11 Ways To Promote Your Blog
Posted by Marketing Man in Blogging,Marketing for Accountants,Online Marketing,Social Networks | November 16, 2012
Getting a blog started on your accountancy website is only half the battle, getting people to actually read your content is the tricky part. The main question is how do you get your content viewed and shared by people in your community? Here are some tips you can implement now to drive traffic to your blog.
Concentrate on high quality blog posts. A lot of small business owners make the mistake of assuming they have to post everyday or every other day and very quickly burn themselves out and run out of things to write about. I don’t recommend posting daily, unless you have the time to really put the time in to generate top quality content. I prefer a quality over quantity approach. Make your content really appeal to the visitors of the blog, solve a problem for them, offer them some guidance and generally build up your image as an expert in the field. There is no point in following the next steps to send more people to your blog if the content is weak.
Make sure you have a link to your blog on your website. This may seem like common sense but there are websites out there that have very active blogs and absolutely no mention of them on their main website. Make sure you are promoting your blog and blog content on your main website.
Promote your blog through social media
Link to your blog in your email signature. Every email that you send is an opportunity to send someone to your blog. You could even go the extra step and post direct links to your latest blog post in your email signature. So, for example, instead of just having a “Visit Our Blog” link you would have something like “Check out our latest blog post on 5 ways to blah blah blah”.
Promote the link to your RSS feed. I personally do not make much use of RSS but there are plenty of people who do so make sure your RSS feed is easy to find so they can subscribe to your blog.
Get social. Visit other blogs in your niche and leave comments on their articles. The key here is to leave good quality comments rather than just “Nice Post” type comments. The aim is to get noticed by the blog owner who may reciprocate and start visiting your blog or, ideally, may drop a link to your site on his/hers but also to get noticed by other people visiting the blog. If you are leaving good quality comments then you are increasing the chance that someone will click through to your website to see what else you have to say. When people see blog commenting as a strategy they immediately think SPAM! What I am advocating is really contributing to the article so much so that the blog owner will genuinely appreciate the comment and want to reply to you.
Make it easy to share. Most people won’t go out of their way to share your content, even if it is great, but if you make it simple you can get a lot of success. If you have a WordPress blog then there are any number of social sharing plugins you can use to encourage people to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc.
Link to your blog from everywhere. If you have a Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, web forums etc. make sure you have a link to your blog and are regularly posting links to your blog posts.
Encourage people to stick around. Again this is much easier if you are using WordPress but having things like Popular Posts or Related Posts in your sidebar or at the end of your blog post will encourage people to stay on your blog and continue reading. You can also create your content to encourage further reading, creating a series of lined posts is a great way to keep people engaged.
Guest Post on related blogs. Guest posting is not only a great way to build relevant backlinks to your website it is also a very good method of driving traffic to your blog. Writing a guest post on an established website allows you to tap into their readership and attract referral traffic, obviously you need to be providing top quality content so that you are piquing the interest of the reader to find out more about you.
Allow Guest Posts on your own blog. Flipping the point above you can also drive traffic to your site by allowing people to guest post. The author of the guest post will be keen to get as much exposure as possible so will promote the post in their own social networks and link to it from their own blog.
The main point to take away from this article is that you will not drive traffic to your blog if you isolate yourself, i’m afraid content is not enough, “if you build it they will come” does not work when it comes to blogging. You need to get social and network with as many people as you can, promote the content of others and you will start to see people promoting your own content. Blogging isn’t easy and it takes time but if you do it right it can be a great weapon for your website.
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About the Author – Marketing Man
Marketing Man is a superhero marketer hell bent on a personal crusade to improve the websites and marketing of UK accountancy firms. Check him out on Google+
