1. Create unique and interesting titles that interest your readers
A catchy title or tweet will grab reader’s attention and draw them in. Top titles include the keywords plus statements like ’10 excellent ways to’ or asking a question ‘Who is easier to live with – men or women?’
2. Twitter
Twitter is every bloggers dream. Build a good following by interacting with like-minded people, joining in with blogger chats and contacting brands. Then you can promote every blog post you write through twitter to the right audience. Always include the username of the brand if it’s a review, however, remember not to put a username as the first character or it’ll just show on their timeline, not to everyone! There are quite a few ‘RT Twitters’ starting up like @FemaleBloggerRT and @TheBlogGuideRT to name a few, they will retweet your post out to their followers, so make sure to copy them in to your promotional tweets. Just remember with Twitter not to spam people with the same thing over and over, keep it fresh and interesting.
3. Buffer
Buffer is the app I use for scheduling tweets. Every time I write a blog post I schedule a couple of promotional tweets for the same day, a few days apart, then again a month later. This is a really handy way to boost older posts popularity again. For some of my most popular posts I schedule tweets every month or so to give them a boost – just because I wrote them a while ago doesn’t mean they are forgotten!
4. Facebook & Facebook groups
Create a Facebook page for your blog and share every post. Facebook also has some awesome groups for bloggers, I’m a member of quite a few. Many of them have threads to promote blog posts, competitions and exchange links. They are a great place to chat to other bloggers and make friends too.
5. Pinterest
Pinterest is fabulous for blog promotion. Pin all your key images from blog posts with a link back to the post. The image will be repinned and shared across a large audience creating lots of backlinks to your blog (check my post on Google Pagerank for why this is good!) and traffic.
6. G+ Google Plus
Google + is becoming quite popular since GFC lost popularity. Like Facebook or Twitter you can build a loyal following, and promote your blog posts. Also, there are hundreds of blogger communities to join too.
7. Forums
Participate in forums for like minded people. Don’t just spam forums with your link, take part in chats, build friendships and people will naturally be curious about your blog. Quite often there are threads for promoting posts and competitions too. My favourite forum is Blogger Forums as it’s so friendly and helpful, I could spend all day on there reading every thread! Forums can be such a great place to meet other bloggers – not all forums are like Guru Gossip!
8. Stumble Upon
Stumble Upon is one of the best traffic generators out there! This is a newer one to me too. You can add all of your posts there so people can randomly ‘stumble’ across your content. I’m still in the process of testing this, but I’ve read many great success stories. I’ll let you know how it goes
9. Build a comment network
Putting the effort in to interact with other bloggers really pays off, plus its fun too! Make sure to comment on lots of similar blogs to your own and find bloggers who are active commenters and drop them a line. Make sure your comment is something interesting and in response to their post, not just ‘check out my blog’. Leave your link and they may want to check out your blog and return a comment too!
10. Blog Hops
Blog Hops are an excellent way to promote posts and find people who are posting similar topics to you. I join in with a few now and again, my favourite is ‘The Week that was Captured’ run by Hannah of Make, Do and Push! Where we all link up a post of pictures from the week, I’m so nosey I love seeing what everyone has been up to!
Overall, there are so many social media sites to promote your blog posts, however the key is to be friendly, interact and build a loyal following of people who genuinely want to read your content. Good luck!
