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20 Ways of Promoting your WordPress Blog

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Promoting WordPress Blog

Now that you have created and started on your WordPress blog, it’s time to also get started on its promotion!

Promotion!!! Why? This is the question that first comes up in the minds of bloggers or companies (yes even businesses have their own blogs), when somebody asks them to promote their blog. Their usual refrain is to say that they back themselves and their content to reach the desired target audience, and they don’t really think promotion is necessary.

But, IT IS NECESSARY. Yes, in an online world where a surfer’s attention span is bare minimum at best, you will be hard-pressed to capture the attention of your target audience. You would do well to remember that your target audience is fickle and what’s more, has lots of options to choose from as far as the blog of a particular niche is concerned. Say your blog is about SEO, and you believe it offers the latest and the very best of information about SEO and its various aspects, Google updates, the works; but guess what, there will be plenty of other guest blogs out there who will be doing the same thing. So, how do you ensure that it’s your blog that is able to grab eyeballs? Yes, you guessed it right; you do that by PROMOTING it.

So without beating about the bush, let me take you through 20 ways that will help you promote your WordPress blog.

1. Your content should be Fantastic

Yes, I know you are backing your content to the hilt, but is it really any good? You need to understand that there are plenty of people, some of them authority figures in their niche, who are tackling the same subject as you are. So, you need to take great pains to ensure that your content is interesting, is a problem solver and is engaging. More importantly, it must be what your target readers are looking for. By giving them something that they want, you are essentially taking the first step towards promoting your content.

2. Update your blog regularly

One blog post a month is not really going to cut it with your readers. You need to ensure that you are going to update your blog regularly through the week. By making regular posts, you are giving your readers something to come back to. Just imagine a scenario wherein a reader loves what you write, but finds that your posts are few and far between. This reader will stop coming to your blog, even though he/she has a good opinion about what you write. So, updating your blog is one of the more subtle ways of promoting it, although quite a number of people will tell you that it isn’t a part of marketing your blog at all.

3. Choose a Relevant Theme

Why do people spend a lot of time and effort searching for that perfect theme for their WordPress blog? It’s because the choice of the theme will make or mar their efforts. The right theme is the one that is relevant to the purpose of your blog, looks good and offers users a very nice user experience. This is also something that makes people come back to your blog, again and again. On the other hand, a theme that is not user friendly and looks very ordinary is a put off. Such blogs usually don’t work.

4.  Identify and Market your USP

Your blog needs to have a unique selling proposition, which is its driving force.  This is what separates the ordinary blog from something that is extraordinary. More often than not, what most bloggers do is that they leverage their personal credentials to define their USP, for e.g. somebody who is blogging on internet marketing, might have a decade worth of experience in the same, in this case the experience is the USP. It helps that person create a brand (yes treat your blog like a brand) that his readers will trust.

5. Give your Blog, Character

If you want people to relate to your blog, then you need to personalize it. Think of your blog as an extension of your own persona and write accordingly. Your blog is about your perceptions, ideas and opinions about a particular niche or subject. Exude confidence, pride, expertise, and a whole lot of other qualities with your blog. Your blog should come across as something that means business and believes in its posts, which essentially means that as a blog owner you identify with whatever is written on it.

6. Fixing Permalinks

If you are serious about blogging and promoting your blog, you need to get some idea about optimizing your blog and its content. The easiest optimization technique that can be used is by ensuring that the URLs of your blog posts have contextual keyword/s. For this to happen, you need to create your Permalinks accordingly. Don’t worry, it’s a pretty easy process and you can do it easily on your WordPress blog.

7. Showcase Credibility

This is of paramount importance. One of the better ways of ensuring that your blog exudes credibility is packing your content with facts and figures. Also make it a point to answer the comments that are posted on the blog. There are times when readers will have a contrary option to yours and will want to debate the points mentioned on a particular post. Don’t back away from replying to their comments. If you trust the veracity of the content posted on your blog, you must be willing to defend it. Over time, this creates a credible reputation for your blog.

Something else you should do and not forget is to provide your contact details. You must give users an option to get in touch with you. This breeds credibility as well.

