How Do I Promote My Blog? The Essential Guide to Content Promotion
Recently, I shared one of my latest blog posts on LinkedIn and received this comment: “Love this article and longer, high quality content is definitely the way to go. I’d love to see a side bar or other complementary content about the best strategies for promoting content once it’s written.” This is a great topic suggestion — and one I definitely need to address. Why? Because the reality is writing great content alone won’t get you far. Composing a high-quality piece and hitting “publish” just isn’t enough. You have to help it along on its internet journey. Hold its hand for a little bit. You have to guide it into the limelight, or, in some cases, shove it out there. It’s the only way to ensure success – as opposed to publishing it on your site, crossing your fingers, and hoping against hope somebody will stumble across it and read it. With solid promotion, you can help your blog reach great heights. The only question left, of course, is this: “How do I promote my blog?” Well, friends, I’m here with tons of actionable tips to help you do just that. Settle in with your cozy beverage of choice. Ready? Let’s get knee-deep in great content promotion tactics. “How Do I Promote My Blog the Smart Way?” 15 Tactics, Tips, Tricks, and Strategies to Try There are tons of ways to promote your content. Not kidding. Tons. Because the amount of information is so broad, we’re going to break this down further into categories. Based on your resources, choose your weapon(s) wisely. The Lowdown: How to Create Great Email Marketing for Better Content Promotion You know the power of email marketing — or you should. It has a mind-exploding ROI of $44 for every $1 spent. Naturally, it can also do great things for promoting your content. Here are top tactics to try. [clickToTweet tweet=”Need some ideas for promoting your next blog post? @ExpWriters has some great tactics to try!” quote=”Need some ideas for promoting your next blog post? @ExpWriters has some great tactics to try!”] 1. Build Up Your Email List The number one thing you can do for content promotion is build up your email list. Once you have a direct line to a loyal, built-in audience, it becomes a platform for anything you publish. Your email list will not only click-through to read your blogs. They’ll also share them with their social networks, which dramatically increases your exposure. In fact, your list is 3.9x more likely to share your content than people who visit from other places (like search results). Email is widely used across demographics. According to Pew Research, 92% of adults online use it, and an average of at least 61% use it daily. The reach potential of email is really, really big. So, how do you grow your list so you can tap into that? We address this topic thoroughly in a previous post – it’s definitely recommended reading. Here are some key takeaways: Use compelling CTAs in your content that urge readers to subscribe. Create and offer free lead magnets (original guides, how-tos, videos, white papers, case studies, etc.). Collect visitor emails in exchange for your freebies. Create evergreen content that continues to provide useful information long past its publication date. Include powerful CTAs in each one that ask for subscriptions, or point visitors to your email-gathering lead magnet. There are also plenty of tools out there that can help you grow your list. Jeff Bullas and Kissmetrics offer great suggestions for tools to use, including both free and paid options. 2. Send Content to Your Email List at the Right Time After you’ve built an email list, you can send them an update about when you publish a new blog post. Jon Morrow of Smartblogger calls this combination of blogging + email “the ultimate publishing platform.” He also uses some other choice words: He’s totally right, of course. Here’s an example of an email I sent out to my list notifying them about a fresh blog: However, this strategy gets better if you send the email at the right time. There has been a standard stat floating around for a while about optimal send times – send in the morning, and send on Tuesday or Thursday. Those times were the right times up until recently. Now, the advent of mobile is shaking things up. More and more people are checking their phones for email versus sitting down at their computers. Vertical Response analyzed recent data and found that the ability to check email anytime, anywhere, has changed what your optimal email send time should be. Now, the ideal sweet spot is either morning or late evening on a weekday. Here’s an infographic that shows the send-time as compared to the transaction rate (email opens and clicks). In particular, late-night email readers show a lot of potential for engagement. Sending a short, sweet email to your list when you publish an awesome new blog = key. That goes double for sending that email at the right time. For you, that ideal time might look a little different from the average. Play around with when you send your blog update emails, and track what works. These two powerhouses combined could make all the difference. 3. Segment Your Email List There’s another way to truly super-power your content promotion with email: Send out blog updates to the exact people who’ll love reading about whatever topic you’ve covered. This means you need to segment your email list, according to a HubSpot infographic. Divide it up into categories based on information like your audience’s interests, where they opted-in for email in the first place, their purchase record, and more. These people may show more enthusiasm for certain posts than other list subscribers. Send targeted post updates and you’ll start encouraging loyal followers who are more likely to share your content. 4. Promote Your Blog in Your Email Newsletter CoSchedule has a great tip to boost your … Read more
