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Want to promote your blog? 151 Tried and Tested ways

Want to know how to promote your blog? How to get traffic to your blog? How to get your blog to the people who want to see it?

These are questions that everyone running or marketing a blog asks. And it’s easy to get discouraged—there are already so many blogs out there!

Luckily, it’s absolutely possible to promote your blog to increase traffic or readership or customers. Below, I’ve got 151 tried and tested ways to promote your blog.

They cover all sorts of methods and venues. Some are big, some are small. You don’t have to do all of them—but they’re certainly worth a look.

hostingpillBest way promote your blog
  1. Share your content across many social networks
  2. Share blog posts on social media right when you publish them
  3. Share not just one post, but multiple in a single instance!
  4. Use optimal posting time to share posts.
  5. Use optimal posting time to publish blog posts.
  6. Use optimal posting days.
  7. Mention influencers in your posts.
  8. Tell influencers about how you mentioned them.
  9. Use Facebook groups.
  10. Use forums!
  11. Use Quora’s “feed” to find popular and pressing questions
  12. Find and use subreddits that are involved with your niche.
  13. Pin posts to the top of your social media profiles
  14. Use hashtags.
  15. Use certain tools to find out which hashtags are the best.
  16. Tweet frequently
  17. …But don’t have the exact same posting schedule for other social media networks.
  18. Similarly, when certain posts aren’t doing well…cut your losses.
  19. Share your new posts more than once.
  20. Re-promote older content that’s done well.
  21. Use visuals in your tweets and be cautious of how many characters you use.
  22. Place links early into tweets
  23. Use Twitter cards
  24. Call on readers to share (for a good reason).
  25. Share using emotion (tactfully, of course).
  26. Set daily/weekly goals for growing social media contacts and follows.
  27. Clean/modify open graph data.
  28. Include links to your blog posts in your social media profiles.
  29. Host and/or participate in Twitter chats to share what you know (and recommend blog posts!)
  30. Do the same thing, but on subreddits and forums!
  31. If it comes down to it, consider starting a subreddit on a topic or niche.
  32. If you’re really feeling confident, consider starting a subreddit for your blog.
  33. Don’t neglect Instagram.
  34. On LinkedIn, try focusing on skill building and business.
  35. Use longer descriptions on Pinterest.
  36. Use Pinterest group boards.
  37. Use Promoted Tweets.
  38. Pay to promote on Facebook.
  39. Use LinkedIn sponsored content.
  40. Use LinkedIn Groups.
  41. And of course, Reddit ads.
  42. Thank readers for sharing!
  43. In general, contribute to aggregate sites and up-vote communities.
  44. Focus on practicality and utility in your shared posts.
  45. Place social media sharing buttons in prominent places.
  46. Use Sumo to double down on the sharing buttons.
  47. Share with people who have already shared your content.
  48. Share with people who share similar content.
  49. Share with people who write similar content.
  50. In forums, answer questions using your blog posts.
  51. Use social bookmarking sites.
  52. Use reciprocal sharing sites.
  53. Have an email campaign/use email marketing.
  54. Build your email list.
  55. Have something to offer in exchange for an email address (aka, a lead magnet).
  56. Send those emails at good times.
  57. Send emails as you launch new posts.
  58. Email newsletters.
  59. Try plain text emails.
  60. Use software for automated email marketing!
  61. Enable social shares in emails.
  62. Include links to your blog or certain posts in your email signature.
  63. Resend emails…using the words that worked for the emails that got read the most.
  64. A/B test emails.
  65. Create subgroups in your email lists.
  66. Get featured on round-up emails.
  67. Get featured on round-up posts/articles.
  68. Set up an RSS feed (if you don’t have one) and share it with your audience.
  69. Ask your partners and/or affiliates to share your stuff.
  70. Write a guest post!
  71. Heck, have a guest-post campaign!
  72. Try co-marketing!
  73. Help readers email your blog posts to their circles.
  74. Syndicate your content.
  75. Have employees promote your posts.
  76. Have customers link to your blog.
  77. Prioritize promoters when you link to people.
  78. Interview influential bloggers.
  79. Invite said influencers and bloggers to contribute to your blog
  80. Try to build real relationships with people in the blogosphere and social media.
  81. On that note…DON’T SPAM.
  82. In general, try to build a loyal audience.
  83. A major takeaway: collaborate, and share each other’s content!
  84. Work on your linking game: make sure people are linking to your blog!
  85. On that note, work on content that’s ready to go viral.
  86. Regularly include external links.
  87. But be careful about your external links.
  88. Do internal links too, of course!
  89. Do keyword research.
  90. Target one keyword per blog post (if you’re just starting out).
  91. Optimize posts for keywords.
  92. Use Google Ads and Bing Ads.
  93. Buy ad space in the “related content” sections of top sites.
  94. Use web analytics tools.
  95. Use tools that are specifically geared for social media monitoring.
  96. Submit to search engines.
  97. Put links to related articles/a “related articles” section at the end of your blog posts.
  98. In your new posts, link to your best and most popular posts.
  99. Visa versa: update your best posts to have links to your new posts.
  100. Make sure to fill out your meta descriptions, etc.
  101. Don’t only change headlines as you post—also change up meta descriptions, subheadings, etc.
  102. Use pop-ups to promote your blog.
  103. Use pop-ins to promote your blog.
  104. Retargeting/remarketing!
  105. Use push notifications through the browser, instead of email.
  106. Have mobile-friendly push notifications to promote your blog.
  107. Test out different headlines, especially with A/B testing.
  108. Choose from a few main, reliable types of headlines.
  109. Include numbers in your headlines.
  110. Use emotional language in headlines.
  111. Create long-form pieces to promote your blog.
  112. When you have short pieces, make sure they’re useful.
  113. Have a powerful introduction.
  114. Put the conclusion first.
  115. Embed infographics to promote your blog.
  116. Does it need to be said? Yes, it does. Use IMAGES.
  117. Even better: create original images and content.
  118. Have text overlaying the images.
  119. Optimize your blog’s images for sharing.
  120. Use image sharing buttons to promote your blog.
  121. Make sure you’ve worked on your content’s overall visual appeal.
  122. Publish content consistently.
  123. Quote experts.
  124. Be unique.
  125. Tell stories.
  126. Respond quickly to trends.
  127. Be helpful!
  128. Know your target audience.
  129. And once you know your target audience, get your tone down!
  130. Make listicles!
  131. Make presentations/slide decks.
  132. Don’t let SEO ruin your content!!!
  133. Update old blog posts.
  134. Turn your blog into a vlog.
  135. Turn your blog/vlog into a podcast!
  136. Turn your blog posts into an ebook!!
  137. Add content upgrades: give your best for free, in exchange for emails!
  138. Build a resource library.
  139. Turn your posts into PDFs, and then share them.
  140. Overall: get the basics of site health right!
  141. Pick a good host.
  142. Make sure your blog has good uptime.
  143. Make sure your blog is fast.
  144. Use SSL.
  145. Take extra steps with security.
  146. Be wary of WordPress plugins!
  147. Pick your WordPress theme carefully.
  148. Be ready to scale up your site
  149. Plan your content.
  150. That being said, don’t restrict your creative outbursts either.
  151. SLEEP.

Let’s get started!

1. Share your content across many social networks

Maybe you don’t like Facebook. Maybe Instagram is what you use, or Twitter is. Suppose you never got into LinkedIn.

Guess what?

Too bad.

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but in general: it’s a good idea to spread your content across many social networks.

The reason is simple: you’re putting out good content. That content ought to be seen and shared as much as can be.

And the more places you share, the more likely it is your content will be seen, enjoyed, and shared by others.

2. Share blog posts on social media right when you publish them

This is a pretty easy thing to do—a lot of platforms have an option for simultaneously publishing a post to your blog and putting it on social media.

Doing this does a couple things:

First, it lets people see your post right when you publish it. Duh.

Second, if you garner likes, retweets, shares, and comments on the post or post link, it makes your post look more credible.

Which makes it more likely to get even more internet points. It’s the most straightforward way of promoting your blog to increase traffic.

3. Share not just one post, but multiple in a single instance!

To be fair, everyone understands the concept of sharing a single published piece.

But there’s another way of sharing your content on social media, and it’s a little more refreshing:

Basically, group your content. Arrange a collection of posts however you want—probably through a tag, category, or tag.

Then share that whole collection of posts with a single link! This lets you hit broader topics and thus appeal to a wider range of interests.

4. Use optimal posting time to share posts.

When I was in high school, I would insist to my friends that there was an optimal posting time, and that was why my profile pictures got so many likes. They laughed.

Fast forward years later, and who’s laughing now? It’s simply TRUE that some times of day are better for posting and sharing content than others.

Keep in mind, of course, that times vary between social networks. It may sound complicated, but luckily, it’s easy to research!