8. Offer Variety

If you want your content to do all the talking for you, it’s important to use variety. Purely text oriented content kills readers interest after a period of time. So, try to mix and match your content by not just offering textual content but also offering videos, infographics, whitepapers and even PDF presentations on your blog. Variety, they say, is the spice of life, and nowhere is this truer than in your blog.

9. Facebook Profile

Yes, why not use the ever increasing potential of social media for your promotional efforts. Setup a Facebook page. Use your personal profile to market your blog. You need to give details about your blog and what it is all about to prospective readers and this becomes a breeze if you use your personal profile to market your blog. You can share the links to your blog posts through your Facebook profile.

10. Tweet… Tweet!!

Your blog needs the cute little blue birdie, so create that Twitter handle for your blog, and keep updating your handle, every time you make a blog post. You can even send out related tweets and interact with the followers of your blog, one-to-one. What you could do is that you can integrate your Facebook page with the profile you have created for Twitter. This will take away the need to make separate updates on both the social media platforms. An update done on one will reflect on the other.

11. On-Blog Twitter and Facebook Engagement

There are plenty of ways you can do this, but one of the better ways is by adding Facebook ‘Like’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons at the end of every page. So, if the visitor likes your post, they can click on the Like button and the link to your blog post will appear on their Facebook profile page. Not only will this help your blog post go viral, but search engines do consider the number of ‘likes’ in their search algorithm to rank your page. The Tweet this button performs along similar lines, and visitors, who press this button, will send out a Tweet with respect to your blog post. All in all, these are the kind of social sharing mechanisms that most bloggers are adopting as they are reaping rich dividends of the same.

12. Email Marketing

When it comes to online promotion, sometimes, it’s the tried and tested marketing methods that also need to be made a part of the marketing mix. Take for example the case of email marketing. With the advent of more innovative tools and techniques, not many give it the importance it earlier merited. But, if you want more and more users to adopt your blog, you need to distribute your content to prospective readers. This is where email marketing comes in handy. So, use it.

13. You won’t escape Keyword Research

Whatever, your online marketing techniques are, if there is one thing that you can’t escape is keyword research. You need to identify those keywords for which you want your blog to be ranked. You need to target only those keywords that are going to be used by your target readers to search for your blog. One of the best strategies in this regard is to target a mix of low volume and high volume keywords. There is very little chance of going wrong in this case, as you will be covering all your bases.

14. Blog Optimization

The great thing about the WordPress platform is that it offers you an SEO pack plugin that is easy to install and helps you optimize your blog, by optimizing your titles and description. So, use that to get started on your Homepage first, and try and optimize every important aspect on it, including the text, Title, Meta description etc, for your target keywords. Once that is done, you will also need to optimize your category pages in the same manner. Remember it is a unified SEO approach that will work for you, and not a piecemeal approach.

15. How about a Facebook Fan Page?

Yes, one of the better ways of using social media to promote your blog is to create a Facebook Fan page. What this means is that you need to create a landing page on Facebook that offers information about your blog, and what it is all about. By using this page, you can even post your blog articles, pictures and any other information related to your blog. It’s important not to confuse your fan page with your personal profile. They are two very different things. The latter helps you spread awareness about your blog, using your personal network, while the former helps you collect ‘fans’ who have subscribed to your Fan page; these fans actually want to know about any new updates and happenings on your blog.

16. Using YouTube Videos

This is something that requires a bit of creative effort from your side, but if you get it right, and are able to link YouTube videos to your WordPress blog site, there is no better way to promote your blog. Start off with a video that is really simple and which helps you get the hang of creating videos for your blog. As you go along, you can get a little more creative and do something that is really innovative.

17. Use Voting Sites

Another great promotional strategy is to use social news sites and discovery engines like Reddit, StumbleUpon, and BlogEngage, which accept posts and allow readers to vote for the content. This helps you generate a pretty good amount of backlinks to your blog and what’s more regular submission of your posts to these sites, does help improve blog traffic, as well.

18. Network within the Blogging Community

As a blogger, you are a part of the larger blogging community that interacts with each other on various discussion forums and other sites. What you need to do, is become an active member of this community and make constructive contributions in terms of your opinions, ideas, suggestions and anything and everything related to your niche and blogging in general. This will not only help you improve your reputation and the credibility of your blog, but it will also help you place a finger on the pulse of the latest trends, and use them in your blog.

