New bloggers tend to give up in less than three months or even in weeks when they realize that they aren’t getting traffic to their blog. It’s depressing to write content almost every day of the week and have no readers. Sort of like talking to the wall, right? Well, we shouldn’t just wait. There are many places to promote your blog, even if your blog is really new.
I started this blog in December last year, but migrated twice and eventually settled for a self-hosted blog right before February. I’ve been getting about 50 to 100 views daily after I started promoting my blog and it’s a good start for new bloggers.
Organic search traffic may be the best traffic for your blog, but your efforts in writing SEO compliant articles will normally only pay off after at least 6 months from launch.
In the meantime, why not bring in some traffic and make some affiliate sales to cover your blogging costs?
This article is a list of 9 free (or paid if you like) places to promote your blog and get traffic even before your SEO efforts kick in.
1. Pinterest
This one’s still a relatively new platform for me to promote my blog posts but I’m definitely getting more views each day from Pinterest. It has proven to be the best social media platform for bringing traffic to blogs.
How does it drive traffic to your blog?
If your pin gets repinned by others many times, your potential reach is multiplied many times. If your pin gets saved to a group board with 100,000 followers, imagine how many views you might potentially get. The bigger the reach, the higher the chance of getting new visitors to your blog.The good thing about Pinterest in promoting your blog is that the visitors you get from Pinterest are most probably interested in the topic you’ve written. It’s easier to get the right visitors and it helps a lot in conversions.
A pin on Pinterest will remain for months or even more than a year and generates more traffic as time passes, unlike promoting your blog on Facebook and Twitter, which normally lasts for just days.
What are some of the tips in increasing your repin rate?
I’m not a Pinterest expert, but my views are based on what some of the rather successful bloggers have mentioned in their respective articles.I would recommend converting your Pinterest account to a Business account, and you will be able to see how many views, clicks and saves your pins are getting. That way, you can determine which pin is working for you and which is not. You can also set up Rich Pins which really stand out. You can refer to Melyssa Griffin’s easy-to-understand article on how to set up rich pins.
To get your pins noticed by a bigger audience, try joining group boards with a high repin rate. A group board with thousands of followers but with a low repin rate isn’t that helpful because if no one repins your article, it limits your reach.
You can use PinGroupie to search for all of the group boards in your targeted niche, and you can check how many pins, likes, collaborators, followers and repins a group board has. To join a group board, you will have to contact the owner of the board via email or by commenting on one of the person’s pins. Some group boards have their own rules to join or some are even closed to new pins.
You have to keep trying to get invited to more group boards. That way, you can increase your repins.
If you need an image editor for creating beautiful pins, you can use PicMonkey or Canva. Both of them work well for Pinterest. I normally use PicMonkey as it’s free (limited themes) but I plan to sign up for the premium once I have the budget to do so. The premium version comes with lots of other themes that will help you to create even prettier pins.
2. Facebook
Facebook is one of the most common ways to promote your blog. Most of the time, you’ll find difficulty in promoting your blog to your friends or family as they might not be interested in your articles.
If that’s the case, another way to promote is by joining Facebook blog groups. The good thing about such groups is that it not only gives you more readers, but you can learn a lot from other bloggers as well.
Sharing your blog posts and reading other blog posts enables you to gauge how your blog fares in a community of bloggers. You will learn about the tools other bloggers are using, the methods they are employing to get traffic and eventually improve your blog as a whole.
Most importantly, you’ll need the encouragement from other bloggers to continue blogging when nothing seems to be happening for you.
Apart from Facebook groups, you can experiment with Facebook Ads as well, if you have the budget. I haven’t had much success with it as you can see in this article. You can be successful with Facebook Ads if you are able to promote the right content to the right audience. Let me know if it worked for you.
3. Twitter
Twitter is another platform for you to promote your blog. Twitter can be effective in driving traffic to your blog if you do it correctly. A simple copy and paste of your blog URL is not the way to do it.
There are certain tactics for you to use to draw your followers’ attention.
- Use short but provocative tweets which makes potential readers want to find out what you’re tweeting about. You don’t have to write the topic of your article.
- You can use hashtags as well. Use specific hashtags to promote your own brand and general hashtags to get your tweets seen by users searching for it.
- Using visually appealing images might help as well.
- Use mentions as well. If you wrote an article about a prominent person, tag him so that you might get potential re-tweets from his or her followers.
I’ve never really used Twitter to promote my blog yet so I’m not sure how effective it really is.
