We are living in the world of marketing. Any product or service can be sold easily, if marketed properly. This concept is applicable in the blogosphere as well.
Gone are the days when a blog with great content gets huge traffic. The competition is huge now-a-days as each and every day new bloggers are coming up with something new and catchy. Thus bloggers must concentrate on writing unique and interesting content as well as on promoting their articles.
It is not that bloggers do not promote their articles. However most of them concentrate on just Facebook and Twitter. It’s not a bad idea as these are the two most active social networks in the world. Bloggers have been successful in marketing their articles on these sites. Facebook has almost 800 million users while Twitter has 300 million users. With this huge potential, it is always great to promote on these sites.
However concentrating on just Facebook and Twitter is not enough. Since everyone is concentrating on these two, you must do something different. It’s time to think beyond these sites.
There are number of ways in which you can promote your articles. This includes promotion on social networks, social bookmarking sites, blog communities, etc.
First of all, we need to understand our requirement. Ask yourself the following questions:
1. What is my ultimate aim in promoting the articles?
2. Do I have enough time to promote?
Now the answer to the first question is same for every one of us. We promote our articles for two reasons – Traffic and Backlinks. Time is something which depends from person to person. Most of us are part-time bloggers; so time is a constraint for us.
So we must select methods in such a way so that our aim of getting traffic and building backlinks are satisfied and at the same time, we do not invest too much of time.
Today I am going to share with you some proven methods which will satisfy the above needs.
Social Networks
Apart from Facebook and Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn are two other social networks which can used for article promotion.
Google+
Google+ is the new social networking site of Google. It is new compared to Facebook and Twitter. However, it has huge potential. It started on 28th June 2011 and so far has 90 million registered users according to Wikipedia.
Google+ has a new concept of “Circle”. Circle! What is it? The concept of Circle gives us the opportunity to create different groups like friends, family, etc.
So you can create a Circle and add people who like the niche of your blog. You can now promote your articles to that circle. This concept is very useful as you are not sharing it with everyone and thus will not be considered as a spammer.
Google has introduced the “+1” concept something similar to the “Like” concept of Facebook. If you share something on Google+, people can +1 it. Thus it gets virally promoted. For example, if your friend +1 your post, it gets shared with his friends, who can again +1 it and so on.
LinkedIn is another popular social network and is the world’s largest professional network. It has almost 135 million registered users according to Wikipedia.
Bloggers should promote their articles in LinkedIn. This may not be helpful in building backlinks, but can be useful for getting traffic.
Video Promotion
Video promotion can also be useful in promoting your articles. Creating videos is not a problem these days. There are a lot of online and offline softwares available on the internet for creating videos. Just create a video that contains the summary of the article. Also try to create them with catchy titles. This will attract visitors.
I recommend you to go for YouTube only for Video promotion.
YouTube
You Tube gets millions of views everyday. So why not conquer this huge traffic bank. Create some videos and share them on this site. It is not necessary to create a video for each and every article. Create one or two videos per week and add the link of the article in the description part. If visitors like your writing style and content, they will bookmark your blog and visit it again and again.
There are some advantages of video promotion. Videos gets indexed quickly in the search engines. Also people like to watch videos rather than reading the articles. If they like the content of your video, they will definitely visit your blog to read the full article.
Blog Communities
Blog communities can play an important role in article promotion. Here you will find many like minded people. Blog Engage and Blokube are the recommended ones.
Blog Engage
Blog Engage is a very popular community of Bloggers. I started using it from August 2011. Believe me it is an awesome community. I promoted my articles in this community and received good amount of traffic. Not only that; my blog became a Page Rank 1 blog within 2 months. I give the total credit for my success to this community. This community is highly recommended.
Blokube
It is a new community of bloggers. However it is growing in terms of the number of members. It also helps you to promote your articles and get quality backlinks.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking sites help you to get traffic as well as build backlinks. There are a number of social bookmarking sites on the internet. But I recommend you not to waste time in all of them.
The recommended ones are Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. These 3 sites are very popular.
If you want to go for bulk bookmarking, Social Monkee makes it handy with a browser bookmarklet.
Other Methods
There are some more ways of promoting your article apart from the above mentioned ones.
Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is normally used to build Backlinks. However it can be used for article promotion as well. How? Simple; Comment on Commentluv enabled blogs. This way you will be able to promote your articles as well.
It is recommended not to comment on each and every blog. You should comment only on blogs which are related to the niche of your articles.
Guest Posting
This is an indirect way of promotion. Try to write guest articles on popular blogs. Most of them will allow you to add 1 or 2 links in the author bio. Thus you will build backlinks for your blog.
If you’re hesitating guest posting for some reason or if you want help with it, check out Jane’s report of guest blogging.
But how will you get traffic? Well if people like your writing style, they will definitely visit your blog. It is recommended to write minimum 2 guest articles per week.
Most of the methods mentioned above are proven ones. But you must remember one thing – Content is King. In order to make the above methods work, concentrate on writing unique and interesting content.
What next? Share your valuable views in the comments section. Also share this article on various social networks.
