Content is what is most important but the old saying build it and they will come doesn’t work anymore. You can have the most amazing blog post but you need to promote it to get traffic.
If you are going to be serious about blogging start using wordpress. There are other options like blogger, tumblr, and built in blogs in carts such as shopify but if you want to be able to control everything and fine tune everything wordpress is the way to go.
Social Media
- Facebook: Facebook is king of social media. I have found that posting a quote relative to your article and the blog post link gets the most likes, and shares, and people clicking on the link.
- Twitter: schedule the posts on twitter
- Pinterest: Create a board specifically for all your blog posts
- Linkedin: Share it on your profile and in the groups you belong to.
- Google+: Share it with your circle
Bookmarking sites
- Stumbleupon: Make an account on stumbleupon and stumble your blog posts
- Digg: Submit each post on Digg
- Reddit: Reddit is a big bookmarking site
- Delicious: Bookmark it on delicious
- Technorati: Technorati is one of the top search engines for blogs
Search Engine Optimization
This is a long term strategy for promoting your blog posts. You can use google keyword tool to find keywords. Make sure that there is a decent amount of Global Monthly Searches but that the competition isn’t so high that you can’t rank on google for it. Write your article normally then go back in and see where you can add the term more in the blog post.
Tips for SEO
- Title: have the term in the title
- Url: have the term in the url
- Description: have the term in the meta description and write a custom description for the blog post
- In the post: have it throughout the blog post
Newsletter
Create a newsletter on mailchimp or another mailing list program and start sending out newsletters on a regular basis. You can also use feedburner for your RSS feed and allow users to get your blog posts directly in their inbox. Only post part of the content, you want them to read the rest on your site!