You have created your blog a few months ago. You regularly produce content to supply the "few readers you have" but that doesn't seem to be enough.
Your numbers are hardly increasing and you don't know how to boost your web traffic. The few Facebook and Twitter ads that you buy to promote your publications don't really help and you do not know what to do.
Today I would like to suggest 10 tips that will help you to better promote your next blog post and develop your audience.
1. Share your article to your contacts via email
This should be one of the essential practices that you must take into consideration right away.
Once your article is ready, do not hesitate to share it with your contacts by email.
The goal is not to annoy them with long boring messages, but to stay brief and close to them. Summarize your article, add a few links towards your blog and the article in question, insert an illustrative image and you're done.
Do not forget also that the goal is to grow your traffic, and it also means proximity to your readers. So make sure you include custom formulas in your email, this could serve you well.
Some tools to help you manage your email addresses and send your different articles:
- MailChimp
- MailJet
2. Share your article on your social networks
Sending emails is good, but your article will have even more visibility if you also share it on your social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
To that end, tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Tweetdeck can be useful. You just have to schedule the publication of your article on these tools and let them share your content on your social pages.
3. Social bookmaking
Use social bookmaking sites like Digg, Diigo, Reddit, Delicious etc to allow your readers to record and share the link of your article with a more or less wide/relevant audience.
4. Reviewing discussion forums and communities
Do not hesitate to join online discussion groups, including Facebook, Google plus and LinkedIn and share your article. This will allow you to have more readers and to see the traffic of your blog grow as you take part in group activities.
5. Using curation sites
Sites such as Scoop.it, Storify, are good places to search for ideas but also to share content. Utilize it you from time to time, they can get very useful.
6. Identify/Tag the influencers
How would you feel if a blogger mentioned you in an article? Good?
Well, it's the same thing that happens if you mention influencers in your posts from time to time.
Every time you produce an article and quote an influencer inside, share your production with them. Send them an email, mention them on Facebook or Google+ or mention them in a tweet. Some of them will return the favor!
7. Find some fellow bloggers who can help you
There are some bloggers out there that, from time to time, reach out to their peers in order to gather a wider audience. Once a week or once a month, they are willing to share content from other blogs with their readers so that other sources of information benefit their audience. You can try to get in touch with them and offer to publish your recent article on their blog. There will certainly be a counterpart, because everyone is trying to be more visible but it's worth a try.
8. Reuse your old publications
Old articles can still be used to produce new content. Turn them into video or infographics, why not? A video can have more impact than an infographic, that can itself have more impact than an article to your readers. Do not hesitate to play the game by transforming your old publications into new productions.
9. A bit of advertising never hurt
Some paid ads published over a period of time will always strengthen your actions. Set a monthly budget for your items.
10. Guest-posts
This kind of campaign is not always easy, but when a blog gives you this opportunity, it is better to seize it. It is clear that they will (certainly) enforce a topic, or ask you to produce an article taking into account their given criteria, but once the article shared on his blog, you will be benefiting from exposure to their audience.
Most of us bloggers do not give more time to the promotion of our productions than to their creation. This is one of the reasons why our articles are not very visible.
I hope these tips will help you, as they have helped me, to spend as much time marketing your articles as writing them. Over time, more promotion techniques will become available, so stay up-to-date.
Knowledge cannot all be acquired in one day... Good luck!
[Translated from a contribution by Vanessa Lecosson]