As easy as may seem, promoting your blog can be a tricky task. With increasing competition and everyone wanting a share in the blogosphere, not being able to attract a readership is hardly a surprise. Sure, we have all kinds of social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to promote our work online, but very often, even that’s not enough.
Blogging and marketing experts keep telling us to expose our work as often as possible, but then why is “exposure” not doing its magic? If your readerships are reducing and analytics are showing not-so-happy statistics, what could we be doing wrong?!
Here are a few things to watch out for while promoting your blog. Be sure to keep these do’s and don’ts in mind if you want your blog marketing schemes to work!
Do’s:
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Do post original content:
Original content, original content & original content! That’s the first step to killing it with your blog and gathering a large fan following. If your blog content is just like every other blog they can find over the web, quit wasting your time (and theirs) and come up with something original! Your niche may be the same or similar to many other bloggers, but what’s important is what you’re offering. Try to set yourself apart from your competitors, especially for topics and keywords that receive a high volume of traffic per day.
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Do promote consistently:
If you’re bummed out about not being able to get even a single follower after posting your blog article only once on a social media account, you’re mistaken about what it takes to actually “promote” your blog. In order to really cut through the crowd and get the audience’s attention, you need to post frequently and consistently. In fact, Kissmetrics suggests that you should have a social sharing schedule to double your wordpress site traffic. According to their research, “the more often you share, the more likely you are to get clicks”—without upsetting your fans!
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Do pay attention to your audience:
Your ideal audience could be young teens between the ages of 12 to 18. Guess where you’ll find them? According to Pew, Instagram and Snapchat (after Facebook) are the most popular social networks among teens. If you were blindly promoting on Twitter or Pinterest, you were clearly missing out. This was just a hypothetical example. Now, think about your ideal audience. Where do they hang out online? What topics do they love to talk about (you can search this through Google Trends)? What do they like, dislike, want, or prefer? More importantly, how can you provide them with something they really care about? A great marketing strategy always involves getting to know your audience first and asking all of these questions before you start promoting.
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Do use visuals:
If you’re always posting links to your posts on Twitter, you could be boring your audience. Hey, what about visuals?! Did you know that tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets? If this statistic surprised you, you should check out the rest of the other stats about content marketing with visuals by Hubspot!
Don’ts:
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Don’t make it all about you:
If you keep promoting with the words “I” “Me” or “My”, you’re making a huge mistake! Why should they care? Why would they want to click on the link? What would they find out if they read your article? And, how could you help them with what you are offering? Make it about them, not you!
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Don’t ignore comments:
Anyone (even you) would absolutely hate it if you invest the time, effort, and a precious login ID to comment on someone’s blog and they don’t have the courtesy to reply back. If a subscriber has given your post thought and provided feedback, the least you can do is provide basic customer service and appreciate it. This is also an opportunity to start a dialogue and receive even more comments—hence improve your search results!
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Don’t stop experimenting:
If something’s not working, it’s your responsibility to find out why. Not every blogger has the same reasons for success or failure, so there’s no harm in experimenting and trying new things to win an audience. Plus, audiences can get bored of seeing the same thing over and again. Whatever you try, always follow it with a split test and stats!
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Don’t forget about being personal:
We do have a plethora of amazing tools to use to automate the blog promotion process, but it’s important to remember not to get carried away with these tools. If you’re employing a program for almost every other task on your blog (post updates, find content, curate images, etc) you could run the risk of de-humanizing your blog.
Give in your own efforts, engage with your audience personally, and put your own (, not programs) mind to what your audience wants.
Finally, remember that building a reputation and seeking loyal followers is more important than focusing on rankings and wanting to be liked by millions. We hope the strategies above have highlighted a few points that will “woo” your audience and keep you from making those costly mistakes that chase them away.
