the way people behave and interact with content is different on each Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Instagram.
On Instagram, or example, people are largely interested in getting a glimpse into other people’s lives. For example, there are proven statistics that photos with faces get 38% more likes than photos without faces.
While on Linkedin, people are mostly business focused and thus, more likely to be interested in content that aids them in improving their life or business.
So, you need to understand the demographic of your target audience on each platform and create/share specific content for each.
7. Schedule Your Posts.
Joseph Jaffe believes you should spend 10% of your time writing a blog and then 90% promoting it.
So, make your life easier by scheduling and preparing all your marketing related posts at the beginning of the week rather than randomly throughout the week.
Our Publisher Tool will allow you to publish and schedule posts to multiple social media networks and accounts with just a couple of clicks.
Additionally, Uniclix will help you determine the best times to post on each social network in order to reach maximum engagement.
8. Add Tweetable Quotes to Your Content.
Of course, an easy way to promote your blog on social media is to have other people do it for you. One way of doing that is by having Click to Tweet quotes throughout your content.
While this strategy isn’t going to have the greatest impact on your overall traffic, it is going to be a more organic way to ask someone to share your post, and all of those individual shares build up.
For example, here is a Click to Tweet from backlinko:
So, how do you add a Click to Tweet to your content?
- Find a snippet of content that is both shareable and fits Twitter’s character limit of 280 characters.
- Create the Click to Tweet. We recommend using ClickToTweet.com as it’s both simple and free.
How to Promote Your Blog With Paid Marketing
9. Promote Already Successful Content.
An easy way to get more return from your ads is to promote already successful content.
For example, you may run ads on blog articles or social media posts that have already done well. As a start, Twitter and Facebook will be a good place to begin.
10. Run Retargeting Campaigns.
Retargeting, remarketing, or whatever you want to call it is not only one of the most effective means of paid advertising, but it is also one of the cheapest.
How?
Retargeting is the simple act of showing ads to people who have recently visited your site. And since you know those people will already be interested in your content, the CTR will be high, and consequently, your Cost Per Click (CPC) will be much cheaper than if you were running a standard campaign.
As WebFX explains:
“The average cost for remarketing on Google is $0.66 to $1.23 per click. In comparison, the average cost-per-click (CPC) for search and display ads on Google ranges from $1 to $2 for search ads and less than $1 for display ads.”
Retargeting is a great way to re-engage site viewers and eventually turn them into customers. However, you’ll obviously need to have a decent number of site visitors in the first place.
A few remarketing tools to get you started are Mailchimp and PerfectAudience. While Facebook ads also have an integrated retargeting tool.
In Conclusion
Promoting your blog is definitely not something that needs to be hard. However, it is something that’s going to take time.
In order to see results, you will need to be dedicated and have patience. We suggest you begin by focusing on building a relationship with your email subscribers and gaining a reputable presence on social media.
To save time and make maintaining the best practices easy, you may be interested in our range of social media tools.