19. Effective Communication

You might be wondering, why this is not right at the top of the ‘ways’ given for promoting your blog…. There are two reasons… first, these tips have not been given in their order of importance and second, communication is something that stays relevant through your blogging activity. The reason why I have mentioned this pointer at this junction is to drive home the point that at every stage of the blogging process, you need to communicate effectively. You need to make them feel that your blog is something that they cannot do without; and for this to happen effective communication is a must.

Here are just some of the elements of an effectively communicated message (blog content):

  • Proper preparation of the message
  • It must have clear purpose
  • Keeping the User engaged at every step of the message
  • You pour your heart into the message
  • You must be passionate about your message
  • It must be complete and correct
  • It must help people make a decision (call to action centric)
  • Most importantly, it must be considerate of the target readers’ views

Communicating effectively with your readers is the essence of a successful blog. You can promote it across every known channel, but if it doesn’t come across as honest, you won’t be able to market your blog successfully.

20. Patience is the key

I want to conclude the pointers by mentioning one important attribute that all bloggers must possess while promoting their blog and that is patience. You will do well to remember that your blog cannot go from zero to being a hero in double quick time. So, by being patient, you are giving yourself time to experience the fruits of your professional labor.

I am sure these 20 ways of blog promotion will prove to be immensely useful to you and will help your blog become popular in its niche. But, a word of caution – Promotion is all about learning and implementing new strategies and also reworking existing strategies to suit the need of the hour. So, keep monitoring your results with respect to each and every promotional strategy that you adopt, and keep making changes whenever your think they are needed. All the best!

Image © Ben Chams – Fotolia.com

About

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of The 20 Media, a content marketing agency specializing in content & data-driven SEO and PRmention, a digital PR agency. He regularly speaks at various conferences about SEO, Content Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Digital PR. Pratik has spoken at 80th Annual Conference of Florida Public Relations Association, Accounting & Finance Show, Singapore, NextBigWhat’s UnPluggd, IIT-Bombay, SMX Israel, SEMrush Meetup, MICA, IIT-Roorkee and other major events. As a passionate SEO & content marketer, he shares his thoughts and knowledge in publications like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, Fast Company, The Next Web, YourStory and Inc42 to name a few.

