Blogging is easy. Getting people to read your blog isn’t. Thankfully, you don’t just have to sit, wait and hope people stumble across your work — the vast social sphere that is social media offers a number of ways to drive more prying eyes to your blog.
Promote It
Yes, this is the obvious one — no-one’s going to read your blog if you don’t get out there and tell people about it. Use bookmarking sites, Twitter and any other social media network you might be affiliated with to tell people about each new article you submit.
Monitor It
Social media monitoring tools such as Klout and Social Mention can not only help you to monitor how popular your blog is, who’s talking about it and what they’re saying about it — but it can also help you to learn what works. Social media monitoring tools can allow you to track what people are reading and what they aren’t. When you know what your most popular topics are, you know what you need to write more of.
Link to It
Linking to your blog helps in two ways — it helps you to move up the search engine rankings so that (all being well) at some point, readers will find you naturally. It also drives people to your site. As well as the classic social media networks and bookmarking sites, you can also utilise other blogs, forums and free article marketing sites. Read blogs on similar topics to your own and contribute to the comments. If for example, someone has written an article on how they don’t believe global warming exists and you’ve written an article on how you think it does — comment that you think it’s a really interesting article but you’ve written about your differing views and would love to hear what the blogger thinks (needless to say, use this to link to your article).
Learn from It
Social media can teach you a lot. Find out who the most successful bloggers are in your field of interest and research what they’re doing differently to you. Note down what they Tweet about and how they promote their articles. Look at the topics they write about, the stance they take on certain issues and their style of writing. However, this doesn’t mean you should just copy exactly what they do — remember that some of the most successful bloggers are the most original.
Socialise with It
At its core, social media is about socialising. So use it to socialise. Those ‘successful bloggers’ we were just talking about — communicate with them. If you say something interesting, they will probably say something back. Build a relationship with them and not only will you learn even more about what successful blogging entails but you might also find they promote your best articles for you (thus reaching all of their readership with your blog).
They might even offer you a guest blogging opportunity — a fantastic way to link build and drive more readers to your blog. However, liaising with celebrity bloggers isn’t the only way to secure guest blogging opportunities — try using sites like My Blog Guest to find high quality blogs that are looking for writers just like you to contribute.
Outsource It
If you simply haven’t got the time or inclination to promote your blog yourself, you could always seek the help of an online marketing company or social media agency to do it for you.
10 comments
Jon Anscher says:
Dec 21, 2011
And search engines like social media connections. Getting backlinks from social media is an indicator that people find your content relevant to them.
Richard says:
Dec 21, 2011
I love your first line. It’s so true that the blogging part of blogging is easy. It’s gettng people to read your blog that’s hard. In the beginning especially, you need to focus on social media promotion. Not just on facebook and twitter, but being social in the blogosphere by visiting other blogs and leaving quality comments. That’s the only way to build your online presence until the search engines start indexing your site and giving you page rank.
James Harper says:
Dec 22, 2011
Both great points, reaching out and leaving comments on other blogs is priceless. If you do get a guest post published, don’t forget to make time to interact with people who take the time to comment as well!
Raj says:
Dec 22, 2011
Learning from other bloggers in the same niche and linking to them is very important. The more link love we distribute, more we get back. Thanks for this informative post…
Peter Beckford says:
Dec 22, 2011
Social media is very important in internet marketing and you explained that great in this post.Thanks
Arjun Rai says:
Jan 2, 2012
Yes it is 100% true and social media became one of the best tool of online marketing which is popular these days and many of us are using it.
Brian says:
Dec 22, 2011
One of the things I found out about tweeting my blog content on Twitter was that sites like Topsy and other websites add the links they find on Twitter onto their own websites. I find that helpful in adding links, but now that Google has changed, those sites may not be helpful any longer. It was a benefit for a little while anyway.
Serena says:
Dec 22, 2011
Great article, James! It’s also important to highlight the importance of putting care into the quality of your blogging. No matter the reach of your social media efforts, quality should come before marketing. This post, for example, is very well-written and engaging in tone, which is why I was inclined to spend time reading it. There are way too many blogs out there that are sloppy and filled with typos, which immediately lowers my level of interest in the material!
Barry @ build links says:
Dec 28, 2011
Social media can be effectively utilized to promote your blog. All the points mentioned here are very useful.
Of all these, outsourcing your work should be done very carefully. Those who are working for you, should know your objective and should work accordingly. Close monitoring is required especially in the initial stages.
Andi says:
Jan 1, 2012
James,
Great tips and inspiration to expand in the blogging world, all in a well-developed post. What do you think is the best way to find other, local bloggers, for a business that depends on locals?