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9 Places to
Promote Your Blog
for FREE
You spend hours crafting the perfect blog post. You follow all of the tips and advice to make it as helpful as possible and easy to read. You then publish your amazing content and… crickets.
When I was new to blogging the most frustrating part of the entire process was getting blog traffic.
I had informative, helpful posts but no traffic.
It was so frustrating.
At least, it was until I took the (free) 12 Week Bootcamp by Scrivs who runs the Billionaire Blog Club.
In his course he discusses the importance of content but he also talks about the importance of promoting yourself and your blog in order to create traffic. He goes by the 20/80 rule which means he spends about 20% of his time creating content but 80% of his time promoting his content.
Talk about a lightbulb on moment.
The most important part of your blog is content but the most important part of blogging is promotion.
Promoting your blog is what will get you readers, subscribers, and to your ultimate goal of monetization. But you don’t just want any readers- you want the right readers. You want to find your tribe.
How do you find your tribe? Trial and error.
I know not what you want to hear but it’s a truthful one.
You can think you know your audience but until you get your content out there and people start to respond you have no idea where your audience is or exactly what they like. When you first start blogging it’s pretty much a best-guess-crapshoot.
The best way to determine what works best is to test it. Pick a way to promote your posts,try it out for a couple of months, then check back and see how things went. If you notice a bump in traffic, keep doing it. If you don’t, stop and move on to another avenue of promotion.
Keep doing this until you have at least five places to promote your content which drive you traffic consistently.
9+ places to promote your posts to get more traffic
1. Pinterest
Pinterest is the best traffic driver for most bloggers.
I say most because how well you do can depend on your niche. Home decor and crafts get the most reach while business pages tend to do better on other platforms like LinkedIn. Either way, you want to get your posts out there and not just once- often and with several pins for one post.
Make sure you pin to your well-keyworded board first and your pin is well keyworded too. The best way to continually get your pins seen on Pinterest is with a scheduler like Tailwind. It allows you to select the pins you want pinned in advance so you are not constantly on Pinterest pinning.
Getting seen is only half the battle though- the other half of the battle is having well-designed pins that are likely to go viral with great titles. Carly Campbell from Mommy on Purpose has put together an amazing guide on setting up your Pinterest business account, profile, and boards for success. Her book is called Pinteresting Strategies and she also reviews the anatomy of great pins and her eBook is underpriced in my opinion (shhh- don’t tell her I said that). Check it out by clicking above- it’s definitely worth its weight in gold.
2. Facebook
Personal FB page
Your personal FB page will have more reach than your business one especially if people like your posts often. Take advantage of this and share your posts on your personal FB occasionally. If you publish more than one post a week space out your posts unless people interact a lot with them.
When posting, try and pull an excerpt from the post and then leave it trailing just a bit. This peaks your reader’s curiosity and encourage them to click through.
Business FB Page
This is one you can do consistently but don’t expect much from it. The Facebook algorithm puts page posts at the bottom of the feed.
However, you still want to set up a business Facebook page and make sharing your posts a habit. It’s like having your product at Walmart- some companies don’t even profit by having their products there because the prices are so low but they can’t afford to not have their product there- it looks bad. Have a FB page but don’t put much effort into it unless you plan on doing paid advertisements.
Your Group FB Page
Starting a FB group is the best way to get organic reach on FB- especially if your FB group is well engaged and followers interact with each other. Share your best posts and you’ll see a nice little spike in traffic.
Don’t worry about having a small group at the beginning. Small means a more personal experience for your early readers so take advantage of it and try and provide as much value as possible for your first followers which is what I try to do on my Private Facebook page.
My followers get to ask questions and receive personal responses from me. I also try to address their questions in my Facebook Lives as well.
Other On-Topic FB Groups
Join a few FB groups and spend some time getting to know the other followers. Answer their questions and try to be helpful. After a bit you can start posting your links in response to questiosn with something like “This article is great for helping with xyz.”
