10 Ways #Newbie #Bloggers Can Promote Their Posts

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On Monday I posted this:

Attention Newbie Bloggers: Are You Making This Mistake?

In this post I talked about the biggest mistake I made when I started One Spoon At A Time last September.  That mistake was creating 30 posts before I started any promotional activity of the blog.

As a comparison I looked at the websites of Brankica Underwood (www.live-your-love.com) and Tristan Higbee (www.bloggingbookshelf.com).  Both of these sites started at a similar time to me – but both of them are toasting me in terms of Alexa ranking and traffic.

I caught up with both Brankica and Tristan via email and asked them some questions about their blogs and their blog growth.

Let’s start with Bran.

Introducing Brankica

Brankica’s blog (www.live-your-love.com) is a great place for newbies to check out, she gives practical and very honest advice.  What’s really interesting is that although she started out in September, she didn’t switch to writing about blogging and develop a focus for her site until December.

1. So you switched to writing about blogging in December – what kind of audience had you built up – and was there much off a drop off as you made the switch?

I didn’t have much audience at that moment; I was more testing how WP works and just talking about my travels and shooting. I wasn’t even promoting the blog much, because it was my first encounter with WP and I wanted to learn how it works.

2) How did you promote Live Your Love once you’d made the switch to writing about blogging? Was it mainly comments? I remember the 140 Blogs to visit PDF book – I think that was my first real exposure to you – can you write a few lines on that?

Blog commenting was number one and then connecting with people on twitter.

3. What strategy would you say brought the most traffic? And do you still use it?

Definitely networking along with commenting. The more people knew me, the more they shared my posts. I still comment but way less, because I have less and less time to do it, with all the stuff I have on my hands.

4) What strategies do you use to bring traffic NOW? (Being as you’re already a superstar…)

The “new” thing is guest posting but I only do it in “small amounts”.   

5.Any advice to newbies starting from Day 1 on building an audience?

Forget about links and anchor text and all the other things most newbies do, going like crazy to build links and it ends up being spamming. Just talk to a new person on twitter every day and make yourself noticeable on a new blog every week. Once people know you, you won’t have to spam them.

Introducing Tristan

Tristan’s blog is another great place for newbies to hang out – he writes detailed case studies with strategies that you can try out and see if they work for you.  Here are the questions I asked Tristan:

1. What was the strategy that built the audience for blogging bookshelf?

My strategies were to a) provide unique content with a personality, b) guest post a ton, and c) comment on a ton of blogs.

2. Was there any particular moment when you KNEW that strategy was starting to pay off?

When I got 100 comments on a post when the blog was only a month old, I had a good feeling about things:)

3. What strategies do you currently use to promote Blogging Bookshelf?

I’ve been busy with other stuff and haven’t done much lately, but I’m starting to get back into the guest-posting groove.

4. Any advice to newbies starting from Day 1 on building an audience?

You can guest post, network, and comment till you’re blue in the face, but if your content sucks, you’re just wasting your time. Take the extra time and effort to produce content that people won’t find on a bazillion other blogs in your niche. If people can read on other blogs what they can read on yours, why would they read yours?

What You’re Thinking Might Be Right….But It Might Be Wrong

Now Bran and Tristan are doing really well, they get good traffic, have good Alexa rankings, have built a great audience and continue to develop their rapport with their audience.  And you’re probably thinking if you model their approach and do lots of blog comments, and make relationships on twitter and do a ton of guest posts and yada yada yada that your blog is going to take off.

You might be right, and that strategy might work.

But you might be wrong.

Because it’s possible that these strategies may not work for you in YOUR niche or market area.  And the reason is that for you to really promote your blog or website you’ve got to put yourself in the places where your intended audiences hang out.

And in some markets YOUR audience doesn’t hang out on blogs.  And doesn’t hang out on twitter.  So spending time modeling Bran and Tristan did to grow their blogs isn’t going to work.

So How Can you Promote Your Blog?

The first step you need to take is to find out where your intended audience hangs out online.  Do they hang out on YouTube?  Or Facebook?  Or LinkedIn?  Or a niche specific forum?  Or even offline?

If you don’t know the answer to this question, activities to promote your blog are going to be speculative at best, and are going to have mixed results.

The easiest way to find out where your intended audience hang out is to interview two or three people who fit your target profile.

If you’ve got a handful of people on your list already, then email them and see if they’ll answer a few questions.

One of those questions should be: where do you go online to find information and answers?

When You Know Where Your Audience Go – Then You Need To Go There Too…

Bran and Tristan have shown us that you can go pretty far via blog comments and twitter and guest posting.