Share your content across many social networks

5. Use optimal posting time to publish blog posts.

Of course, you’re running a blog—and depending on the ecosystem your blog lives in (for example, WordPress), you’ll probably want to make sure the post itself is published at a good time.

This is more of a wild card—we can roughly intuit when people use Instagram or Facebook, especially if we use them.

But you’ll have to think about when your readers and when people in your blogosphere are taking time to read a blog.

6. Use optimal posting days.

As you can see, this is something I take seriously. No, it’s not because I’m bitter about my experiences in high school.

Anyway, the point stands.

Naturally, if some times are better for promoting your blog, then some days are as well. And again, you’ll have to factor in your own knowledge of your audience.

Is your target audience going to be scrolling through a blog post at work? Good, looks like weekdays will be fine.

Or maybe your blog is all about hangover cures—might be good to post on the weekend!

7. Mention influencers in your posts.

Look, you’re probably already familiar with some influencers if you’re blogging.

After all, you’re probably doing research for your field…so you’ve definitely come across some names that are influential in it.

When you mention influencers in your posts, you show your awareness of the topic. You show humility—you give credit where it’s due.

And especially importantly, people are more likely to find and stick to your posts as you mention relevant influencers.

8. Tell influencers about how you mentioned them.

You can make the influencer thing go even better though. Just contact the influencer(s) you mention.

After all, unless you do a terrible job of it, the worst they can do is be unresponsive. And reaching out doesn’t need to take much time or energy from you.

On the other hand, an influencer might be pleased and share your content to their audience—that’s a BIG win.

Because not only is that an endorsement of your content, it’s a great way of driving traffic to your blog.

9. Use Facebook groups.

I know, I know—you and 2 billion people already understand the concept of posting to Facebook.

What I’m talking about though, is posting to a Facebook group. A Facebook group will be focused on a specific topic or issue, and it’s a great place to find people with similar interests.

…People with similar interests who want to talk about those interests and want to hear more about them.

Plus, there are a countless Facebook groups, and you better believe there are many different groups for the same niches. So not only will there probably be a Facebook group for your niche, there will probably be more than one.

But be wary: some groups may have rules about self-promotion, and even if it’s relevant, your blog promotion may not get received warmly.

10. Use forums!

Once again, you’ve got to be mindful of the forum itself—some may not be receptive to links to your site.

That said, plenty of them will be. The key is to BE HUMAN. (More on this later). Keep your presence on the forum tactful above all else. Be contributive.

Because a relevant forum is a great place for you to answer questions using your blog posts.

You’d be surprised: as long as you and your blog are useful, you can get traffic to your blog, and even build a loyal following.

11. Use Quora’s “feed” to find popular and pressing questions

If you don’t know, Quora is basically a question and answer site—kind of like Yahoo! Answers, but more popular.

Accessing Quora’s feed will let you see some of the most popular questions in a relevant topic. You can see what your target audience is most concerned or interested with.

And then? You can answer the question right in Quora, AND you can use your Quora research to address the topics in your future blog posts!

12. Find and use subreddits that are involved with your niche.

This is basically in the same vein as the last two ways of promoting your blog. But, Reddit is different. And useful. Believe me, Reddit is a super useful site for bloggers.

Basically, Reddit is a giant network centered on sharing content. Some of it original of course, much of it reposted or linked to. There are hundreds of “subreddits”—basically communities and forums dedicated to certain topics within the Reddit ecosystem.

It sometimes seems like there’s a subreddit for everything. Some are large, some are small, and there may be more than one that overlap with your blog’s focus.

But there’s a good chance they’ll be useful for research at least: you can find pressing questions, popular ideas, and gauge attitudes and interests.

subreddits

13. Pin posts to the top of your social media profiles

It’s simple: people may frequently come across your blog’s social media profiles. When they do, they may or may not take a lot of time to stalk your page.

So just pin your latest post or your best post to the top of your profile, so it’s the FIRST thing anyone sees when they visit your page.

You can do this on a number of social networks, but here it is on Twitter:

social media profiles

14. Use hashtags.

Oh, you think hashtags are a joke?

Sure, they’re easy to poke fun at, but they’re dang useful! And, they’re not just on Twitter —they’re useful on Instagram and Facebook too.

It’s not just that a lot of people find content by hashtags—it’s that there are SO MANY hashtags, you can find a particular one to excel at.

Maybe everyone uses #wanderlust…but there’s bound to be some less popular, but similar hashtag, that you can game the most to promote your blog.

15. Use certain tools to find out which hashtags are the best.

Go ahead and test your own creativity, of course…but is it going to hurt to be precise about these things?

Because some hashtags are going to be way too popular, and will be easy to get buried in (see the above example of #wanderlust).

Others may be too unpopular, and won’t bring enough people to your post, and thus, your blog.

But using tools like What the Trend, Hashtags.org, or Twitonomy, you can find what hashtags are trending, which are good to target, and some even have search analytics.

16. Tweet frequently

Here’s the thing: Twitter is fundamentally different from other social media networks.

Sure, there are plenty of overlaps. But in general, it’s more okay to Tweet a lot than to post a lot on Facebook or Instagram.

Don’t get me wrong: you should post frequently on all your networks. But frequently on Twitter means upwards of a dozen times a day.

How to get people to read your blog? Talk about it a lot!

17. …But don’t have the exact same posting schedule for other social media networks.

This sort of goes back to the optimal posting times and optimal posting days I was talking about.

Keep in mind that you may have different audiences on different networks, and that people on different networks will:

Be expecting a certain frequency of posts, and will be using those networks at different times.

18. Similarly, when certain posts aren’t doing well…cut your losses.

This sounds rough, because sometimes it is—a common problem I see in social media campaigns is people don’t know when to cut their losses.

It’s simple—if you’re posts aren’t doing well, it’s okay to try posting a little more. But at a certain point, you’ll need to face reality and switch things up.

Because if people aren’t responding well to your posts…posting even more of the same stuff is likely going to do more harm than good.

When you want to know how to market your blog, negative feedback and poor results can be a tremendous lesson to learn from.

19. Share your new posts more than once.

Yes, I know—contradictions galore!

Keep in mind that all of this really is case-by-case. That said, when you write a new post, give it the best shot you can. And that means, share it more than once.

Sure, change up the wording when you share the post, do what you think is best—but don’t limit yourself to one share.

New posts can feel vulnerable, and may leave you wondering how to get traffic to your blog. Re-sharing them isn’t glamorous, but it’s effective.

20. Re-promote older content that’s done well.

You can’t limit things to your new posts—when you have older content that’s done well, keep using it. Remember that it’s popular for a reason.

After all, you may be getting new followers and new viewers who haven’t seen your older stuff yet.

So how to get people to read your blog? Re-promote your older stuff that’s done well or is just good in general.

Here’s an example: this was tweeted June 24th, 2019.

…But the actual article? It was written 6 months earlier.

21. Use visuals in your tweets and be cautious of how many characters you use.

It’s simple, folks. Twitter is not usually a place for long-form posts. It’s true that some people have “threads”—i.e., a string of tweets connected to form a longer thought.

But for the most part, Twitter’s character limit is there for a reason.

So—keep ‘em short, and use visuals. Get to the point, hook your audience, and use visuals: so it’ll be EASY for others to retweet your content.

22. Place links early into tweets

This is useful for similar reasons as the last one: it’s about making your tweets useful and good candidates for retweeting.

There’s some tentative evidence, via analyses from Dan Zarrella, that of tweets with links, the ones with links placed early had the most clickthroughs.

*Note: his main analysis is not available at the moment, so I linked to another one in which he discusses the importance of experimenting with link placement.

Is this hard science? No. But it’s definitely something.

23. Use Twitter cards

Twitter cards are basically a way of adding media to Tweets, so they’re not just plain text.

This is an example of a Twitter card:

use twitter cards

Even that Twitter card is pretty plain looking, but you get the idea. If you use Twitter often, you’ve definitely seen them.

In short, Twitter cards make your Tweets look considerably more interesting. Thus, they’re more likely to get retweets and more likely to get traffic to your blog.

24. Call on readers to share (for a good reason).

A certain portion of your audience may already be likely to share your posts. But some who might otherwise be ambivalent about sharing others’ posts could be tipped over the line by a good call to action.

In other words, call on your readers and followers to share for a good reason, not only because they like it.

For example:

“Do you agree that (insert conglomerate here) should be more transparent about its server outages? If so, share this post, and any others you see that shine a light on (conglomerate here)’s transparency issues!”

25. Share using emotion (tactfully, of course).

A great way to promote your blog? Use emotion. People share things that cause emotions.

Heck, the whole concept of a social network is to mimic relationships and real-life social networks. Obviously emotion is important.

This isn’t just common knowledge, or anecdotal evidence. This phenomenon has been documented—most famously for bloggers and marketers, by the New York Times Customer Insight Group.

