How to promote your blog – Ten tips

Writing a blog will enable you and your business to share news, insights and knowledge on your website about a topic of your choice. A regular blog will enable you to:

·       increase your brand’s awareness and credibility

·       boost traffic to your website

·       increase conversions

·       generate sales.

Managing and promoting your blog to support your business is essential to the overall process of blogging. Regular blog content will have a positive impact on your:

·       search engine optimisation (SEO)

·       content for promotion via your social channels

·       influence on your prospective and current customers

·       call to action opportunities.

Once you’ve chosen your blog topic, completed your research, written a captivating introduction, completed the body text, proofread it and completed the final edit, it’s time to go live and promote your blog. Here are ten tips for getting the most out of your content:

1.     Optimise your blog content for search

Make sure that you identify terms that rank highly in search to ensure that your content features in search engine results pages (SERPs). Do keyword research and naturally build these terms into your content, linking to your other web pages as well as external website pages. Writing your blog posts for SEO is a cost-effective way to enable readers to organically find, read and share your content.

2.     Accompany your blog with visuals

Images, videos and animations will make your blog posts stand out, increase their appeal and make them more memorable. Given that visual content is recalled over 50% more than written content, adding visuals to your blogs will ensure that your audience remembers you, thus strengthening your brand.

Simply adding image alt text (the written copy that appears in place of an image on a webpage if the image fails to load on a user's screen) can significantly increase your blog traffic, as well as its accessibility.

3.     Repurpose your blog into various formats

Repurposing a blog involves reusing some or all of it to expand its reach. It typically involves converting the content into a different format, such as:

·       a video

·       an infographic

·       a podcast

·       a Slideshare presentation

·       a webinar

You can add call to actions (CTAs) to your blog posts, such as a free online guide, where readers sign up with their contact details and leads are generated. Repurposing your blog will provide a greater rate of engagement and can significantly increase your blog traffic.

4.     Build organic links to your blog

Link building is the process of getting other websites to link back to your web pages to generate referral traffic and increase your website’s authority. Links signal to Google that your site is a valuable resource so the more backlinks you have, the higher your site’s keyword ranking will be. 

Building links to your site is a very effective way to make sure that you are nurturing an effective, sustainable search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy for your blog.

5.     Create a social media content calendar

Unsurprisingly, one of the most effective ways of promoting your blog is via social media. Take the time to build an effective social media presence through creating a social media content calendar. This should outline how you plan to engage your audience through a variety of posts, with maybe three or four every month that drive traffic to your blog.

6.     Use influencers to promote your blog

One of the most effective ways of promoting your blog is via influencers in your niche. It is likely that you will need to formulate and build a relationship with that person before asking them for help with your blog promotion. Your requests will be rejected by some influencers. 

To build a long-term relationship with an influencer, you can link to their content in your blog posts, which you should then continue to cultivate.

7.     Guest blog for similar blogs

Make contact with similar blogs, suggesting ideas for them to publish to their blog. This will provide benefits for both you and them as it will give you a backlink and also provide them with fresh, high quality content that they haven’t had to spend the time researching and writing.

8.     Make sure your blog is prominent on your website

Promote your blog on your website and site menu, including a CTA which encourages readers to subscribe. Allow readers to sign up so that they can receive new blog posts. This will ensure that your blog is successful over the long-term.

9.     Promote your blog with e-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is a highly effective way to promote your blog and cultivate your audience. It’s also a great way to engage with guest bloggers and industry experts.

To grow your list of readers, you should start a blog newsletter to increase your subscriptions. Adding a call to action (CTA) to your blog is an effective way of converting your readers into subscribers, and eventually, into customers.

When you have built a sizeable list, you can start to segment this by interests, based on what subscribers have clicked on, downloaded and purchased. If you quoted or referred to someone in your content, make sure that you let them know so that they can share it with their connections.  

10.  Use your social channels for blog promotion

Social media is an effective way of sharing your blog content and engaging with your audience. LinkedIn and Twitter are valuable networks for content promotion. Make sure that you tag those that you have mentioned in your blog and those who are relevant to extend your reach as much as possible. There will also be a number of professionals on LinkedIn and Twitter who will mention you and comment on your blog.  

Make sure that you research good times to post your content on social media, promoting your blog across as many channels as possible. Adding some context when sharing a post will ensure that your connections open and read your blog.

Your blog content should be valuable, unique and relevant to your products, services and brand. Great content on its own isn’t enough to engage and convert your audience - you need an effective promotional plan, which includes tactics to grow and convert customers. Where you promote your blog is just as important as how you promote it. You should select avenues of distribution where you can grow your audience.