Get on blogging, chapter 5 – Let it fly

25.07.2014 5 min read

Get on blogging is a weekly series about blogging and becoming a blogger. In this fifth chapter I get into marketing your blog and posts. How will readers find your content?

You build it and they will come! That would be really something, wouldn't it? You'd only have to concentrate on writing and creating. Unfortunately in reality you will have to do lots of work if you want your blog to be noticed and your posts read. Marketing is not advertising and selling, even though advertising and selling are marketing. That means marketing is much bigger thing than many people understand. Actually even the way your blog looks is part of it's marketing. For more information about marketing in general read the Marketing basics series.

Be active

Your own activity is important. The best case scenario would be that other people would share your posts and tell their friends to join them in reading your blog. There are those who will but you are the main marketer of your blog, not anyone else. Of course unless you hire someone to do the heavy lifting. You must yourself be active in marketing your blog and the posts, you must yourself be willing to tell others when your blog has been updated. Be active yourself and be persistent. There's no such thing as overnight success and it can take years before your blog gets any sort of popular. For the success you must keep blogging and you must keep marketing.

Go social

For your blog social media are the best marketing platforms. Actually your blog is social media and it's a common misconception to exclude blogs from them. Because of this sharing your blog posts on other platforms is only natural. You can share your content on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon and many other services. Keep sharing the content, not only once, but again and again. Most of your friends and followers will miss your posts on the first and even the second time you share it. However be careful: I see lots of people sharing the same link a bit too many times a day and a bit too often for my taste. Some I mute for that. Don't get muted for oversharing.

It's a good idea to share other content than your blog posts too. Sharing other bloggers content may lead to them to share your content too. Of course you shouldn't expect this and share only to get shares. ReTweet, like and plus content that really interest you. Sharing posts from other blogs benefits you also in the way that it makes you seem interesting and you will gain followers, likers and then some. As your followings grow more people will also see when you share the content of your own blog.

Sharing your content on social media is also important for SEO point of view. Search engines will see your content has been shared thus it must have (at least some) interest. That will make them rank your content higher up in searches. Google+ is very important in this since Google has integrated the service heavily to their search engine. Add social media buttons to your blog posts. At least add Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google+ buttons, because these are the most likely platforms for your content to be shared. Adding the buttons will not only help your readers to share your content but also it will suggest and encourage them to do so.

Utilise the images

Visual web is a big deal now and many social media platforms have taken into it. Pinterest is obviously very visual and it's pretty much all about sharing images. Twitter has also made using images on Tweets a big deal and Facebook has recently changed it's layout to accommodate bigger images. In case there are images on your blog posts make sure to share them on Pinterest. Pinterest is a great source of traffic. You can also include a photo in your Tweets about your blog posts. In case you Tweet your post multiple times a day (which I don't recommend) don't use an image in every one of those Tweets. That would only annoy many of your followers.

Make comments

If you wish to have comments on your blog, comment on other blogs. I'm myself a bit lazy in this, but when I actually take an effort to go and comment other blogs it gives a little spike to the amount of visitors. Commenting isn't about SEO and you need not to treat is as a plain marketing effort. Make sure you are commenting because you really wish to add to the conversation and want to connect. Otherwise your comments will start to look spammy and they will get reported to spam filter services or at least deleted. Therefore even though you can use commenting as part of your marketing plan you must make sure your comments don't become something the other bloggers don't want on their blogs. Remember also to comment on less popular and more unknown blogs. Their owners don't get too many comments in general and are very happy about those they get. They are also more likely to return the favour and comment your blog than the popular bloggers.

Send email

Some people swear on newsletters. For them sending newsletters is the best way to get readers to their blog. It of course requires building a pretty big audience of interested subscribers. There are many things you can do and many things you need not to do with your newsletter, but for me the best newsletters are those which make me feel special. They aren't all about the latest blog post, but they include some sort of content that isn't available anywhere else. Do add the links to your latest blog posts too on your emails, but don't make the email only about it. Emails are a bit tricky business. In case your list is very small it won't be driving so much traffic to your blog and writing the emails may get frustrating (I've been there many times). Additionally subscribers are very flaky and some of them are likely to unsubscribe after a while for many different reasons. That's not something to take personally.

Get listed

Add your blog to appropriate blog listings and directories, such as Bloglovin'. As an example this blog is on Bloglovin'. While it's following isn't really big the service still creates some traffic to the blog. There are lots of different blog directories, some local listings and specialised listings. Unfortunately more and more blog listings are either kind of dead or they require payment for your blog to be listed. It is a bit of an effort to get your blog on these different directories but if you happen to find a good one it's worth the trouble.

Next week Get on blogging goes deep in the analytics and measuring. Does lack of comments mean no person is reading the blog? How accurate are the visitor tracking services? Is your blog doomed if the bounce rate is high?

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• Get on blogging, chapter 6 – Comments, traffic and shares
• Get on blogging, chapter 4 – It\'s all about the looks