But that’s in the ‘blogging about blogging’ market.

Most of you know I run a bass guitar website too.  If I relied on blog comments and twitter to promote that website I’d be dead in the water.  Because none of my intended audience hang out on blogs or twitter.

Instead they want to watch videos of people teaching songs on the bass guitar.  Or people playing songs on the bass guitar.  You know where to go to if your audience is video based, right?  YouTube.

So for my bass guitar website everything revolves around video – the monthly newsletter that opt-in subscribers get is predominantly video based.  The ‘ethical bribe’ that opt-in subscribers get is also video based.

The other place that my target audience appears to hang out on in large numbers is Facebook – so plans are underway to give that bass website a Facebook presence.

As Well As Finding Out Where They Hang Out, You Need To Find Out What Type Of Content They Want

This was another big lesson from my bass guitar website.   I love to write – and when I started the bass website I created a bunch of quality articles about the bass guitar.  And assumed people would find me via Google.

And guess what?  No one came.

After 6 months I had about 15 subscribers and an average of 4 daily visitors.

The reason I was getting no traffic is because people didn’t want that kind of content – they wanted to know how to play songs.  And not just songs in general – but specific songs.

Literally the day I started adding videos the daily traffic and subscriber rates took off and kept going.  (Currently I get 15 to 20 sign-ups a day, and around 470 daily visits).

That’s because I was finally giving my audience the type of content they wanted to look at.

And that’s what you’ve got to do too.  It’s no good giving your audience written content if they want to watch videos, or listen to podcasts.

And you’ve got to drill down further than that too – if they want ‘how-to’ content don’t give them opinion pieces.  When you do that interview with your target profile you need to find out not only where they hang out, but what their problems are – and what type of content they look for to solve those problems.

From those interviews you should not only know where you need to put your content online to reach your target audience – but what format that content should be in, and how that content is structured.

A Warning About Putting Content On Other Sites

Depending on your audience you may find that you need to create content on a platform like Facebook or YouTube to reach them.

When you use a third party platform like that you must remember that YOU DON’T OWN THE CONTENT.  Facebook does.  Or YouTube does.

And because they own it – they control it.  So it’s vital that the content you create on these platforms does two jobs:

• (i)  It gets your content in front of your target audience
• (ii)  It drives that target audience back to a property you own – like your blog or website.  Where there is a compelling reason for them to sign up to your mailing list!

Recently there was a purge at YouTube – and lots of people with videos that had ‘Make Money Online’ in their video titles, or the tags, had their accounts suspended or deleted without warning.  The most high profile casualty was Darren Rowse from ProBlogger.

(For the record, Darren got his account back – but that’s partly because he had a large audience to make a noise on Twitter and other platforms about YouTube being heavy handed.  For you and I it would probably be much harder.)

The Two Big Takeaways

There are two big takeaways for you from Monday’s post and today’s post.

The first takeaway is that you should be promoting your content now.  Don’t wait until you’ve written 10 posts.  Or 50 posts.  Or 100 posts.  Spend at least as much time promoting your content as you do creating it.  Preferably more.

The second takeaway is that you should be positioning your content where your audience hangs out online.  Don’t make your blog or website the focus if your audience hangs out on YouTube.  Or LinkedIn.  Or a market specific forum.

Promotion Strategies

To finish off the post I want to talk briefly about 10 different strategies you could use to get eyeballs to your website.

But.

DON’T just take one of these and blindly start using it with your fingers crossed and hope for the best.

Only use a strategy if your research tells you that your chosen method will put you and your content in front of your intended audience.

1. Blog Commenting

If there is a healthy number of blogs in your niche, then blog commenting is a great way to build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.

The key is to consider your blog comments to be ‘mini posts’ – and focus on quality.  Add to the conversation – add value to what’s going on.

Remember what Bran said too – don’t worry about commenting for backlinks, and leaving spammy comments.  Leave detailed, informative comments.

You will start getting traffic this way.  Read these two posts by Tristan for more ideas:

How To Get 100 Comments On A Blog Post

How To Comment On Lots Of Blogs Fast

Again, I have to emphasize – this strategy ONLY works if there are enough blogs in your niche that are read by your target audience.

2. Twitter (and Triberr)

In Monday’s post I talked about Twitter.  And especially about Triberr.  If your audience uses Twitter not only do you need to be on it, but you need to be on Triberr too.

Head over to the Triberr website and use the  ‘Find Tribe’ function to try and find a tribe that shares your interest.

