by Amin Ghale
Do you know why 95 percent of blogs fail miserably?
Lack of quality content?
No!
In fact, most writers fail dramatically even with high-quality content.
Then what is the reason behind it?
…Because they simply thrive on one COMMON RULE – “Push great content and traffic will come.”
And this is where most bloggers get it wrong.
Well, pushing vital content is important, it’s just not enough.
So here is the truth:
The secret sauce of building a blog audience lies in the marketing hands of a content creator.
If you are unable to sell your content in the market, you might not succeed in producing it in the first place.
Ideally, you want to use up your 30 percent of your time in creating the greatest piece you can create and 70 percent of your time promoting it.
But, is there any technique to promote the content if you are a newbie and you do not have anyone to hear you?
Now, let’s get into a stepwise guide to five super creative blog promotion procedures that you can employ to acquire instant traffic.
Start Guest Posting on a Niche-Related Site
A niche-related site is a site that resembles the interest of your website.
A couple of years back, Matt Cutts bamboozled many online marketers with a post that shook many online marketers to its core. His fitting line of decay about the fall of guest blogging had many wondering if guest posting was really dead.
Fast forward to 2016… And guest posting is still a legit thing if done correctly.
In contrast to 2012, now guest posting should be more focused on generating traffic from the article you have posted.
So, you get the idea about guest posting. But how do you find a guest host that is relevant to your website?
Here is how you can find sites that allow guest posting:
Go to Google, and enter these search strings:
Keyword + Guest post guidelines
Keyword + Write for us
Keyword + Be a contributor
Keyword + Accepting Guest Post
Keyword + Submit a post
Keyword + Guest post wanted
Keyword + I’ve been featured on
Keyword + Sites I have written for
These search commands should give you a head start for your campaign.
I will give you an example. I’m the online marketing manager of a company called Web Design Sydney.
So, if I have to find sites to guest post on, I will go for a query like web design + guest post guidelines.
It will get tons of guest post prospects.
The only problem is it might be really challenging to search the sites one after another.
So, here is what you can do:
Step #1: Download an extension named “Link Clump.” (Only works for Chrome.)
Here is how it works: Hold the shift button and take the cursor towards the result pages.
Left the click the mouse, and start to select the sites by dragging the cursor to the sites. This will open all the selected sites in new tabs.
But this doesn’t help, as it is still unable to extract the results in an Excel spreadsheet.
Here is a simple hack you can employ:
Step #2: Click the Link Clump button you see in your browser. You will see something like this:
Step #3: Click the “Add Action” button. A little configuration box will pop up in black background.
And in the Action section choose – “copied to the clipboard.”
Step #4: Go back to your search engine result pages. Start the same dragging process I mentioned above and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet.
Make This a More Effective Tip: In the search result page, you will see a gear icon in the right corner.
Select the search options button from there. Select never choose instant prediction.
Then, next to the bottom right drag the cursor to 100 results per page. Now, instead of 10, you will have 100 at a time. It saves you time that can be used for other productive work.
Step #5: You now need to sort your guest post prospects according to its authority on the web.
For this, we use two metrics – Domain authority and Trust Flow, coined by Moz and Majestic respectively.
The only problem is this link-building software allows you only limited searches. So how do you search so many sites?
Here is what you need to do:
Use this extremely efficient bulk Domain Authority and Trust Flow checking tool.
It is connected with the APIs of both the tools. So it searches the similar data these tools produce.
(Note: When you are collecting TrustFlow data, use the root domain, instead of the URL.)
Step #6: After you have all the data, sort the sites. Domain Authority should be greater than 15.
Step #7: Let’s begin the game of approach and build.
But before you pitch a site owner for guest post you need to do few things:
● Read about the blogger, his or her blogs, and post a few comprehensive comments.
● If the blogger has social media accounts, follow him or her there as well.
Step #8: Pitch them a streamlined Email.
Why should you Email when it’s clearly mentioned on the site that you are allowed to guest post?
…Because it lets you stand out from the crowd. Makes sense?
Make This a More Effective Tip: Most of the bloggers are flexible when it comes to dropping a contextual link.
Like this one right here:
I posted one of my blog’s links on a blog whose Domain Authority was greater than 30. So I got an editorial link as well as some decent
traffic.
Use Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Blog
This is one of the most highly productive marketing strategies if done well. If you are new in the blogging field, I don’t think you have many fans following after you…
However, if you already have built a nice platform in social media accounts, promoting your blog cannot be a difficult task.
Better utilize three little tricks to get a good result:
#1. Post with click-bait headline and an attractive image to harmonize with it. However, don’t trick your audience to buy something that your content doesn’t offer. Be natural and provide them what they desire, not what you wish them to see.
Source: Viralnova.com
#2. Know the demographics of your audience. Where is your audience situated? Are they from the same country or from various other countries? Which demography of people share your content the most? You need to understand the whole behavior fluctuation chapter of your audience with the posts you publish.
#3. Break down your content into different pieces or social snippets. And share them consistently the whole month. Don’t go crazy in just one day.
You have to blast the same content with different titles or social snippets every single time over the month. Here is a nice little tool that can help you out with this process.
But…
The problem most of us have is we don’t have any followers, right?
I am not going to detail down on how to build your social fan base.
That probably will be for the next blog post:
However, you can have a clear-cut idea from these posts here:
- Importance of a fan base and how to grow one
- 5 Twitter tactics to build a huge fan base
- Build a Facebook fan base without a budget
Coming back to the point, what if you don’t have any followers?