So, yeah—emotion is an important part of sharing. Just a word of caution: for goodness sake, be tactful. Don’t make every post about dead puppies (unless you’re an animal rights blogger).

26. Set daily/weekly goals for growing social media contacts and follows.

This might sound too simple, but it can be a golden piece of advice.

Because the cold hard truth is, for most of us, we’re not going to explode one day from a couple hundred followers to a couple hundred thousand.

Even those who do go viral often had a lot of hard, consistent work going on behind the scenes anyway.

And yet, having followers is pretty essential. They’ll share your posts, tell their friends, and overall boost your presence on the internet.

So set consistent goals for expanding your online social network. It can be small or large, but the key is consistency.

For example: “I will gain 50 new followers every week this month on Instagram.”

27. Clean/modify open graph data.

If you haven’t heard about this before, it probably sounds complicated and technical. It’s really not.

Cleaning up your open graph data just means optimizing your posts for social media sharing. The idea is basically to modify your meta descriptions, titles, and excerpts—which is pretty easy to do.

Yoast SEO is a super popular WordPress plugin (with free and paid features) that lets you edit this stuff:

But just about any SEO editor will let you edit this sort of stuff. It’s really not that complex, and a necessary tool for blog promotion.

28. Include links to your blog posts in your social media profiles.

Remember when I said to pin certain posts to the top of your social media profiles? So that when people find your profile, the first thing they see is the post you shared?

Well, here’s the same idea at work—but instead of pinning a Tweet or Facebook post, just put the link right in your actual profile description.

Some people update their profiles with links to their newest posts. Others just link to their site:

Whatever floats your boat!

29. Host and/or participate in Twitter chats to share what you know (and recommend blog posts!)

Earlier in this list, you might have noticed a couple of common themes: first, Twitter is a fundamentally different social network, better equipped for snappier content.

Second, Tweets should be useful and inspire retweeting.

And a GREAT way of being useful is to contribute to Twitter discussions, or even host them. This can be through direct messages (private), or ideally, through public Twitter threads.

participate in Twitter chats

And when it’s appropriate? Suggest a blog post you wrote that addresses a person’s question.

30. Do the same thing, but on subreddits and forums!

It’s one thing to find a subreddit in your area (see #12), and a whole other thing to participate in it. Here’s the thing about Reddit that separates it from most other social media sites:

On other popular platforms, most people you know post and share. On Reddit, the VAST majority of users are “lurkers”—looking, but not participating.

This is a common phenomenon on the internet, and is called the 1% rule.

Reddit is a particularly strong example of the 1% rule, so this means that when you contribute to or host discussions on Reddit, you’re seriously shaping content in that subreddit.

Because subreddits and forums are best-suited for more in-depth discussions on niche topics, it is ABSOLUTELY one of the best places for you to shine with your expertise.

31. If it comes down to it, consider starting a subreddit on a topic or niche.

This is really just an extension of the previous idea, but it might be a tad intense for some people. You won’t hear this advice often—but I’m confident it’s one of the most overlooked and underused ways of promoting your content.

Anyone with a Reddit account that’s been active for more than a month can start a subreddit. It’s totally free.

Subreddits are based on topic—they’re not supposed to work like Facebook pages, for example. How to market your blog on Reddit is not clear-cut, so a lot of bloggers just don’t do it.

But if you make a subreddit about your blog’s focus, you can 1) seriously contribute to the conversation, 2) get immediate insights on the conversation, 3) get a great reputation.

32. If you’re really feeling confident, consider starting a subreddit for your blog.

I know I just said subreddits aren’t supposed to work like Facebook pages. But sometimes, when an internet personality is sufficiently popular, they’ll make their own subreddit for fans to post and discuss things about them.

These subreddits are also used for promotion, but mix in well with organic discussion from the community.

Most subreddits created for promotional reasons are from artists, cosplayers, and story-tellers. But check this out:

consider starting a subreddit

This is a subreddit based on a dude’s blog. It’s a bit niche, but it’s got a dedicated community. They don’t only discuss the blog’s posts, but all sorts of stuff related to that field.

And his blog has become significantly more popular because the subreddit has a great reputation for interesting discussion.

33. Don’t neglect Instagram.

Instagram is an enormously popular social network, but not used by bloggers for promotion nearly as often as the other social networks (for obvious reasons).

The thing is, visual content is very easy to consume, and if you have the resources, Instagram could be a great way of making your content easy to view.

Here’s Neil Patel’s Instagram page:

See? He’s got a link to his blog, a short and easy to digest bio. His posts make you want to read more.

34. On LinkedIn, try focusing on skill building and business.

You’ll probably have a lot of overlap between your posts on different social networks, but on LinkedIn, you should still cater to the LinkedIn culture.

Meaning, it’s best to focus on things that interest professionals, and the value your blog can bring to them.

So bringing out your business success stories, case studies, and stuff about building skills will do better on LinkedIn, for example. And, people on LinkedIn will usually be less resistant to promoting your blog to increase traffic.

35. Use longer descriptions on Pinterest.

Pinterest is popularly used by bloggers, but you might not know how to market your blog there.

Think of Pinterest as having some overlap with a search engine. Like a search engine, having keywords in your descriptions will help people find your pins.

This means that writing longer descriptions gives you more of an opportunity to use keywords without spamming them or making them look tactless.

Also, there’s some limited evidence that descriptions with more than 300 characters get the most repins—but take that with a grain of salt.

36. Use Pinterest group boards.

Pinterest group boards work similarly to groups on other social networks: they’re a community built around a certain topic.

This expands the amount of people who will see your content and your contributions.

Especially because when someone “follows all” of a person’s boards, they’ll also end up following the board you contribute to!

37. Use Promoted Tweets.

People see Promoted Tweets all the time, every time they use Twitter in fact. Sponsored and promoted posts are common on every major social network.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that I recommend this—but I’d like to point out an extra advantage of promoted Tweets in particular:

Tweets are short. People might ignore a sponsored Facebook post, but a promoted Tweet is easier to take in, even with a glance.

38. Pay to promote your blog on Facebook.

There are two main ways you can do this: you can pay for an ad that stands out more as an advertisement, and a boosted post is a post you pay to…boost to an audience.

Technically both are ads, but Facebook ads are more customizable and are more obvious as ads. Boosted posts show up in users’ timelines alongside other, regular posts.

You can read more about the distinction here.

People do this because it works—Facebook gives you access to a lot of people, so you can more easily reach the right audience/demographic with ads and boosted posts.

39. Use LinkedIn sponsored content to promote your blog.

Again, think of paying to advertise on Facebook: you get access to a large number of people who you can then narrow down into specific target audiences to advertise to.

But again, LinkedIn people are probably going to be more receptive to certain types of content that you’re already probably writing about.

But first, I would recommend figuring out which of your LinkedIn posts have done the best organically, and then sponsoring them.

40. Use LinkedIn Groups to promote your blog.

This is fairly similar to creating or participating in Facebook Groups and Pinterest Boards.

Use linkedin groups to promote your blog

The difference, of course, is your LinkedIn social network is probably a bit different from your Facebook or Pinterest or Twitter audiences, and as I said earlier, probably expecting business-related and professional posts.

This actually means that LinkedIn Groups will usually be a more suitable place for your blog promotion than groups on other social networks.

41. And of course, Reddit ads.

But on this, I must say:

Beware.

Reddit is a bit different from the aforementioned sites—people sort of expect ads and promoted content on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Redditors, on the other hand, are used to ads but…they strongly dislike them. Advertised and promoted content is thus something to be handled carefully, particularly if you find Reddit a good place for your blog and brand.

That said, you can either buy adspace on Reddit, or you can pay to have posts promoted. Either can work.

Use Reditt ads to promote your blog

42. Thank readers for sharing!

First off, you’re already grateful someone shared your content, so that’s a good reason to thank them.

Secondly, it’s good to encourage people for supporting your blog, and it might even make them more inclined to do so again in the future.

Thirdly, it’s a good way to recommend other posts you think they might like. For instance, “Thanks a ton for sharing! If you liked that post, you might also like this one: ___.”

43. In general, contribute to aggregate sites and up-vote communities.

If you need a refresher, aggregate sites have information from a lot of different sources related to certain topics. They frequently use up and down vote buttons to let users rate the submitted content.

Yes, including Reddit. I’ve talked about Reddit quite a bit so far, but it’s not the only aggregate site or up-vote community.

Here are some other examples of aggregate sites and upvote communities:

StumbleUpon, BizSugar, Product Hunt, Hacker News, Triberr, Inbound.org.

When relevant, you could promote your blog to increase traffic and see how the community reacts.

44. Focus on practicality and utility in your shared posts.

If I haven’t emphasized this enough, let me make it crystal clear:

When you share your posts on social media, make them USEFUL.