Then you can request an invite to that tribe.  Once you get on Triberr see how it works for a month or two, and then start building your tribes – and your reach – out.

3. Facebook

Using Facebook to expand your reach is something I can’t talk about much as I don’t have any experience of it – other than to say that it works for some people.  So it could work for you.

There are plenty of resources out there about Facebook – if your audience hangs out on Facebook, then research how to implement a Facebook strategy.  (And drop me an email and tell me what you did J )

Or you could go read Pat Flynn’s post:

The Blogger’s Guide To Facebook

4. YouTube/Video Marketing

In some markets YouTube and video marketing is incredibly powerful.  Again, there are lots of resources about Video Marketing around – I created a Webinar series on how to get eyeballs to your videos called Build Your Tribe Build Your Audience.
That will be running again soon – if you’d be interested in joining, drop me an email.

5. Guest Posting

Guest Posting is something that I’ve done a bit of – but not enough to say for sure whether it’s worth doing for you!  There are people who get great results from it – Bran and Tristan for two – but for me it’s something I’ve put on the back burner until I’ve finished the new opt-in course on How To Write an eBook that I’m writing.

When that course is finished, then I’ll be hitting guest posting hard and will have some more results to share.

6. iTunes And Podcasts

Again, this is an area that I don’t have personal experience with.  But there are bloggers out there who use Podcasts and report interesting traffic results.  Check Pat Flynn (again) at www.smartpassiveincome.com for one – not only does he do it, but you’ll find a couple of posts talking about it.

7. Linked In

LinkedIn is one of the next forms of promotion that I plan to do for One Spoon.  If you really want to know how to use LinkedIn, the recognized expert is a guy called Lewis Howes.

Lewis has built a list of around 50,000 using LinkedIn.  If you opt-in at his website you’ll get a free eBook called Master LinkedIn strategies – and it’s good.

Lewis also has an eBook package that goes deeper into LinkedIn.  I think it’s around $97 – reportedly it’s excellent.

8.Using Forums

If there aren’t a lot of blogs in your niche to leave comments on and attract visitors, then a niche specific Forum (or two) could be a good replacement.

Again, using forums to promote yourself isn’t about leaving spammy comments with a cheesy signature link.  It’s about providing quality information and helping people.

I used to be more aggressive about promoting my bass website than I am currently – and there was a bass guitar forum that I posted to pretty regularly.    (Side Note: you can also get great ideas for content from seeing what questions are asked regularly at Forums).

9.Forum Marketing (with a twist)

Another way you could use Forums – and props to Jason Fladlien for this idea – is to start a high quality thread at regular intervals that will get read repeatedly over time.

To explain it simply, it’s kind of like guest posting.  But instead of posting it on a blog, you post your high quality info on a Forum.  And over time – especially if it’s an evergreen topic in your niche – you should get repeated eyeballs on your thread in the Forum, and a number of clicks to your website via a non-spammy signature link.

Few people in any niche are doing this.  If your audience hangs out at Forums, this is a way to really differentiate yourself from your competitors.

10. Content Syndication

There are lots of ways to syndicate your content so that you get more eyeballs on it.

• You could join a promotion network like Blog Engage or Blokube or Serpd.

• You could upload PDFs of your posts to document sharing sites like Scribd or DocStoc.

• You could turn your article into a slide presentation and upload that presentation to Slideshare.

• If your post is a tutorial post, there are literally dozens of tutorial sites out there on the web that you could post it too.

• You could convert it to Kindle format and post it as a Kindle Single for $0.99 or for free.

There are other methods you could use too – for now, these are the most obvious methods.

Summary

For newbie bloggers, promoting your posts is as important as writing them.  Don’t wait to promote for anything – start doing it now.

To promote your posts effectively you need to know where your audience hangs out – and make sure that they can find you there.  And then there must be a clear path for your intended audience to follow back to your website.

When you post content to some platforms, you don’t own the content (YouTube, Facebook etc).  So you must drive people back to your website.

Finally you need to work out a method that works for you.  What works for Bran and Tristan may not work for you.  What works for me may not work for you.  Don’t blindly follow someone else – experiment and find the method that’s the best fit for your site and your personality.

Your Shout

If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments section below.  If you’ve got any thoughts on any of the methods listed above – or you are using different methods successfully – we’d all love to hear from you!

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1. Attention #Newbie #Bloggers – Are You Making This Mistake?
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Tagged as: blog commenting, blog promotion, bloggers, linkedin, newbie, triberr, twitter, video marketing