I just bought a course by Kristi Hines on blog post promotion and before I take it, I wanted to brush up more on what others are saying. So this will be a multi part journey, as we explore together what numerous digital marketing experts are revealing about how to promote your blog posts.
I have 20 years of search engine optimization experience but “SEO” has changed and it has changed radically. SEO has potentially changed more from 2012 to 2015 than from 1997 to 2012!
1997 was the start of the Google era but it wasn’t until 2012 with the advent of Penguin that Google was able to enforce people to be authorities.
Gone are the good old days when we could rank in Google for things like “Saxophones”, “Hearing Aids” and “Wedding Locations” with all but a few adjusted title and meta tags and some on page optimization. And hush hush – maybe a few article directory links here and there.
Now you seriously need to put in some hard work to get traffic to your site and a blog is on the front lines of this battle. But a blog with no promotion is like a tree falling in the woods that almost nobody hears.
Here’s my first list of tips and stay tuned for more as my ideas evolve.
25 actionable blogpost promotion tips and rough workflow ideas
Create and optimize your blog posts properly as a pre requisite
- Use SemRush to find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors. Sort by search volume and cost per click to see what keywords matter. Promotion will make your chances of ranking for harder keywords more likely.
- Create some of your content as longer, more shareable posts – 1,000 minimum to maybe 3,000 ish words and up if the quality stays high. If you are as pithy and concise as Seth Godin, go short but otherwise go with in depth content. See quicksprout.com as a good example of this.
- Add a main photo (ideally numerous pics), bullet points to make your blog posts scan and skim friendly, social share buttons, quotes from influencers, links to back up factoids, an author name and a title/headline with a somewhat long tail keyphrase but that is also catchy like a numbered list or “how to”.
- Optimize your posts title and meta description, alt tags/image names and keyword driven/short/enticing URL ( g. /25-actionable-blogpost-promotion-tips).
Use tools to find and outreach influencers and people who share regularly
- Use Buzz Sumo to find content that relates to your important keywords.
- Create a list of influencers / thought leaders in your niche partially based on who gets the most social media shares on their content according Buzz Sumo.
- Get the Twitter handles of the people that shared the content of the top influencer posts. Use toofr.com or Rapportive to get the emails of those people.
- Email 150 of these people who like to share content like yours and ask them if they would mind sharing your similar post. Consider BuzzStream for advanced outreach options.
Get good at social media or hid your head in the sand
- Use Buffer to regularly share other people’s content, so that you build your own twitter following and can have more influence when you share your own content.
- Use Hootsuite to engage people on Twitter through direct messages and replies etc. You need to interact and create relationships in the new “SEO” / digital marketing world, not just hide behind a wall of hopeful keywords, waiting for Google to always bail you out.
- Comment on several blog posts a day with high quality, helpful suggestions and don’t link your site. Choose sites that are influential in your niche to get on the radar of the authors. Create a Disqus account for commenting.
It’s no surprise that the experts at Buffer nicely back this one up:
“One of the best ways I’ve found of promoting content is to develop relationships with people before you publish.” Belle Beth Cooper, Content Crafter at Buffer
Guest Post often – some people say to do this more than you post on your own site
- Reach out to high quality and relevant blogs in your niche to ask them if they will accept a guest post from you. Try to write a several guest post per month. Don’t do it so much for the link. Do it almost exclusively for the traffic. Occasional links are great but Google doesn’t like this to be about the links. If you get enough guest posts, other natural links will come as you grow your brand.
- Meet speakers at conferences and ask them for guest post or podcast interview opportunities.
- Check out blogger communities: MyblogU, MyGuestBlog (was hit by Google) and Tomoson.
- Use ahrefs.com to check out the sites that link to influencers and or search for author name + guest post etc.
- Ann Smarty says when you reach out to bloggers, known their blog well and send manual emails. Be real. Don’t hire people in India to do this unless they are as good at this as Bruce Lee was at kicking ass. Otherwise, you will have your ass kicked and defeat the purpose of this process.
- Connect with editors on social, join their Twitter chats or Google Hangouts or invite them to do the same with you.
Still not convinced? Neil Patel says: “I still regularly guest-post, despite getting over 500,000 visitors per month already.”
Join or start groups
- Join or start relevant LinkedIn and or Facebook groups and be a regular contributor / helpful person and share your original content when it truly makes sense. If you have not done this before, join one group today and chime in on the conversation, after reading the flow of the threads.
Pay to play
- Facebook promoted posts, LinkedIn and Twitter ads can also drive some traffic.
- Stumble upon, Viral Content Buzz and Empire Avenue have options to “pay to be seen”.
- Pay for consulting from influencers, which starts a relationship and can lead to other things.
- Pay some of the top writers you can find, that also have a social following. You won’t get this for $50 to $100 a post if you are looking for deep traffic and connections. Don’t just pay writers but pay for their promotional help.
Email and email newsletters are one of the best blog promotion tactics
- Build your email list by using free giveaways like ebooks, guides and interactive content like quizzes.
- Share your best content with your list and ask influencers to share your content with their lists – which may require a joint venture / commission based type of arrangement.
- Make a list of 25 influencers and avoid veering off course and thinking you have to reach out to one million. Even if you get a half dozen real relationships going, your guest post and promotion activities will increase significantly.
Want even more tips right now? Check out 32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips by Kristi Hines.
Conclusion
I may be an old school “SEO guy” who used to have it easy when you simply just added keywords and Google did the rest, but I am not an old dog that can’t learn new tricks. I am so excited to deepen my knowledge of blog post promotion and hope you will continue to join me as I interview other experts on this and write more posts about it.
The good news: It works and lots of people are doing it that get tens of thousands of visits a month that would not have come from simply selecting the right keywords.
The bad news: It takes way longer than old school SEO used to take.
If you are an expert and a thought leader but don’ have good website or blog traffic, these techniques are essential for you. You can do it on your own but be prepared for learning several pieces of software and various tactics. Or get some help on the tech side and focus on creating high quality content from your voice that SEO’s and social / promotion experts can help you share.
What are some of the best blog promotion techniques that you use?