Because one of the best ways to be appreciated is to bring tangible value to peoples’ lives. You blog because you have expertise and intelligence. Share it with people.

This is important for sharing posts in particular because you want people to repost and re-share.

45. Place social media sharing buttons in prominent places.

These are the buttons that let readers share certain posts on different social media platforms.

It’s one of the most common answers to the issue of how to market your blog.

Here’s an example of what those look like on our site (on the left):

place social media sharing buttons in prominent places to promote your blog

Notice how we put the buttons near the top of the page, close to the post’s header image.

Social media sharing buttons hit two birds with one stone: it lets people increase your social media presence and drive traffic to your blog!

46. Use Sumo to double down on the sharing buttons.

Sumo is an app/WordPress plugin that basically gives you a more intense way of adding social media sharing buttons.

In short: it adds the sharing buttons to the start of the article, on the left side, and at the very end as well.

Here’s an example page so you can see it in action.

47. Share with people who have already shared your content.

Sound intuitive? Well, good, because this works.

People who have already shared your content are more likely to share it again. And if you can get some of the same people to consistently share your content? Even better!

The core idea here is to pay special attention to the people online who are helping you out and supporting your content.

48. Share with people who share similar content.

This is similar to the previous method of promoting your blog, but it might take a little more effort on your part.

After all, it’s a little less likely they’ll share your content, compared to people who have already shared your content.

The important part, of course, is that these people are already sharers, and if they like the content, they are more likely to spread it than the average person.

So make it a point to share to them!

49. Share with people who write similar content.

This overlaps a bit with contacting influencers, but it’s a bit different.

Because let’s face the facts—not everyone who writes about a certain topic is an influencer. More so the opposite.

Nonetheless, many other bloggers are eager to grow with others, instead of purely competing. Some of the people most likely to share your content are those who write similar content.

50. In forums, answer questions using your blog posts.

This is in a similar vein to hosting Twitter threads and participating in forums and subreddits. Except, this is more explicit:

Find a question or topic that you have a blog post for. Make sure it’s pretty relevant, or you’ll probably be written off as someone only interested in self-promotion.

Forum culture varies between forums, but at the end of the day, if you’re actually contributing, it won’t always be bad to promote your blog.

51. Use social bookmarking sites to promote your blog.

This may be a new one to you: social bookmarking sites share some overlap with aggregate sites, but differ in that social bookmarking sites focus more on pure web links. Aggregate sites in practice often include reposting of images and uploading of content itself.

Plus, some social bookmarking sites let you apply to have your blog presented on the sites. Meaning when people try to discover posts and content, they may find your blog’s stuff!

So when you wonder how to get traffic to your blog, social bookmarking sites are a logical answer because the whole model is about directing people to different sites.

At the moment, Digg, Flipboard, StumbleUpon, and AllTop are good for submitting your blog!

52. Use reciprocal sharing sites to promote your blog.

Reciprocal sharing sites let you earn credits (or some version of points) for sharing other people’s content. Then, you can use your credits to post your content—and others will share it to get more credits themselves.

At the moment, Triberr and Viral Content Bee are top reciprocal sharing sites and good options.

A word of caution: don’t expect this to be easy free traffic. You still should participate, target a niche, and contribute!

53. Have an email campaign/use email marketing to promote your blog.

This is actually a bigger tip—it’s a bit like saying “share on social media.”

Nonetheless, email marketing campaigns are one of the biggest answers to the question of how to market your blog.

Which means, there are a bunch of smaller tips and tricks for the email promotion, which will follow this one.

But for now, here are a few key points:

Almost everyone uses email—the vast majority of internet users have email, even more than social media.

You won’t be spamming, but you also won’t be a best friend writing personal letters. Presumably you have some sort of interaction with the person—as in, you have gotten their email for a reason.

Of course I’ve got more to say! Here are the specifics:

54. Build your email list to promote your blog.

This is a major point. It sounds obvious, but it may be one of the more arduous parts—and there are some fundamentals that ought to be adhered to.

You won’t be building your email list because you hacked a million people’s Facebook accounts. You’re a real person, who’s going to be getting people’s emails with their permission.

To put it briefly: you can’t have an email campaign without a reliable list of people to email.

Sumo (mentioned earlier) has some email list-building software. So does OptinMonster, LeadPages, Unbounce, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, and plenty of others.

55. Have something to offer in exchange for an email address (aka, a lead magnet).

To an extent, you can probably get people to give you an email address because they agree with what your vocal about, or otherwise want to hear from you.

So at the most basic level, you are offering your blog. But you can still do better than that, because that won’t be enough for a lot of people.

I encourage you to be creative here, and to use your knowledge of your audience and potential contacts best.

But some tried and proven reliable ways of offering something in exchange for emails: online flipbooks, ebooks, white papers, other original research and reporting, links to free downloads, and lists of updates are all pretty good!

There are also newsletters…but I’ll tell you more about that later!

Once your lead magnets are working, you’ll attract people to your email list, and from there you’ll have a regular audience to promote your content to!

56. Send those emails at good times.

Optimal posting time does not only apply to social media. It might seem harder to know when the best times to send emails are, as email is more nebulous than certain audiences on certain social media sites.

But you’re in luck: MailChimp actually has a feature called Send Time Optimization that focuses on exactly that.

While you’d need to use MailChimp to make the most of that feature, despite that data varies person to person and campaign to campaign…there is some solid research available from when MailChimp made the feature.

Short version: weekdays tend to work best, with slight peaks on Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually in the morning (between 7 and 10am).

57. Send emails as you launch new posts.

This is basically the email campaign equivalent of sharing a post on social media right after you publish it.

However, email can sometimes be more potent, as it’s going straight to a person’s inbox.

And if you have actual readers on your email list, you have a fair chance of getting views on your post right off the bat.

So when wondering how to get traffic to your blog, remember that emails notifying of new posts are highly used for a reason.

58. Use Email newsletters to promote your blog.

Newsletters can be a good way of incentivizing people to give you their email, as I discussed earlier.

But they’re also just a generally good thing to send out to keep people subscribed and loyal.

Plus, you don’t have to do that much extra work—you can repurpose your existing content from the last week or two, plus whatever older posts you think might be relevant/interesting.

59. Try plain text emails.

As you may expect, this isn’t 100% proven true—but I find there’s still good evidence for this, and lines up with some suspicions I’ve held for a while.

At first it may seem like plain text emails aren’t a good way to promote your blog to increase traffic.

If you think about it though, it makes sense: you probably expect and even enjoy having visually stimulating stuff on social media.

BUT in your email inbox, you probably get frustrated with spammy emails full of graphics and big fonts. Plain text emails tend to be what you get from your friends, family, and coworkers—in other words, “real” people.

HubSpot put out a report on this: plain-text emails repeatedly had higher clickthrough and open rates, even though people tend to say they don’t prefer plain-text emails.

60. Use software for automated email marketing!

Earlier, when I talked about building an email list, I mentioned some software names. Well, a lot of list-building software also lets you automate email campaigns.

Nowadays, pretty much everyone does, and it’d be a huge expense of time and energy to run an email campaign that’s not automated.

The software ranges in complexity and features, but the gist tends to be the same—edit your emails, manage your lists, time when they get sent out, and so on.

Some good examples of automated email marketing software are: Constant Contact, Zoho Campaigns, SendinBlue, Hubspot, Campaigner, Pardot, Infusionsoft, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign.

61. Enable social shares in emails to promote your blog.

This is basically the same concept as having sharing buttons in your posts.

But as you’d expect, this is a little more potent, because you’re basically giving the sharing option to a person directly, rather than waiting for them to visit your site.

It’s also one of the BEST ways of getting your post a presence on social media quickly.

62. Include links to your blog or certain posts in your email signature.

Using certain software, you can customize email in a way you wouldn’t expect, including your signature.

And one of the more unique ways promoting your blog to increase traffic is to put a link to your latest post right in your signature.

Because it stands out, it’s a good way of getting people to notice something they might otherwise glaze over! Doing something a little more refreshing like that is a good way of tackling the issue of how to get people to read your blog.

63. Resend emails…using the words that worked for the emails that got read the most.

Sounds basic, but it’s easy to neglect. Using email marketing software you’ll get some insights on what emails were opened and how engaged contacts were with them.

You’ll usually find some trends emerging, and the wording of some emails will probably be better than others. For example, you might be using a lot more humor in the body of a certain email, and it might have been read more than anything else you’ve drafted.

So take what worked best in the best-received emails, and edit your other emails to fit that better—then resend!

64. A/B test emails.

When you want to resend emails as described above, you don’t want to rely on trial and error alone to figure out what gets opened the most.

Luckily, you can do A/B testing: create two different emails, and see what happens to each. You can test for the main text, but it’s also a great idea to test the subject lines.