4. Instagram
Instagram is not just a place for you to share images of what you ate or what you wore (or didn’t wear) today. You can use it to promote your blog as well.
Always add a link to your blog in the ‘bio’ section. That way, users who look into your profile can be directed to your link. You can also promote your blog by using “call to action” images. For e.g. you can host a giveaway through Instagram and require your followers to use the link in your bio to participate.
You can also contact influencers in your niche and get their help to promote your account. However, most influencers will definitely require some payment for a shout out. You can read this article for a comprehensive guide in driving traffic through Instagram.
Personally, I feel that Instagram is harder to use to gain traffic to your blog for two main reasons:
- You can’t insert a clickable link in your posts. You can only direct them to click the link located at your bio.
- You can only insert one URL at your bio. If you want to shorten your URL, you can use Bitly.
5. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the Facebook equivalent for the working class. It’s where you promote yourself in terms of your current profession and your work history. There will be lots of job headhunters and it’s a good way to get recommended to a great position in a stable company.
How is LinkedIn suitable to promote your blog?
For most bloggers, it’s not. It’s relevant when your blog topic is more towards employment, interview skills, office ethics and all other related topics. If you run a food blog or a fashion blog, you generally can’t expect to get much traffic from LinkedIn. If you write on interview tips, it might work well for you.
6. Quora
You can use Quora to promote your blog as well. Quora is a Q&A platform where you can ask whatever question you have in mind and you’re likely to get a few answers (at least) by other users.
The best way to promote your blog is to contribute relevant and lengthy answers to questions that are related to your niche. You can also summarize your answer and include the link of your blog post for the full article. For e.g. if someone asks “how do I start a blog?”, you can give brief points on the steps to take, but link your article for a comprehensive and detailed version of it.
Remember to complete your bio on Quora. Also, mention that you’re the owner/blogger/founder of your website, for e.g “I’m the founder of www.yourwebsite.com”. It appears right beneath your name whenever someone sees your answer, or visits your profile.
You can also include your affiliate link in your answers, and disclose as such. It might help you to increase your affiliate conversion rate. For e.g. if you’re a web hosting affiliate (Bluehost / SiteGround / HostGator / etc.), you can promote web hosting to someone interested in getting a new blog, but provide honest reviews.
Once you get more followers, your answers will probably show up much higher compared to others. That way, you’ll get more views and it’s an added advantage.
7. StumbleUpon
The next on the list is StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is a platform where you can share your articles on it, and when users click on the “Stumble button”, they are “randomly” directed to articles in the chosen category. They probably have their own algorithm to decide how often an article shows up in “stumbles”. One of those ways is through their paid advertisements. If you would like to try using their paid advertisements, it’s through another link here.
It’s easier to stumble upon articles which have thousands of ‘likes’, which probably means that the more likes you get on your article, the easier it is for your article to reach others. I may be wrong though.
The negative part about using StumbleUpon to promote your blog is the high bounce rate. As StumbleUpon works on the mechanism where you jump to someone else’s article after you’ve read the current one, it’s only normal that your bounce rate will keep increasing.
8. Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is one of those platforms where you normally look for funny or controversial articles. It may not be that suitable if your posts are on your personal lifestyle or whatnot.
I’m still new to promoting my blog through Buzzfeed but I don’t really see it as a viable way unless I’m writing about the kind of news that may go viral or use controversial headlines. Topics like “How to start a blog” are generally unsuitable, in my opinion.
If you’re interested, you can use this link to add your post there.
9. Digg
If your articles are suitable for Buzzfeed, you should check out Digg as well. They have topics on technology, news, entertainment, science and even Donald Trump. You get the idea.
I came across this article which teaches you how to drive traffic to your blog using Digg for your own reading.
I’ve not personally experimented with Digg before, so I can’t tell if it’s really effective. I’m sure some would have found success with it. If you’ve tried it before, do let me know in the comment box below!
Conclusion
There are many avenues for you to promote your blog. You have to experiment it yourself to know which platform is the most suitable in promoting your blog. Although some experts would argue that search engine traffic is the best type of traffic, you don’t have to wait for your SEO efforts to kick in.You should start promoting from day one and you’ll experience faster growth.
Out of all of the above, I would recommend Pinterest and Facebook as the top 2 methods in promoting your blog as they show the best results so far. Good luck to everyone!
If you need help in setting up a blog, you can refer to this guide!
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