But you still need to promote your content.
This is what I do and even you should: (SEO is my niche.)
Leverage the power of Facebook and Google Plus Communities:
It really doesn’t matter how boring your niche is, you will still find social groups where are people are sharing thoughts similar to yours.
You just need to find them.
Here is how you find them:
Head over to Facebook and search Facebook groups with your main keyword as well as shoulder-hand keywords i.e. keywords that are relevant to your niche. For this post, I would go for something like SEO, content marketing, blogging, etc.
Connect with the club and start engaging.
See if the group offers some helpful insight or it’s just another group with spam all over it.
A spam page looks similar to this:
If the page is spammed to death, I would just leave a link and leave. I do not focus more on such pages as they are worthless. But it provides some social signal. So we can still drop a link.
Our target page should be the one that engages its audience and contains occasional links.
This way you can put a link if you offer quality.
Here, the page looks like it is filled with decent SEO lovers.
Now, analyze the type of content that creates more value or attraction in the group.
So a case study looks suitable for this group.
Develop a juice-leaking case study and post it.
If this method doesn’t look viable to you, instead employ these simple hacks. It doesn’t assure that your thread will be read, but it can somehow make your thread look legit and strong.
At first, start with a simple thank you message to the admin of the page for the invitation.
After that, spend a couple of days asking some questions.
Remember NO LINKS to your content or you will look like a spammer.
After a week, try to connect with the people by including insightful comments.
Then, after some days, drop a link with expressive comments only where it looks like a good fit.
And, it’s similar in Google groups. I’ve also seen links from G+ hold some positive impact on a new site rather than a Facebook group or Twitter chat group.
Go to your G+ account and start to search communities using your keywords.
Always pick up the one that has good numbers. You can’t do anything with the group that has hardly any members.
Follow the similar procedure mentioned above.
Make This a More Effective Tip: With Google Plus, this nice little easy trick can work a great deal. After you drop your link, start blasting shares, comments, and +1’s of the community’s engaging content.
Create a Post to Lure an Influencer and Reach Out to Them
This tactic is a hidden treasure. And a highly effective method, if used systematically.
Attracting an influencer simply means developing a post targeted particularly for the influencer like boasting about how they motivate you. Or, how you hit the correct road from the wrong loop thanks to them.
But, earlier than developing any content, you have to understand who are the important people in your niche.
Here is how you can reach them:
Step #1: Search for top influencer in your niche:
Employ the tools such as Followerwonk to reach influencers of your website. This is how you use Followerwonk to get the detailed information of your influencer:
Go to Followerwonk and log in with Twitter. Place your site’s major keyword or related keywords in search.
Sort out the profiles according to social authority. Just hit the social authority tab once, and that’s it.
Now those are the influencers you want to connect with.
Step #2: Check If they have a website (most of them do). Looks like Jeff has a website.
Prepare an Excel spreadsheet and jot the website down. Now it’s time to start the search for emails.
Use this email hunting guide for a quick help.
Either way, if you can’t find emails, you should also check their LinkedIn profile because most influencers do put their email there.
Step #3: Study the website properly. Go through his high converting posts. Try to figure out the influencer’s model of attraction when it comes to content. Also, check if any of your previous posts resembles the content your influencer shares. If not, build one.
Step #4: Reach out to them with a sneaky little click bait subject line and enticing body content.
Something like this: (Name) I Followed your Instructions, here is the RESULT.
Writing a subject title is only 10% of the finished work. And the remaining 90% lies in the body part of your email. Make sure you are talking as a genuine follower rather than a seller trying to sell his content.
Remember one thing: Influencers are busy. There is the reason why they are called influencers. Never fill the body part with your long stories. Nobody wants to hear it.
Here is an example of my email pitch to one of the brilliant names in content marketing – Neil Patel.
Result: Not only did I get the share on Twitter; in fact, Neil offered me something I couldn’t deny.
Make This a More Effective Tip: If you have mentioned an influencer in your content, do mention that too. Though it can’t guarantee anything, it does help you prove your point.
Repurpose Content and Syndicate it Everywhere
Take your content and convert it into videos. Publish it to various video submission sites like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion etc.
If you don’t want to do a manual distribution, get help from a distribution service like Oneload.
You can get a free plan that allows you to blast two videos at a time to 10 different channels.
Similarly turn your content into infographics, Slidedeck, and PDFs. Share them to slide submission sites and doc sharing sites like:
Note: Whether you are creating videos, PDFs or slides, always work with an SEO frame of mind.
Always have keywords in your titles and description. It gives you extra ranking gold.
Key Takeaway
If you need your blog to shine among the crowd of millions, you need to put extra efforts on your blog promotion strategies.
Now I want to know if you guys have anything interesting to share? What are the other strategies you have been using?
Tell us in the comments section below.
Admin Blogger’s Commentary: Readers, please share Amin’s post, so all bloggers, both new and veteran, can know these step by step ideas for blog promotion.
Related Posts:
10 Colorful Ways to Promote Your Blog
4 Simple Ways to Start Blogging Creatively
The Ultimate Guide to Blog Promotion
5 Smart Things You Can Do to Be a Better Blog Promoter
5 Powerful Ways Busy People Can Promote Their Blogs
79 of the Most Effective Ways to Get Free Blog Traffic