Sandipan Mukherjee is the founder and CEO of Squarex Technologies. Squarex Technologies is a Web and Software Development Company.
Thank for the great post.
Really Google plus has far more reach than Facebook if Google integrate its plus feature with search engine.
I think stumbleupon is best site which surely provides traffic, where as digg offer nothing in my case.
Well Digg may not provide you traffic, but it is very useful for building backlinks. Anyways, thanks for sharing your valuable views.
I thin Digg is nofollow. If you are using to get dofollow links better you double check over links.
I know Digg provides Nofollow links. In fact most of the social networks provide nofollow links. But nofollow links can be useful as well. Bing and Yahoo take NoFollow links into account. Plus a website with only DoFollow links will look more suspicious to Google than another website having a natural mixture of DoFollow and NoFollow links.
Sandipan
thats right there are so much other great ways of promoting our blogs, I think guest blog posting is one of the best and biggest ways
Thats right Kenny. Guest Blogging is very useful for promoting your blog as well as you as a Blogger.
I wonder why Facebook and Twitter are the two tools that are used most often to promote blogs? Its strange how just two websites can become so popular isn’t it! Anyway thanks for the tips
Twitter and Facebook are the most used tool because it has a large number of registered users. These two sites have been useful in getting traffic as well. However we should not invest our time in these sites only and concentrate on other methods as well.
Yes, guest posting is definitely one of a good way to promote not only your sites but also you get passive income in certain ways.
I agree with your views Ricardus. Thanks for the comment.
I Liked The Title Sandipan. Yes most of the Bloggers only focus on Facebook and Twitter to Promote Blogs, but I think actively participating and following all the points listed above can help the Bloggers to Promote his Blog. But all you need is to Remain Active.
Its true, you have to to active, otherwise the points listed above are useless. Thanks for the comment Harry.
Its true, you have to be active, otherwise the points listed above are useless. Thanks for the comment Harry.
For optimizing the websites social media is playing a good role to marketing the products, making the friends and to share views with everyone…….
Thanks for sharing your valuable views.
I think that blog commenting is the best back linking strategy to do. easiest way to distribute links in different site. I really appreciate this great information you have shared cause almost everything are worth to use. specially using face-book and twitter as a tool.
I agree with you Kate. Blog Commenting is the best way for building Back links.. Thanks for the comment.
Personally,
I’m trying something different. It involves paying people to post my stuff on their social network. Is that bad? Iunno. But, it’s different?
It isn’t bad unless they start spamming. People hate spammers. Otherwise there is no harm in it.
Awesome tips Sandipan. Thanks for sharing the articles. For me Guest posting and Blog Commenting is tough way but its the best way to gain traffic as well as exposure.
Commenting on other blogs is definitely a tough job if you do that with a motive of getting backlinks. Find good articles on various social networks or blog communities. Read the article and then comment on it. It will help you in two ways - you will gain knowledge and you will get backlink.
Great post. I use Google + for promotion as well, but I believe that guest blogging is the way to go. It takes more time, but the benefits are awesome, not just by traffic and backlinks, but the relationships you get with the author and the readers of the blog.
I agree with you Jens. Guest Posting has a lot of advantages. Thanks for the comment.
Thanks for these suggestions. I find relevant Linkedin groups a great way of generating traffic, in saying that I only post to groups where I actively participate.
Thanks Niall Devitt for sharing your views.
4 Leg Celebrity says
In my opinion Google has had the best social network engine but they never took advantage of it, this is there Next blog system, it existed long before Stumbleupon and they should have done this along time ago. They have a captured audience.
Thanks 4 Leg Celebrity for sharing your valuable views.
I’ve never seen people implement guest blogging without gaining more subscribers and web site visits. Google+ seems to be a good option than FB and Twitter too but we just cant argue on the discrepancy between these platforms as the latter sites have more users than the former. Blokube seems great too.
Regards,
Spatch Merlin from How to Blog
Guest Posting is the best method for gaining exposure.
Google + may have less members than Facebook and Twitter, but it is recommended to promote your article in this site.
Instead of keep busy in sharing our articles on all the social network we can use automated software like dlvrt.it it can publish the articles automatically in the behalf of website owner.
I haven’t used this kind of software, so cant tell you much about it.
Does it post in social networks like Facebook, Google+, etc as well? If yes, then I should be avoided. In these sites, it is better to post manually and also interact with your followers or fans; otherwise they will term you as spammer.
SEO Guy says
A lot of rules here, but think I can follow them all!
Nice to hear that. Do tell me whether you got positive results or not.
Well, I also have account on Google+ and LinkedIn. Other websites are familiar for me, but I haven’t used them yet. Thanks a lot for sharing this list of websites that are very helpful for all bloggers
You should not just concentrate on social networking sites. You should also use the above mentioned sites to promote your article.
You are absolutely right about using other sites, that can be also helpful! Thanks
You are Welcome Amanda. If you need any help from me, feel free to contact me.
I guess there are just so many ways one can promote their products online. There are several resources here that I don’t really use. Thanks for the good write up.
Yes there are a lot of ways. You should use them. Thanks for the comment.
