Getting a blog off the ground can be quite a challenge, especially if this is your first blog. In reality, it doesn’t get any easier to promote a project, any project, blog or typical website. But if you know what you’re doing you at least know what to expect and how to go about doing it – which in my opinion is half the battle.
This article is not going to divulge any well kept secrets from the world of blog promotion. Nor is it going to be a step by step bullet point guide as to what you need to do to market your project. What it will do however is inform you of the fundamental elements of blog promotion. Too many times people focus on just one of the points below when in reality, to achieve any real level of success, you need to cover all bases. So, let’s get started.
Preparing Your Site
By preparing your site, I mean getting it in a state to perform at its maximum when it comes to marketing. First and foremost, you need good, relevant, unique content. This is the cornerstone. Without unique content in adundance that people actually want to read, you’re not going to get anywhere. Never. It’s not a matter of time. It’s not a matter of money. It just won’t happen. Secondly, the content needs to be optimised for the search engines. Search traffic is a great “free” way to get visitors to your site. Your content needs to include keywords and you need to set your page titles and meta descriptions to include such keywords. Do not go over the top though as too much “on site optimisation” can have an adverse effect and probably end up costing you visitors than gaining them. Finally, make sure your content is easy to share. Place share buttons above, below or to the side of your main content – whereever is likely to get eyes on it. Letting your visitors do the promotional work for you is the key to good marketing.
Social is Important
Social media is becoming more and more important as each day passes. These days everyone has a social presence in some form be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or some other new fangled network. It’s also becoming more and more apparent that the social network is the first port of call if someone wants information of something. More and more people are using the search features built in to the likes to Facebook or Twitter and traditional search engines such as Google are starting to take a back seat. So with that said, having a presence for your site on social media is of the upmost importance. You should also prominently display links to your social media profiles on your website as that is one of the keys to retaining your visitors and turning them into customers. If you have 1 visitor to your website you should be doing your upmost to make sure they come back again and again.
The Key to Outreach
There is no secret when it comes to outreach. You find other blogs in your sector and work with them on something that is mutually beneficial. This usually involves you providing content, an article, for their site and them in turn giving you a link back to your blog. A link back to your own blog can be a great way for you to lure vistors to someone elses site over to yours and there are also a ton of benefits in terms of search traffic that having a link on someone elses site brings.
Retaining an Audience
As mentioned above, you should be looking to take all measures to captivate and retain your audience. Every visitor to your website should be maximised and turned into a repeat visitor either by connecting with them socially or making your content so compelling that they’re falling over themselves to come back and read more. A good site will always trump a bad one no matter what tricks you apply.
Conclusion
So hopefully this gives you some food for thought. Blog promotion is not easy as I said above. But it is straight forward if you know what you’re doing. The challenge is not carrying out the task, the challenging is getting the task to yield visitors which unfortunately is going to be down to factors outside of your control for the most part. Make your site as good as it can possibly be and follow the points outlined above and then hopefully your site will become a success!