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{ 46 Responses }

  1. Dharak Sandeep says:
    Hey Pratik,I am not a regular reader of this blog, but I found this post from google, I fall into deep by reading one and one paragraph of this blog. Really all the points are very useful and important. As this is one of the best posts ever, where I could get some genuine information compared to other blogs.Thanks a lot mate for sharing such an impressive post here.
  2. van dat says:
    Thank for sharing great article. I am trying some blog for mysheft. I learn more knonlege from your post. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF5KgImHIHs
  3. Andrew says:
    Nice list here of some fundamentals for promoting a blog. I like the idea of using a personal Facebook profile to promote in addition to your site's Page. But I think it's important to only promote the very best and refrain from making sales pitches because that could irritate your friends and real-life acquaintances.
  4. Taswir says:
    Nice sharing Pratik. I shall concentrate more on social sharing. How about Google+ and Pinterest. Don't you think those have significant impact on social media?
  5. Trung Nguyen says:
    I think these 20 ways above are awesome to use for promoting a blog. I'm just using some of these ways, I'll try the others, hoping it'll work well for my blog. :)
  6. Praveen Soni says:
    Hello Pratik Dholakiya, wow i love the tips which you are shared above. i like mostly all the tips but we know that how difficult is to be consistent with blogging but i especially like some of your points which are update blog, choose relevant theme, blog optimization, tweet, be active on social media so fantastic sharing for all the newbie's who just started the blog or going to start the blog :) Well done bro :) Nice sharing, thanks for the sharing :)
  7. Pritam Nagrale says:
    Great article Pratik. I think a new blogger should be consistent in all the activities as explained above. It takes months before you could get some results from your blog. Rather than focusing on monetary gain, he should focus on quality in the beginnings. Results are bound to come.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Here "Patience is the key" point gets applied. You can't be popular overnight neither you can earn money in the short time through Blogging. All you need is to put great efforts and have some patience.
  8. David LLyons says:
    I really think quality content is the key to blogging. Staying committed to the best possible writing and comprehensive original work, and this will take you far. I think in today's world you need good technical skills as well, so consider hiring a technical consultant or freelancer to help out if this is not our strong suit.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      That's absolutely correct. Having detailed post that help the readers in one or the other way will help going long way. Sometimes it happens that your smallest post does really well BUT often times quality and informative writing wins the game.
  9. akhilendra says:
    email marketing is crucial for any blog or online business, content is king, social media marketing along with search engine optimization is imperative for a successful blog. thanks for sharing these tips.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Thanks Akhilendra for stopping by and commenting. I'm glad you liked the post.
  10. Sanjib Saha says:
    Hi, It was a fabulous post with descriptive yet to the point information. I loved the way you have elaborated every point still keeping it apt and not messy. It is the right place for the newbies to read through and improve their skills. It is beneficial for established ones to brush up their minds and give them a darn new approach and refreshed view to blogging. Thanks for such a good effort.:)
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Hi Sanjib, Thank you so much for your kind words. I feel great after reading your comment that my post is helping to the readers get what they're actually looking for. Thanks again for sharing your words.
  11. Dhruv Bhagat says:
    Hi Pratik, I loved all your tips for promoting the blog for high traffic. I truly think that YouTube is one of the most advanced way to promote a blog. Also, one can make money from YouTube videos too.. Tweeting posts is one more great way in the blogosphere! Thanks for sharing your top 20 ways :)
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      That's right Dhruv, If you can be creative enough to get the eyeballs of twitterers then you're definitely going to get a number of tweets for what you've shared. Glad you liked the post and hope all the points will be helpful.
  12. Anton Koekemoer says:
    Hi Pratik, 20 of the best tips for anyone starting off with their own blog in Wordpress if I may say so myself. Especially the last tip on Patience is key. Not to mention the acute knowledge on SEO one will build up following some of these tips – especially with Keyword Research, as it is the base / foundation for your SEO strategy.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Hi Anton, glad you liked the post and found implementable. Thanks for commenting and sharing your thoughts.
  13. Julian King says:
    Taking into account we all are looking for creative techniques to gain exposure and to bring more traffic for our blogs, I find this list very useful. I will implement all these tips, but I'll be focusing more on social media, as I've read that Google puts more weight on it.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Hey Julian, Glad you found the list useful. Try your hands with all the popular social media networks. Google+ is a growing network so you probably would get less than what you could get through Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, so my recommendation would be to try all these platforms together. Let me know in case if you need any help with that.
  14. Aasma says:
    Facebook and Twitter obviously play vital role in the promotion of any website and blog, but you can also not ignore Google+. It's reach also increasing and now people are spending their on it.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      You're right, Google+ is a growing network and everyone should take advantage of it. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
  15. Kulwant Nagi says:
    After setting the blog this is the toughest part where most bloggers fail and quit blogging. I have seen many fellow bloggers who just quitted blogging because of getting low traffic. By following this easy to implement points a newbie can easily generate massive traffic. But I have little doubt with point "Update your blog regularly". because I have read one many blogs that if you want to deliver quality content and don't want to smash reader's mind then you should write 2-3 posts in a week. Correct me if I am wrong. Otherwise all your points are very good.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Hi Kulwant, Thanks for your comment. To update your blog regularly would be preferable if you're willing to increase your readers day by day. I know that there are many people around saying that update your blog twice or thrice a week to ensure that your readers don't get bored, however this is something you'll need to do after you have a sufficient # of readers. Running a blog and posting regularly doesn't necessarily required that you need to post content only, you can share videos, graphics, a few posts written outside extraordinarily, some news, sometimes create a poll etc. Hope this will be helpful.
