So far so good. You have set up your blog, begun creating content for it and learnt what marketing means. Now I’ll show you the different ways in which you can promote your blog.
8 ways to promote your blog for free
There are a battery of ways to promote your blog for free and get traffic to it. In truth, there are so many ways, it can get confusing sometimes. If you want to know the top blog promotion techniques you can use today, I can list them down to simplify the methods. These are some ways to promote your blog for free and which I personally use for my sites.
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Guest blogging
Now, there are gazillions of blogs out there. There are a lot of blogs that allow other people to post their own articles on. This is what guest blogging is. All you need to do to guest post on a blog is to pick one that relates to your own blog and get in touch with them. A lot of blogs that officially accept guest post submissions have a page dedicated to giving guest posting instructions, letting guest posters know how to go about submitting articles to the sites.
Choosing high PR (page rank) sites to submit to is a technique used by a lot of bloggers. That is to get traffic and readers from the guest blog while at the same time building links for SEO to increase their search engine ranking positions.
But the catch is that if you go about guest blogging just for the sake of building links for SEO, you are missing the boat. You are losing out on the real benefits of guest blogging.
On top of that, Google and other search engines are less in favor of guest posting carried out for the sole point of building links and SEO now than ever before. So you shouldn’t focus solely on link building. Rather use the technique to drive traffic and build your brand.
BloggingLinkup is a website that lets you easily find blogs that accept guest posts on their blogs. You can also use Google to find blogs in your topic that publish guest posts. Some keywords you can use are among others:
Your topic/keyword “guest post”
Your topic/keyword “write for us”
Your topic/keyword “guest posting guidelines”
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Building an email list
Building an email list is not just a technique of blog promotion but also a way to pocket major cash by promoting stuff to the people on your list. You will not only be able to get recurring traffic but you will also generate income by promoting your products or affiliate products on your list.
The key thing to remember is that you need to share quality stuff with the people who are on your list. Keep in mind that the people who are on your list are real people with real lives and real feelings. So treat them like one and send them stuff that solves their problems and that they are going to use. Also, pick your products carefully if you are going to be promoting affiliate products.
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Social media marketing
With the ever-growing popularity of social media sites, it’s almost impossible not to get any visitors using this method, as long as you provide great value and share great stuff.
When it comes to making a social media campaign a success, staying active is a key. You should always be there.
Now, there is no end to social media sites out there. There’s no clear-cut rule that will suit every social media site so you must have different plans that best suit each site.
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SEO
SEO or search engine optimization involves ranking your site on search engines so your site gets found. Writing and link building are the two steps you need to take, but the technique is labor intensive. On top of that, search engine rules change too often leaving millions of websites penalized each year. But the traffic is steady and that’s what makes it attractive to a lot of bloggers.
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Blog comments
Blog commenting in simple words involves reading your favorite blogs and leaving a comment on them. If you post high quality comments, the method will help you build a brand for yourself and get some visitors.
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Forum posting
Another way to promote your blog is forum posting. Select related forums and post valuable posts.
Basically you’ll first post informative and valuable posts, then promote your stuff and post your links in the space provided called the sig file. The more familiar you are to the members of the forum, the better the chances of you getting a lot of traffic.
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Article marketing
Writing and submitting articles to article directory sites so it gets read by visitors of the article directories is another form of blog promotion. Not only that, but there will also be ezines or webmasters who are going to copy your article to post on their sites, bringing about more readers and traffic to your own site. Ezinearticles, Goarticles and Buzzle are some top article directories you can submit articles to.
How you are going to drive traffic is simply the resource box. When you write and submit articles, there is a space set aside for you to add information about yourself, your site and your links. That space is called resource box and is found at the bottom of the page where your article ends.
You can also resubmit existing articles to article directories for extra traffic. If you want more traffic and more views, then you are going to have to write good articles as well as create catchy and clickable resource boxes that many people are likely to click on.
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Blogroll links
Blogroll is a list of links on the sidebar linking to other favorite blogs of the blogger. When someone links to you from their blogroll, it will not only build your brand and help you build relationship with the blogger, but will also help you build a link which is used as a vote when your link profile is evaluated.
Now that you’ve learnt some of the most common ways to promote your blog for free, it’s time to make money out of your blog. That’s what you were waiting for, right? So, let me take you to the last step of this guide and show you how you can monetize your blog.