Example: Email A’s subject line says “Big mistakes in choosing a web host,” and email B’s says “5 mistakes my clients overcame in choosing a web host.” Email B’s may have a higher open rate—a great insight.

Sometimes you’ll do this manually, but often software will make this pretty easy.

This is simply the most efficient way of finding out what works best in your emails.

65. Create subgroups in your email lists.

This is especially important as your email list grows in size and you expand readership, but it’s important for a range of email list sizes.

At the end of the day, an email list alone fails to capture a lot of the diversity of your contacts. There will usually be subgroups of your audience, interested in specific aspects of what you write about.

You can create subgroups any which way—by level of interest, by topic of interest (if it’s known), by demographic, and so on.

This lets you target email campaigns MUCH more precisely!

66. Get featured on round-up emails to promote your blog.

This one is a bit different from the normal email campaign stuff I’ve been talking about so far.

If you’re unfamiliar with this, it’s pretty simple: picture all those round-up articles you’ve seen. Meaning, collections of the best articles or blogs on a certain topic, in a single blog post or article. To give you an idea, here’s a round up that we did few months ago.

Well, people do that via email, too—and the more dedicated readers will be into it.

They’re not too hard to find, just search this:

get on roundup emails to promote your blog

67. Get featured on round-up posts/articles to promote your blog.

You already know what round-up articles are, but you might not have thought of trying to get featured on them before.

You can dig around popular blogs that put out round-up posts in your industry, if you’re familiar with that sphere already.

If not, you can search for them just the way you’d search for round-up emails. Enter this:

“intitle:roundup” + industry or keyword here.

For example:

68. Set up an RSS feed (if you don’t have one) and share it with your audience.

RSS feeds sound old-school, but they’re still fairly popular. In particular, your more dedicated blog-reading audience may still use RSS feeds to find content they like.

If you use WordPress, you already have a built-in RSS feed for your posts. The URL will be something like:

http:// (website here) .com/blog/feed

If you don’t have WordPress, you can set one up pretty easily by Googling around. Once you’ve got an RSS Feed set up, just send it out through email and social media!

69. Ask your partners and/or affiliates to share your stuff.

Assuming you have partners or affiliates: you have them because they can help you grow your audience.

So use them! Aside from getting their advice, many can help you promote your blog.

A common example would be an affiliate including one of your posts in their newsletter, or just something as simple as a social media share.

70. Write a guest post to promote your blog!

Don’t be too suspicious: guest posts can be a SUPER effective way of reaching new people and building your email list, social media subscribers, etc.

People who are already reading the other blog may be more inclined to check yours out because a site they trust featured your guest post—a good way to get people to read your blog.

And aside from letting you reach new audiences, you can build credibility and new relationships with all sorts of blogs in your sphere.

71. Heck, have a guest-post campaign!

Depending on how much original reporting, research, or insight you’ve got on a certain topic, you could launch an extended guest-posting campaign.

Split your insights or findings into smaller components, and then make each one a guest post for an extended guest-post tour.

Same concept as before, but you’re also highlighting and giving a reputation to your research!

72. Try co-marketing to promote your blog!

Also known as cross-marketing, this is when two marketing teams/professionals from different organizations work together on a piece of content.

A real collaboration like this can easily expose you to new readers, and some will be more inclined to read check out your blog if it collaborated with their favorite blog.

You can also do a content trade for similar effect: where you and the other party write a blog post for each other.

Blogging and blog promotion doesn’t need to be a zero sum game!

try co-marketing to promote your blog

73. Help readers email your blog posts to their circles.

This tactic is surprisingly underused. Many people do not enjoy posting much on social media—they may not care for sharing to everyone.

These same people are fairly likely to share things on an individual basis, including through email.

And recommendations emailed to you by a friend, on a personal level? I’m much more likely to open those, that’s for sure. This is a great blog promotion tactic.

Two good examples of tools for this would be WP-Email and Email This Page, which are WordPress plugins that basically add an “email this” button to your posts.

74. Syndicate your content to promote your blog.

Syndication is a great blog promotion tactic because it doesn’t require a ton of energy, but can yield serious results.

Syndication basically means getting your stuff republished onto other sites. It’s a pretty natural, organic way of promoting your blog and it’s especially great for newer blogs that don’t have a lot of posts.

75. Have employees promote your posts.

This is assuming, of course, you have employees, but this could also apply to coworkers. If your blog overlaps pretty well with your industry, even better.

And if your blog is run by your team, then this should be a no-brainer: of course you can ask your team members to promote posts to their circles and friends.

76. Have customers link to your blog.

This is a way of link building, and it’s similar to co-marketing or asking affiliates to help promote your stuff.

The good thing about asking a customer is they presumably already liked your stuff enough to have purchased something from you.

Not only is it that much of a stress, but this surprisingly can make your relationship with a customer more personable—it sounds counterintuitive, but your customer may appreciate being asked to help a business they use.

77. Prioritize promoters when you link to people.

I’ve talked about influencers, external links, and citing sources. Here’s an important nuance: prioritizing promoters means the people who are more active in spreading content.

For example, let’s say contact A is super active on the r/WordPress subreddit, but doesn’t have a lot of resources. Contact B is the opposite: more resources, but not active in posting links.

Of course this is a case-by-case thing, but the general rule is to prioritize the people who do a lot of promotion and spreading of other peoples’ content.

Simply put, if you want to market your blog, get help from someone who can be guaranteed to help market it with you!

78. Interview influential bloggers to promote your blog.

This is a step above telling an influencer you linked or quoted them in your post. You’d be surprised how many influencers would be very agreeable for an interview.

You don’t need to literally get together in the same room, or even have a Skype call—you could literally email them some questions.

This makes your content much more robust. And what’s better? An influencer is much more likely to share your post with their followers if they’ve got a notable presence in the post.

79. Invite said influencers and bloggers to contribute to your blog

This is a step above the last step above, so to speak. In short, aside from just interviewing an influencer, you can ask them to be more involved and contribute directly.

You could also do this with multiple influencers. It can overlap with an interview, but getting quotes or short pieces from multiple influencers not only makes your content more dynamic, but means it’s likely to get shared to more people.

80. Try to build real relationships with people in the blogosphere and social media.

What’s that thing I’ve been saying about promoting your blog on subreddits and forums?

Oh, yeah—be careful.

At the end of the day, you can’t be too one-sided with your blog promotion. If you can actually participate in discussions and build relationships with people online, your blog is far more likely to be well-received.

81. On that note…DON’T SPAM.

Yes, we get it: you have to put your blog out there. You’ve got to post regularly, on different social networks and forums and so on. You’ve got to email.

But if you overdo it, you will be written off as spam. DO NOT spam people’s inboxes or forums. Have tact.

If people think you’re spamming—you’ll get written off immediately. And if you’re seen as a spammer in a more public community online (compared to email, for example), your blog traffic will really suffer.

82. In general, try to build a loyal audience.

This is an essential bit of advice that is super easy to forget, but it hits the big question of how to get people to read your blog. Many of us are swayed by the idea of suddenly exploding into popularity.

If you’re a blogger, one of your biggest priorities should be in building an audience that regularly reads your content.

And more often than not, that means a SMALLER audience, at least at first. But don’t underestimate having that core group of loyal readers.
build a loyal audience to promote your blog

83. A major takeaway: collaborate, and share each other’s content!

Remember when I said you should share with people who write similar content?

Well, the reason that works is the reason this works: collaboration is important for bloggers.

Because at the end of the day, blogging doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. You can both win when you collaborate with another blog.

If you share each other’s content you can grow your audience, and besides that, your audience will benefit from the exposure to other quality content.

84. Work on your linking game: make sure people are linking to your blog!

Sound obvious? Well, it’s important for another reason.

The obvious reason is that if people are linking to your blog, you’ll be getting more traffic and more views.

But here’s the other reason:

The more links your blog or site gets, the more Google and other search engines take notice. Your blog will have a better chance at staying at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) if you’re being linked to.

85. On that note, work on content that’s ready to go viral.

I’ve cautioned earlier about the allure of going viral. That really just means this: don’t put all your faith in going viral at the expense of other important things.

You should still optimize your blog for viral sharing though.

And one of the best ways to do that? BE NEWSWORTHY.

Keep a close eye on what’s going on in your industry or field. Be first to report, or come out with a good point on the latest developments.

This makes it far more likely that people will spread your content as they digest and share the news.

86. Regularly include external links.

This one is dicey. First of all, YES, it is important to link to other websites in your blog. For a few reasons:

First, you should be part of the conversation, not shut yourself off from what others are saying.

Second, you should give credit where it’s due. You’d want people to do the same for you.

Third, search engines will value your site more if you’re linking to other sites.

87. But be careful about your external links.

Here’s the nuance: be careful about linking to competitors. This isn’t a hard rule—like I said, you should give credit where it’s due and be ready to collaborate—but you also don’t want to overdo it.