FB Group Promo Threads
Most blogging groups will have a daily or weekly thread where you can share your posts. Get involved and start sharing. This is best for new bloggers- once you have a steady flow of traffic I would use your time doing other traffic-boosting activities.
Create an Ad
FB ads are great for reaching target audiences. You can specify sex, age, location, and other interest to make sure the ad gets in front of the right people.
3. Twitter
Twitter is a great way to grow a following because when you tweet and tag someone their following can see it. Find bloggers in your niche, share quotes from their articles, tag them, and drop a post link of your own. If you get lucky, they may share it.
You can also increase your reach using Twitter by:
- Tweeting new posts with a quote from it in the heading
- Add your blog website link in your Twitter profile
- Set up an auto Direct Message for new followers telling them the benefits to checking out your page
- Participate in FB Group re-tweet threads.
- Do a search and see if anyone is asking questions about your topic. Answer them and link them to a post that can help them out.
4. Your Email List
The people on your email list chose to subscribe so don’t forget to share posts with them. When you email them, dig posts out of your archive to share along with new ones. If you can, try and relate them to what you’re currently emailing about but you can also just add a P.S. at the bottom of your email (which is often read the most) and encourage readers to read an older post.
Just because your subscribers have seen a few posts doesn’t mean they’ve seen all your posts so don’t be shy about sharing them.
Need an email service? ConvertKit is the gold standard for bloggers looking for a professional email service.
6. Google Plus
Google tries to have their hand in every jar but has kind of bombed in the social sharing platform. I still suggest you post here though.
Why?
Because it’s owned by Google and Google likes to share content on Google. Posting to Google + is a great way to give your posts a slight edge in Google search results because it’s shared on their platform. It’s simple to do and is definitely worth the minute out of your day to post if it makes Google happy.
5. Medium
You can st up a free Medium account and start sharing your posts in just a few minutes. Medium is pretty easy to figure out but if you need help their Q&A section will walk you through it.
The trick to getting traffic back to your post on Medium is to only share part of your post and then encourage readers to click to your page to read the rest. If you publish the entire article readers will have no incentive to click over.
Since Medium isn’t used as much as other platforms (but still has plenty of traffic) it can be a lot easier to gain momentum.
7. Quora
I love Quora. You don’t have to guess what your audience is thinking or what they need to know. They tell you in the form of a question.
Not only are you helping them by answering their questions but you can come up with great future blog content as well.
Don’t be shy when it comes to answering questions either. If you don’t have an article ready in answer to their question, answer their question then say something like“this is something I really think my readers would enjoy reading about. Your question has inspired me to do a post about it. Subscribe to my blog and I’ll make sure to mention this post came to me from our conversation.”
You’re practically guaranteed a new subscriber because who doesn’t like having their ego stroked and seeing themselves mentioned in print?
8. Stumbleupon (soon to be Mix)
Steumbleupon (soon to be Mix) is a platform where you can submit your content. People browse through and if they like what they see it gets shared which puts it in front of other people. It’s a quick domino effect and can result in quite a few hits in one day (or week) if a post goes viral.
Stumbleupon seemed to be a little tricky to navigate but Mix seems more user friendly and it is on my To-Do List to see just how much traffic I can gain from it.
9. Bloglovin'
Bloglovin is a bit different than other platforms because it is specifically for bloggers by bloggers. You can save your favorite blogs and share them.
The best part of Bloglovin is the chance for another blogger to share your link in their blog. This can result in excellent traffic from people who are most likely your ideal readers and a backlink for your blog which is great for increasing your Domain Authority (how reliable and informative your blog is) in the eyes of google.
Traffic Traffic Everywhere
Driving traffic can be one of the hardest parts of having a blog. Even though I have listed several different platforms here, your best bet is to focus on learning one at a time and then automate what you can.
Traffic takes time but it can be done. Choose a platform, promote your content, be consistent, and you’ll see steady growth for your blog.
Need help with other parts of blogging and networking? Come join my Private Facebook Group and interact with other bloggers and submit your questions to my Facebook Live to get real answers directly from a real person!
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