Sandipan,
As of this time, I am active in promoting my articles at facebook and stumbleupon. I already have my account in twitter but I am a little bit lazy using it. I think, I should make use of my twitter account. With regards to Google+, I already have few people in my circle including Matt Cutts, the Google Engineer.
You should use Twitter and Google+ for promoting your articles. If you are lazy enough, use some software that directly posts in your Twitter account. If you want the name of such software, feel free to ask me.
Interesting thoughts. I think that most bloggers stick with the more widely used social networks like Twitter and Facebook (and to some extent Google+) because they know that this is where people go hangout all day long. The same phenomenon is at play with businesses: you can see them going and promoting their Facebook URLs in their TV ads or trying to use the types of companies listed at buyfacebookfansreviews.com to get more fans because this is where people hang out all day long. I think there are opportunities for bloggers to approach promoting their blog outside of social media as well. The biggest thing with blogging though isn’t how you go about promoting it, the biggest challenge that bloggers face is having the discipline to go out there and create great content even though success is impossible to find in the short-run. If you can last beyond the few months that most bloggers give up on writing anything else, and consistently stay at it for a while, you will eventually achieve some success no matter how you go about promoting yourself.
This article has really solidified my thinking and helped me to continue in posting/liking/commenting/stumbling/google+ my blog in various channels. Some I have been talking to lately are happy to do fb and twitter which will get there, but when
I have also been amazed on how quickly videos get indexed by google, this channel seems to be working well. How there is also pinterest………. it really is getting all too much, but we have to keep on with it (?).
yep people always do think only fb or twitter will bring them traffic and do always promoting their blogs on them.But i never tried these still i get what i want.As you said social bookmarking,article submission and others will definitely help gaining traffic and links
have a nice day
“hello SandipanMukherjee,
normally i will submit my articles to Facebook groups .. its well worked for me :)”
very nice explanation
This is a class act post. This is how articles should be done. Excellent job. If I write a next post about killer content, then this article is my prime example :).
I was just looking for some blogging communities, and you pointed some out just well. I thank you for that!
I love Social Media.
Killer content is about writing with everything you got. I just wrote a poem about blogging, just because I love blogging :). Anybody, check it out :).
I read somewhere that identi.ca gives dofollow backlinks and submission is easy. You must include it in your list.
I’ve become a big fan of Pinterest. Do-follow links that get shared, and I get traffic.
Great article and suggestions. I’m just starting to crank up Google + and StumbleUpon and have heard a lot about Blog Engage so based on this article, I think I’ll give them a try too. Thanks!
Great stuff here! Nicely consolidated information. Promoting blogs and articles to generate traffic and backlinks is very important. Blog Engage is not free right? Hmmm.. anyway, I’m interested to invest to it, hope it has good results!
I would love to join the Blog communities. Thanks for sharing, this could expand our network with our fellow bloggers. How about Digg and Stumbleupon, these are other platforms too.
Sandipan - I completely agree with you that we should look at other social networking tools apart from FB and twitter. You have laid out most of them, but my favorite these days have been StumbleUpon and Pinterest. I have got some considerable traffic from these sites on a regular basis now. Enjoy.
You are absolutely right about all these things. I think that the most effective way of promotion is to use social networks
Well Sandipan I am impressed on youtube strategy. If you upload a good enough video with good keywords and try to redirect the traffic to your own blog it really works.
Moreover, Linkedin as a whole has been neglected due to the tag of “For professionals only” but overall regional social media platforms are available too if you require region specific traffic.
I will try Blog Engage and Blokube. Thanks
The article clearly states the necessity to promote your content in other social networking sites other than facebook and twitter. you are right. what i feel the best bet is in fact the Google plus. with Google marking their search engine results personalized these days, articles and videos shared in Google plus ranks well in search results. Google plus will surely take down facebook and twitter in the years to come. because Google plus has the sheer backing of Google with them.
James says
All the blog promotion method you have included in content of your post is effective. I especially want to highlight that Blog Engage is really effective and efficient whether your blog is new or old.
I find social comment plugin from Facebook really awesome in promoting a blog post and at the same time fighting spam.
I am newbie in the blogging and as newbie it is quite obvious that I chosen facebook and twitter for the promotion. The heading of this post therefore attracted me.
I think the video blogging emphasized by you might play very important role in the quick promotion of any blog. Can you tell me about the website for easily creating effective videos?
your blog is a never ending source of ideas.
regards
vinodh
There are number of ways in which you can promote your articles. This includes promotion on social networks, social bookmarking sites, blog communities, etc.
Adam Night says
Hi, I am new to this and founf this article and all it’s related comments very useful. I am off to put some into practice and start trying to use my twitter account more as I have not done much with this yet.
Only really used facebook and blogger so far!
Very good post and some of the things mentioned here was unique like Blokube which I was not aware of.
Regards
Want to add more , of course social media is the key for ultimate blog promotion but not everything , There are other ways too like going behind the scenes i mean sharply monitoring the promotion strategy of successful bloggers like Ana Hoffman and Tyler Cruz. They even focus on their design too like adding their own image in logo, comment author and many more. And your tips completely adds value to my knowledge. Nice written article.