This really depends on your situation, but a safe way of doing external links is linking to non-competitors who still add value to your article.

For example: chances are you’re not competing with the New York Times. If you are, NYT is so famous anyway that it’s not like you’re alerting your readers to a new blog—either way, a NYT article could be one safe external link.

But you could also link to studies and journals as well as news articles safely. Be open-minded!

Here’s an example of an external link to a non-competitor:

88. Do internal links too, of course!

External links aren’t the only things you should put in your blog posts.

Internal links are ESSENTIAL to promoting your blog.

First, internal links keep readers clicking through your blog. So that’s great.

But secondly, from the perspective of a search engine:

Internal links connect your content and your site. They also establish the site hierarchy, so Google will better understand what pages should be ranked above others, and so on.

This article by Yoast (the popular SEO plugin) explains how internal linking helps search engines understand your site.

89. Do keyword research to promote your blog.

Keyword research is a fundamental of search engine optimization. Whether you’re paying for an intense SEO software or using a free tool and resourcefulness, you should be doing keyword research to get traffic to your blog.

The gist is simple: figure out what terms people are using in search engines. The more you understand about these terms, the better you can curate your content.

This Hubspot article has a good overview of keyword research. And Neil Patel, one of the most successful digital marketers in the world, has a more complex guide to doing keyword research.

90. Target one keyword per blog post (if you’re just starting out).

If you’ve not done much keyword research or keyword campaigning, it can seem overwhelming.

Plus, the thing about keyword research and SEO campaigns is, sometimes you can never do enough. Heck, it can be a fulltime job, which is why so many blogs simply hire people to just focus on keywords.

So if you’re a smaller blog and have limited time and resources, the best thing to do is start small: simply target one keyword per blog post.

If you are careful about choosing the right keyword, you can get a surprising boost in the SERPs.

91. Optimize posts for keywords.

Once you know your keyword(s), optimize your posts for those keywords.

Here’re some examples of doing that:

Making sure your keyword is in the meta description of the post; using it in the page title tag; using it in your main headline; placing it throughout your post; making sure it’s within the first 100 words of the post.

That said, just be careful not to overuse the keyword—it’ll turn off your readers and Google may read the page as spammy.

92. Use Google Ads and Bing Ads to promote your blog.

You’ve definitely heard of Adwords (now known as Google Ads), but there’s a fair chance you haven’t used them.

Google Adwords basically has you and other advertisers bid on keywords to have them appear in results (same with Bing Ads and other search engines).

Google Ads are not foolproof, but if you are intelligent about the keywords you want to target, it can be effective. After all, people still use it ALL the time, so something’s going right.

use google ads

93. Buy ad space in the “related content” sections of top sites.

A lot of bloggers don’t know that they can do this, but it can be a really effective.

Simply put, top sites sell ad space in the “related content” section of their articles. You can use recommendation engines like Outbrain, Taboola, or Zemanta to buy space in different sites.

As these sites are already popular and getting lots of traffic and readership naturally, this is a good way of benefitting from the growth of the bigger players.

94. Use web analytics tools.

There’s a ton of software for this, and a lot of it overlaps. There’s SEO software that can audit your site and keyword and linking strategy.

There’re also things built-in to some website builders that will tell you the basics of where your visitors came from.

But it’s usually worth investing in something that will give you a more in-depth look at how visitors got to your site.

Google Analytics is probably the biggest example: it tells you how many visitors got to your blog from organic searches, how many of them came by clicking a link, how many came from social networks, etc.

95. Use tools that are specifically geared for social media monitoring.

The reason this gets a separate listing is because some SEO software may not do much social media monitoring, and Google Analytics doesn’t do a great job of it either.

So many bloggers and companies invest in tools that are dedicated to social media monitoring.

Some good examples: Twitter Analytics, Pinterest Analytics, BuzzSumo, Awario, Keyhole, and Mention are all worth checking out. But they are by no means your only options!

96. Submit to search engines.

A HUGE number of bloggers think that once they set a meta-description, use a couple keywords, and publish their post, that Google will automatically find it and index it somewhere.

Google & co will be happy to index, but first they need to be alerted to your site’s existence.

Submitting to a search engine is pretty easy: you can use the Google XML Sitemap plugin to generate a sitemap, which is useful in helping search engines understanding your site and your new posts.

You can also submit when you make new posts, also with that aforementioned plugin or any others that are reputable.

97. Put links to related articles/a “related articles” section at the end of your blog posts.

This is a method of using internal links, but it’s more visual in nature and also helps your blog look more engaging.

Various plugins will let you display some related posts at the bottom of every blog post. Some notable examples are Related Posts, Yuzo Related Posts, and Contextual Related Posts.

98. In your new posts, link to your best and most popular posts.

This is a good way of implementing the internal linking I talked about earlier.

When you link to your best-performing posts in your new posts, you 1) give readers more stuff to look at on your blog, and 2) improve your internal linking game.

Here’s an example of a newer post I made, which links to a popular older post (about Bluehost):

best and most popular posts.

99. Visa versa: update your best posts to have links to your new posts.

This is an inversion of the previous, but the same basic concept is at work insofar as you’re improving your internal linking game.

But instead of boosting your already well-performing posts, you boost the posts you just made!

For example: this article I put out about the best WordPress hosting is popular and 8 months old. But it has links throughout to newer and updated posts I’ve made.

100. Make sure to fill out your meta descriptions, etc.

When you get started with WordPress or other platforms, you’ll be asked to fill out meta-descriptions, meta-titles, and so on.

A lot of beginners ignore this stuff, and focus on doing the content first. It’s understandable, but a mistake: these things are a basic building block of how your site look in search engine results.

A lot of popular plugins let you edit this stuff in a little more detail or with some more insight. Yoast is a popular plugin that lets you work on meta-descriptions for free.

101. Don’t only change headlines as you post—also change up meta descriptions, subheadings, etc.

As you share over and over, it’s easy to fall into repetition. What a lot of people do is change up the post headline.

That’s good, but it shouldn’t stop there. You can also switch up your meta-description, subheading, quotes, and your big points or takeaways when you repost on social media.

102. Use pop-ups to promote your blog.

Don’t groan: pop-ups are annoying, but people use them for a reason.

And that’s because they can sometimes work.

Now, as someone who generally is not a fan of pop-ups, I’d like to clarify that your pop-ups don’t need to be awful. You can make pop-ups USEFUL to your readers. For example:

use pop-ups
You can try out various pop-up plugins to find the ones with best conversion.

103. Use pop-ins to promote your blog.

Here’s a safer alternative to pop-ups: pop-ins are basically very small pop-ups.

Instead of taking up the center of your readers’ screen, a lot of space, pop-ins are small and usually in the lower-right corner.

They’re less intrusive and spammy, but serve the same basic purpose. And like I said earlier—you should make them useful to your visitors, so you have nothing to worry about.

104. Retargeting/remarketing!

Remarketing, also known as retargeting, means showing ads to people who have already visited your site.

This is of course because people who’ve already visited your site are more likely to do so again, and remarketing can reach most of the people who’ve already visited your site.

Of course, a word of caution: don’t be too pushy or annoying in your advertising. You don’t want to push away would-be returning visitors.

105. Use push notifications through the browser, instead of email.

One way of reaching people who are uninterested in joining an email list is to use a “web push.”

A web push is a less intrusive way of having people subscribe to new content: a push notification shows up in the web browser when a new post has been published.

Web/browser push notifications are surprisingly common: the biggest example tends to be major news outlets. But using various software or WordPress plugins you can make it an option for your blog as well!

106. Have mobile-friendly push notifications to promote your blog

Everyone uses a phone. If you look at your analytics, you’ll almost definitely find a large portion of your traffic is coming from mobile devices.

You don’t want to neglect promoting to mobile users, so it’s good to look into push notifications.

Pushbullet is one of the more notable examples of an app that will help you set up push notifications, but it’s not the only one!

107. Test out different headlines, especially with A/B testing.

I’ve already talked about A/B testing headlines in email: seeing which of two headlines gets the most opens and clickthroughs.

You should also do that with headlines outside of your email campaigns! In particular, it’s a good method for figuring out what works best on social media.

It’s also good to try IN GENERAL, for your actual posts (not just for social media or email promotion).

Using social media analytics, SEO software, or general web analytics, you can find out which headlines got the most clickthroughs and what should be done more!

108. Choose from a few main, reliable types of headlines.

This is something to keep in mind when you’re making a bunch of different headlines: there are a few very reliable types of headlines that are best to use as a framework.

The good people over at CoSchedule analyzed over a million headlines and found the most common types of headlines in the most highly-shared posts.

So at the moment: Lists, How-to’s, and questions are the types of headlines that get the most traffic and searches.

It’d be best to stick to those tried-and-true formulas…with your own pizzazz of course!