  16. bert says:
    Nice tips. Doing most of them. A professional blog is often a business. So like promoting a business, you promote your blog.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      That's right :)
  17. chris says:
    Hi Pratik I agree with all of what you said but the new content point always confuses me. Do we write one 600 word blog post a week or can we do three posts of 200 words? Which would google prefer? I see tech blogs doing 10 posts of sub 100 words a day and they don't seem to get penalised so why is that? Is it because they are considered authority sites? Sorry for all the questions by the way! Chris
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Hi Chris, No problem about all these questions. Do we write one 600 word blog post a week or can we do three posts of 200 words? Which would google prefer? Google would definitely prefer the post which is quality, unique and is giving something back to readers. I'm sure that a 200 words content would not be enough for what you want to write in or convey your message properly. I see tech blogs doing 10 posts of sub 100 words a day and they don’t seem to get penalised so why is that? Is it because they are considered authority sites? It all depends on the type of blogs, the content being shared on that blog and the type of content being shared on the blog. If they have been using duplicate content to update their platform often then probably they would get penalised sooner or later. BUT I can tell the things with surety after i take look at the type of blogs you're talking about. Let me know if you have any other questions.
  18. Hamza Sheikh says:
    Hey Pratik.. Its an amazing compiled list of ways to promote any website in the internet. Well, I want to add some value into the social networking and engaging with other same niche people. The connection with such people really do wonders for you in the business growth. I have been currently trying to get involved with new users and bloggers in my niche to reach out more and more targeted users and community. btw, thanks for the great post!
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Hi Hamza, That's absolutely right, It is called relationship building and networking - which has high ROI at the end. I have tried and tested this :) Hope you will do good in this.
  19. Tami Nadeau says:
    These are very practical and straight forward tips that I can really use. I am not very savvy on SEO, so anything I can learn is always appreciated. I hadn't given that much thought to my theme, though I had spent a little time thinking about it. I am not all that happy with what I've got, but I'm not sure what really works. Blogging regularly is a challenge for me, as I am very busy outside of blogging. I am slowly changing my ways, and trying to blend it with family time as well. Thanks again for these tips and I will be paying more attention from now on.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      You are welcome Tami, Let me know if I can be of any help for you.
  20. Nishadha says:
    Excellent list of tips. Another one that can have very high returns is replying to journalist queries found in sites like HARO.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Thanks NIshadha, How do you think replying to journalists' queries in the sites like HARO would help to promote your wordpress blog? I'm not sure about this so just curious to hear your thoughts.
      • Nishadha says:
        Hi Pratik, Some industry recognized journalists writing for quality sites ask there question or things related to their story. If you're manage to give some input related to their story you have a good chance of getting a link from these blogs.
        • Pratik Dholakiya says:
          Sounds good but also it's a damn tough job. Have you tried this before?
          • Nishadha says:
            I have tried this and had success with it. It's tough but considering the chance of authority links I think it's well worth it.
            • Pratik Dholakiya says:
              That's awesome. Thanks for letting me know, I will try this out soon and will see how it goes.
  21. Ben Troy says:
    It is definitely good to know info for beginners and a good reminder for those who forgot.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Thanks Ben, glad you liked the content.
  22. Robert says:
    That's a fantastic list. I also think it doesn't hurt to optimize each blog post for SEO. Using a plugin like All In One SEO and adding the main keyword to the title, the meta description, using it in some headlines and sub-headlines. As well as using the main keyword together with some related keywords a few times throughout the blog post. However, the main focus needs to be on the reader and not on the use of keywords for SEO.
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Robert, you've a great point to think about. All it needs to be done is to optimize a page, title and content by keeping users and user behavior in mind.
  23. Josh Kohlbach says:
    This is a great list Pratik! I'd like to reinforce your point about networking. It's amazing how many bloggers never come out of their shell and end up giving up blogging altogether because they don't as much traffic as they would expect. Networking is a MASSIVE key to overcoming this. I've made loads of great friends just emailing bloggers out of the blue and commenting on their articles and it's because of this network that I have been able to launch products and websites successfully. It's also important because in order to market yourself you need to leverage other people's audiences. That's the whole basis of advertising and networking is pretty much free advertising!
    • Pratik Dholakiya says:
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts about networking. Much appreciated. You're absolutely right that networking is a Massive key for the bloggers who give up blogging due to lack of networking. It really helps to not only make great friends who are real bloggers but also helps to get exposure that they are looking for. I know that commenting on other bloggers' blog has been really great part of the networking however I haven't been able to do that myself. I hope I will start doing it soon.
  24. Andy says:
    This post should be called 20 Completely Un-unique Ways of Promoting your WordPress Blog. Nothing here is technically wrong, but none of it is all that unique.
    • Hesham Zebida says:
      You win! I've edited the title, I think it's cool now!