12 easy ways to promote your blog and website

What are the most effective ways to get more traffic to a blog?

This is probably the most asked question I get.

So in response, I put together this quick list of some the of the most effective ways that I use to promote this blog. I hope these help you out and if you have any great ideas to share, please leave a comment below.

I’m assuming you have already setup your blog and have been writing awesome posts for your target audience.

After you finish writing, editing and proofing reading again your blog post, I suggest doing the following;

1) Post to Twitter

If you have a good post title, use it as your message. If not. Either fix your title or create a new one.

I like to you use blog title generators and analyzers to help in this area.

Also, I suggest scheduling several tweets and change the message up to try different message copy.

2) Post to Facebook

Facebook is huge. If you don’t already have a page, you should set one up ASAP.  When posting, try different messages. Post the same piece of content with different message copy and spread the posts out over a few weeks. Monitor what is working and what’s not so you can improve in the future.

Here are my top 32 Facebook Tips to help you get the most out of Facebook.

3) Post to Google+

Google+ is not dead. It may not dominate the social landscape but there are still many people using it. It doesn’t take much to share your post here so do the same as above for message copy and scheduling.

4) Comment on other Blogs

Commenting is networking and link building. If you don’t participate on other blogs, I highly recommend it. You can answer people’s questions and get links back to your site or blog post.

Try to comment on other relevant blogs so people can see your recent post. Do some google searches to find relevant bloggers for the niche you are writing for.

5) Submit your blog post to voting sites

Submit your blog post to blog voting sites like http://Bizsugar.com or http://blogengage.com, Hacker News, Reddit, Inbound.org, Growthhacker.com and others that are relevant to the target audience.

6) Deep link to other bloggers posts

Linking to others can sometimes send trackback notifications that can get them to your site and you might get mentioned elsewhere.

7) Engage with other bloggers and build your network

Ask them to share your post on their social networks. This is one of the best ways to get your content promoted.

Where can you find these influencers?

I would try Buzzsumo. It can help you find the key influencers to promote your content.

8) Include relevant brands & people in your post

Mention other people, products, and services in your post and send out tweets letting them know they were mentioned.

The idea here is that they will promote your content because there is a link back to their site.

9) Guest bloggers, Influencers & advocates

Guest blogging can help you increase traffic depending on how and where you do it.  Guest blogging can work in one of two ways: You write a post to appear on another person’s blog or another person writes a post to appear on your blog.

Once you build these relationships with other bloggers, they can become advocates/evangelists for you and help you promote your content to their audience. remember, it works both ways so it might help to lead with sharing their content and then eventually going in and asking them to do the same.

10) Send to your email list

If you are not collecting emails on your blog. Start doing it now.

Email is not dead and as time passes, you’ll build a list that will help you grow exponentially.

If you already have a list, send an email to your list with a personalized intro and a link to the blog post. Something like this will work well.

Hey,

I just wanted to share with you my latest blog post.

[insert blog title here]
[insert link here]

Let me know what you think.
Thanks
[Insert name]

11) Engage and share in Online Forums

There are thousands of online forums and message boards for every conceivable niche. Find forums that are active and look for threads and conversations that your post relates to. Look for people asking questions you can answer and help out.

Don’t spam in forums. You will get banned very quickly as most people don’t tolerate overly promotional behavior.

Rather than just post and run, engage the other people and at some point reply with a link to your post.

12) Forum Profiles & Signatures

This is an easy back linking strategy. Join forums and message boards where you will find your target audience and even before posting anything, update your forum profile and signature with your value proposition and a link back to your blog.

Now, when you do start to post, every time you do, there will be a link back to your site. This helps with organic SEO as well as direct links to content that solves a problem someone is having on the forum.

Summary

There are much more ways to promote your blog, but these are the top ones that I continue to use for my blog.

This should get you started and if you have any great ideas to share, please leave a comment below.