109. Include numbers in your headlines.

I don’t have hard scientific data for this, but this is a phenomenon I have for sure experienced and that countless other bloggers have noted.

When you include numbers in your headlines and title posts, you’re probably going to bring in more readers.

Using numbers tells your readers exactly what they’ll get—x number of reasons or solutions, for example.

You can Google just about anything and see this in action (because it works):

See what I mean?

110. Use emotional language in headlines to promote your blog.

This isn’t hard science, but there is still quite a bit of evidence backing this up. Garrett Moon, founder of CoSchedule, analyzed over a million headlines (mentioned earlier) and found emotional posts and reputable posts had a high frequency of emotional words.

People at BuzzSumo did a similar analysis of 100 million headlines and found the same thing: emotion is super important in getting clicks and getting interactions on social networks.

This also makes perfect sense intuitively, and lines up with what most of us experience on the internet.

Some examples: “___ make you smile,” “___ make you cry,” “___give you goosebumps,” and so on.

111. Create long-form pieces to promote your blog.

You don’t need to restrict yourself to long-form posts, but they are useful and ought to be posted often.

It makes sense that each blog post gives its topic as much as it can—that you say as much as you can. It gives you more opportunities to use your target keywords and looks more genuine to readers.

For example—I could’ve made a post called “15 tried and tested ways to promote your blog.” I didn’t.

112. When you have short pieces, make sure they’re useful.

Once again, being useful is key. And going back to the previous item, you want your posts to be genuine and not hold back.

Of course there are times when it’s useful to have a short post. In those times, it’s best to be useful—reduce the amount of fluff and give your audience what they’re coming for.

113. Have a powerful introduction.

To be brutally honest, most visitors won’t read far into your posts. If you want to know how to get people to read your blog, you really need to know how to KEEP them from leaving.

This is actually backed up by evidence: this Slate article talks about some solid analysis that tells us what we all know—most people rarely read down an entire page.

This means that you should make sure your introduction HOOKS readers right away. And after that…

114. Put the conclusion first.

Yep, after you’ve got a good hook and catchy opening fact or anecdote, make sure you tell readers the conclusion.

Don’t tell them everything—give them enough to keep reading—but make sure they can get value out of your post IMMEDIATELY.

Again, think of the Slate piece—most readers won’t make it past the beginning. So give them something to stick around for.

115. Embed infographics to promote your blog.

Earlier I cited some work done by BuzzSumo analyzing lots of posts. Well, their other research also revealed this insight:

Infographics are ENORMOUSLY popular and among the most shareable forms of content. Neil Patel has described them as the most shared form of online content (though I’m not sure that’s literally true).

Anyway, the point stands. Embedding infographics allows you to both convey information and appeal to visuals.

It makes your content stand out and MUCH more likely to be shared and reposted.

116. Does it need to be said? Yes, it does. Use IMAGES to promote your blog.

Appealing to visuals can’t be underestimated. Even if they’re not infographics, it’s a good idea in general to be constantly using images in your posts.

I’ll go over some more detailed tips about images, but briefly: adding visuals greatly increases your post engagement. Even people who love to read plain text usually can’t help looking at images.

117. Even better: create original images and content.

You can use stock images, but be wary of overdoing it. The more original image content you have, the more reputable your blog will look.

Heck, your followers will feel better about sharing your content if the visuals stand out and are original.

Here’s an example of an original image used for a review on HostingPill:

create original images to promote your blog

118. Have text overlaying the images.

This sounds like a weird level of detail to specify, but trust me on this. You actually ALWAYS see images with text overlays—and not just as funny memes.

Blogs and magazines do this all the time, because it’s a good way of enhancing images and graphics without being too overwhelming.

Not as intense as an infographic, but with some extra context and info for the image.

Here’s an example from our site, again:

Have text overlaying the images  to promote your blog

119. Optimize your blog’s images for sharing.

This goes for all sorts of visuals—GIFs and video as well as static pictures.

All these things can be optimized to increase social media sharing. It’s not too hard to optimize these files: keep them small, make sure you name them, and if it’s relevant, use pictures of faces (they draw people in more).

Doing these simple things is highly effective at getting traffic to your blog.

Example? Just look up!

120. Use image sharing buttons to promote your blogs.

You’re scrolling through a blog post, and you move your cursor over an image.

Several little icons for social networks pop out: these are buttons that, if clicked, let you share the image to those social networks.

That’s what image sharing buttons are, and I highly recommend them. Using popular plugins, such as SumoMe, you can make it easy for readers to share pictures. Always make it easier for people to promote your blog to increase traffic!

121. Make sure you’ve worked on your content’s overall visual appeal.

I know, I know—I’m talking a lot about images and pictures. What the heck does this even mean?

This actually doesn’t necessarily mean pictures in your blog posts, though it usually overlaps with it.

No, what I’m talking about is the overall visual appeal of your posts and blog.

Even if you have fantastic original images and infographics…are your posts’ fonts easy to read? Is each post one big block of text? Or is it too many tiny little lines?

While it’s sure to vary blog to blog, it’s ESSENTIAL your content’s overall visually appealing. If it’s not…you can bet visitors won’t stay long.

122. Publish content consistently.

This is another fundamental that’s surprisingly easy to neglect. Sharing posts on social media consistently is relatively easy—since it’s easy to share content on social media.

But publishing content consistently means writing consistently, and that’s tough. It’s also one of the single most important things you can do.

Putting out new content regularly looks good in search engines AND gives you the best chance of holding on to people who’ve liked your content in the past. And it gives all visitors the expectation of more, as long as they keep an eye on your blog.

123. Quote experts to promote your blog.

Experts does not equal “influencers.” Oh, they overlap for sure—many influencers are experts in their field.

But experts also means just about every scientist, researcher, and top marketer who’s got hard numbers and/or credibility.

Quoting experts lets your readers know you’re not just making it all up. Simple as that—the more convincing you are, the stronger your blog is.

124. Be unique.

Oh, you think it’s a no-brainer? Well, I’m sorry—why are there a bajillion of the SAME blogs out there?

It’s hard to be a unique blog…and a popular one. Using SEO and generally promoting your blog means doing some of what everyone is doing.

But you’ve still got to hammer home a strong sense of site identity and uniqueness. Or else, few will be interested enough to check you out, and the ones who do may not remember you.

125. Tell stories to promote your blog.

Blogging is a great medium for stories. Even if you’re 100% concerned with the cold-hard facts, stories make your content relatable and digestible.

They can be short, by the way—literally a sentence or two, but it’ll hold your visitors’ eyes longer than some other sentences might.

For example: my reviews tend to mix the facts with my ups-and-downs in testing a host or software.

126. Respond quickly to trends.

This isn’t just a key aspect of optimizing your content for going viral (discussed earlier). This is just an overall good thing to do.

When you respond quickly to trends, it is FAR more likely you’ll be cited and used as a source by the people who come after you.

That means, aside from getting a good rep for being on top of the news, you’ll get linked to. And that doesn’t just mean traffic boosts, but SERP boosts!

127. Be helpful!

Okay, you get it—be useful. Well, so far I’ve been talking about your content and your social interactions on forums/social media.

But what if I told you that’s not the end of it? Aside from simply being of use to your audience and your followers…

You should be a helper, and you should be known for it.

For example: instead of just having informative content, point your audience towards other resources. Go out of your way to add extra help!

128. Know your target audience to promote your blog.

A lot of what I’ve already talked about has built towards this overarching point:

One of your biggest priorities is knowing your audience. And that’s a constant process, not a one-time discovery.

Going on subreddits, forums, and social media to find out what’s being asked—good. But do it more than once, and see what’s changed.

Are the biggest challenges your audience faces the same as when you started promoting your blog? Is your content providing solutions to problems that your audience stopped caring about months ago? Etc.

129. And once you know your target audience, get your tone down!

This is a key detail. And believe it or not, it’s not impossible to figure out what tone you should be using.

Sure, there may be some trial and error involved. But just by paying attention to how your target audience interacts online, and what they seem to consume the most, you should be able to figure out

For example: you may have noticed that I tend to throw in dry humor and speak conversationally while still being informative. Well, that’s what my audience likes!

130. Make listicles to promote your blog!

Curating your content into lists is the big version of this. Using numbers in headlines overlaps with this.

But the elephant in the room is to just create listicles! They are enormously popular, and anyone who’s been on the internet longer than a few minutes knows it.

They’re fun to read, and keep your readers scrolling. Plus, they can sometimes be the best ways of conveying certain types of information. Easily one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog.

Example: THIS ARTICLE!

131. Make presentations/slide decks to promote your blog.

Before you get antsy about this—“How much more content do I have to come up with?!”—let me tell you that this is about content repurposing.

Meaning, you’ve already done tons of research and writing and editing. So just use your existing material to make a presentation.

Why a presentation?

Because it’s visually appealing, easy to click through and digest, and is a less common medium.

