FOR every performance, there should be an audience. The same applies to blogging. Without your audience, your blog won’t survive. So what do you do in order to increase your traffic? Simple –- by promoting your blog.
Your blog will only take off when you know and understand how to sell your ideas to your target audience. The key is in finding out which strategy works for you best.
Sounds easy, right? Yes, but take heed — so many bloggers tend to cut corners by resorting to sneaky promotional methods (eg. spamming) in the hopes of gaining overnight success, and they end up compromising their own credibility and integrity. Those tactics hardly ever work in the long run.
Although increasing your blog’s popularity and hits takes time, it is well worth the effort. There are several sure-fire and legit ways of doing this, and the following are only a few tried-and-true methods employed by professional bloggers. Best of all, these techniques are free and can be immediately implemented.
1. Blog Commenting
While posting links in your comments is frowned on these days, it’s still a favorite promotional tool. The key to making this work is to post relevant comments in blogs that you actually subscribe to. Find a topic that is in the same niche as your blog, and post your comments there. This way you will attract the attention of the blog’s readers AND owners. It also will lessen the chances of your comments being deleted. Trust me, I am one of those who actively deletes comments that sound spammy or even remotely off-topic.
2.Email Marketing
This is another fast method for driving traffic to your site. If you have an email list – and you should – you can regularly send out messages telling your recipients to check out your latest blog post. It’s that simple.
3. Social Communities
Plenty of bloggers swear by posting scheduled tweets on Twitter, creating Facebook fan pages, or posting links in LinkedIn. This is an extremely fast way to create a buzz and get both traffic and backlinks. Facebook fan pages also allows you the opportunity to interact directly with your fans and readers.
Aside from popular social networks, you can promote your blog in forums, blogging communities, and general directories. You can also post your own linked articles in a blog carnival. However, promoting your blog without any other active group participation is considered distasteful by many and could get you banned or even blacklisted as a spammer. One obvious example of doing this is posting your blog link in your forum signature.
The best way to go about this is to actively participate in group discussions on topics that are related to your blog. Build a community of like-minded people, and you don’t just get traffic, you may even establish yourself as an expert in your blog niche.
4. Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking sites are a tad different from social networks, in the sense that the former is used more often for link building. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of bookmarking sites, including Del.i.ci.ous, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg, where readers sign up to bookmark links to their favorite sites.
The upside to promoting your blog in these sites is that your blog can quickly go viral and can receive a huge amount of traffic in record time; however, you don’t get much backlinks from bookmarking, so save this tactic for getting more hits and readers.
5. Direct Interaction
This is an oft-overlooked promotional tactic. With the sheer volume of bloggers cropping up, personal interactions with readers go down. Many blog readers find it flattering to be the subject of a blog author’s attention, and this ultimately helps create a buzz through their testimonials.
Frequent interaction with your readers also allows you to encourage them to keep on reading, participate in your contests, subscribe to RSS feeds, etc. As with real-life businesses, this kind of personalized service inspires loyalty and attracts new traffic.
These are only a few strategies for putting your blog out there. Remember that success isn’t instant, and you’ll have to deal with plenty of rejection as well. You will have to resist the urge to take underhanded shortcuts, but if you apply the aforementioned methods strategically and consistently, chances are your blog will eventually double or even triple its readership without sacrificing your reputation. Good luck!
Photo credits: dressful.com, tipsblogger.com
Carmela Maraan has written on various topics ranging from marketing, advertising, blogging, and creative writing to adult material. She is enthusiastic about expanding her repertoire as she views the world as one huge library. During her free time she is also a voracious reader, an irrepressible singer, and a mom who hardly sleeps.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?i very like to do blog commenting for promoting my blog.
Nice article. Very clear to understand. I use all of these tools to promote my blog.
Nice article and good informations. I think most blogger forgetting the email marketing which is sad. It’s a easy and free way to inform people who are interest in your blog.
Claudia
great article. Short and sweet.
I totally agree with what you have said here Carmela.I would also add you need good content,that engages the reader and makes them want to come back to your blog.You need people to come back and revisit because you have something interesting to say to them
Thanks, everyone. I appreciate your comments. Personally I tend to favor blog commenting, using social communities, and engaging in direct interaction with readers.
If there are other promotional methods that have worked for you but aren’t included in the list, feel free to share them here.
Nice to the point Methods
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