132. Don’t let SEO ruin your content!!!

This is one of the biggest problems I see in the blogosphere. People are understandably caught up in trying to get boosted in the search results.

But often bloggers focus so much on SEO and keywords they neglect the fundamentals of having good content. And importantly, having good WRITING.

Because guess what? You can’t just spam keywords in your posts. You still need to write a real post and keep those keywords in check—they should be natural and not detract from your content.

133. Update old blog posts.

This is an SEO strategy that doesn’t detract from your content game at all. When you update older posts, they get revitalized in search engine results. Especially if they were already popular.

You can do this by adding or replacing the media in your post, switching up your keyword targeting, and including updated information and links.

134. Turn your blog into a vlog to promote your blog.

Back to content repurposing: vlogs are all the rage these days. This will no doubt take more work to repurpose:

You have to actually film and edit content, which can be a full-time job on your own or come at the cost of hiring someone.

But videos are massively popular on the internet and there could be a lot of people who’d be interested in your content…but don’t like to read.

135. Turn your blog/vlog into a podcast to promote your blog!

Yes, vlogs are popular…but podcasts are even MORE the rage! It really is a golden age for podcasts, and repurposing your blog into a podcast can be a good blog promotion tactic.

If you’re already resourced well enough to make a vlog, you can easily repurpose that into a podcast. Find out how you can create Podcast using this Complete Guide to Podcasting.

136. Turn your blog posts into an ebook to promote your blog!

This is probably the most common form of content repurposing I see on blogs today. It does seem like just about everyone has an ebook.

But that doesn’t mean they’re a waste of time. Existing readers may find an ebook helpful, and some people may even become new readers after browsing through your ebook.

After all, you can think of your ebook as the epitome of your best work, an in-depth treatment.

The ebook can also offer the advantage of helping you establish yourself in the field, and can be a useful backlink magnet. And…it can become a content upgrade:

137. Add content upgrades: give your best for free, in exchange for emails!

A content upgrade is a specially made piece of content that you offer your readers in exchange for something.

And of course, I recommend you give some of your content upgrades away for free, in exchange for emails! Make sure to embed an interactive online form to your website that compels visitors to share their email address with you. You can find out other free form builder options here.

Content upgrades can, yes, include an ebook, but can also include your podcasts or specially-made infographics, etc.

138. Build a resource library to promote your blog.

Have you ever seen a knowledge base or help center on a software company’s website?

That’s sort of what I’m talking about. To an extent, your blog IS a resource library itself. But specifically, I mean collecting your best resources (including posts) and putting them in a single page.

Maybe your most useful posts, your best infographics, and any free tools your site provides—just for example.

139. Turn your posts into PDFs, and then share them to promote your blog.

This is a few different things: it’s content repurposing, a potential lead magnet, and a way of making your content more mobile.

In short, if you take a bit of time to convert some of your existing posts into PDFs, you can then share them as individual documents.

You may not see as much traffic directly linked to your blog of course. But it can still be a good way of personalizing content in emails or make it easier for sharing.

140. Overall: get the basics of site health right!

By now, I’ve talked about the importance of having solid linking and content. But believe it or not, it gets even more fundamental.

In general, your blog needs to be healthy, for two main reasons: first, you’ll get treated better by Google. Second, your visitors will have a better experience.

I’ll go into some of the specifics of this:

141. Pick a good host.

This is a big decision usually made at the very beginning. But it’s pretty common for people to realize they need a different host (or different hosting plan) later on.

That’s okay—the point is, make sure your host is good. If it’s not, be ready to change hosts.

When you pick a good host, you’ll have the features you need to manage your blog and good performance.

142. Make sure your blog has good uptime.

One of the biggest factors in site/blog performance is uptime. Uptime basically is what it sounds like: the amount of time your web host’s servers are up and hosting your site.

It’s calculated as a percentage—usually upwards of 99.9%.

It might sound great if your site is up 99.9% of the time, but it’s actually not a great score.

have good uptime to promote your blog

As you can see, a 99.9% score means your site will actually be down, on average, 10 minutes a week or 43 minutes a month. Which is not good for a lot of bloggers.

The better your site uptime, the less visitors you lose, and the better your search engine rankings!

You can calculate what your uptime percentages actually mean using our free SLA uptime calculator (shown above).

143. Make sure your blog is fast.

Site speed is similarly important. There are various factors that go into this, and a lot of hosts offer speed and performance boosters with certain hosting plans.

However, the bottom line is you want a reliable host that has all-around great base speeds.

The faster your blog and blog pages load for people, the better an experience they’ll have. And the better you’ll get ranked in search engines.

Here’s an example: our test site with GreenGeeks usually has response times at or below the 400ms mark. Which is among the fastest we’ve tested.

make sure your blog is fast to promote your blog

144. Use SSL.

If you’ve bought a hosting plan, you probably saw this term. But it’s easy to neglect, especially as SSL packages may expire after a year with some hosts.

SSL basically means the connection between the site and the visitor’s browser is encrypted and thus secured. It’s important to not let it expire. You can find out how to install free SSL certificate here.

If you don’t have SSL, most browsers (including Chrome) will tell the visitor that the site isn’t secure. Which makes them more likely to bounce, and way less likely to sign up for anything with their email address.

145. Take extra steps with security.

There are two big fundamentals to your blog’s security: SSL and the actions your host takes to protect its servers and your site.

But there’s still a lot of stuff you can do to improve security on your site.

Most hosts offer some form of regular backups, which is great. WordPress and similar content management systems (CMS) frequently have plugins and apps that can boost some aspect of security.

For example: WordFence, BulletProof Security, and Sucuri are all WordPress plugins that do malware scans, add firewalls, login security, and more.

146. Be wary of WordPress plugins!

This is somewhat true for other content management systems, but this is primarily an issue for WordPress.

You may know that one of the big advantages of WordPress is the HUGE variety of available plugins.

But, this also means that a lot of not-so-good plugins are present. At best, these might just be ineffective. At worst, they’ll be malware.

Check this out:

be wary of wordpress plugins

There are over 1,350 results for the keyword “website builder.” Some of them are bound to be bad apples.

147. Pick your WordPress theme carefully.

This holds true whether you’re using a free theme or paying for one, believe it or not.

And I don’t only mean you ought to be mindful of appearance, though that’s helpful too.

A big thing to keep in mind when picking a WordPress theme is whether or not it’s secure and whether it gets updated consistently.

WordPress themes can sometimes get abandoned, which result in certain customization features not working or your site being slow/glitchy to visitors.

148. Be ready to scale up your site to promote your blog

If you’re using a shared web hosting account, your web host probably tells you that you have unlimited storage and bandwidth.

What that really means is you don’t have metered storage or bandwidth. That’s because people on certain shared hosting plans are not expected to use up too many resources.

But if your site begins to grow in popularity, you’ll need more resources to keep providing solid performance and new content to your newer visitors. Your host may even demand that you scale up.

In short, if you’re interested in how to promote your blog, you’re by default interested in scaling up—so be ready for it!

149. Plan your content to promote your blog.

One of the oldest tricks in the book, and it goes to all sorts of people writing content, not just bloggers.

Nonetheless, it’s pretty important: if your content is planned, you’ll be able to keep churning out stuff when there’s not much happening in your field.

Plus, if you know when you’re posting this or that, it’s much easier to know when to promote your blog to increase traffic.

For example, I have a list of reviews to be posted within certain parts of the month, in a certain order, as well as a list of posts that need updating (also in a certain order). You can read content marketing statistics here.

plan your content to promote your blog

150. That being said, don’t restrict your creative outbursts either.

I know—sounds a little ridiculous after that last point.

This is another thing that might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to forget. Sometimes, in the rush to sit yourself down and do work, you end up losing the passionate moments.

Don’t forget why you have a blog in the first place. You enjoy contributing to it, you enjoy making content for it—so when you have an idea, or the paragraphs start appearing in your head…

Roll with it. Because some of your best content will come from that.

151. To promote your blog – Sleep!.

Yes, I’m starting to get into the personal care stuff. Yes, I roll my eyes too when I see this stuff on similar articles/listicles.

Nonetheless, this one is important. Actually, it’s essential.

Because damn-near every blogger and content-creator I know is losing sleep regularly because they’re so involved with their work.

In the short run it may seem to pay off, but you better believe that blogging is a long-run game.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t blame you if you felt a little overwhelmed. 151 things is a LOT of stuff to do, even if each one were small.

Well, remember that you don’t need to do all of them—each blog has its own set of resources and challenges.

Do what’s appropriate for your company or your site—for a lot of smaller blogs, it’d be best to pick a few from this list and work on them consistently until ready to take on more.

That said, there are some overarching takeaways here:

Promote via email, promote via social media. Be useful and be decent online, so people actually want to hear from you.

Make sure your content is good…and then promote the HECK out of it!