The bullsh*t lie about blogging that I’m tired of hearing…
I just wrote the most brilliant blog post….now what?
Tell me if this sounds familiar? You’re in the middle of folding laundry and you think of the most AMAZING blog post. The kind of blog post that you KNOW will go viral, the kind of blog post that will make people laugh, cry and most of all share with their friends. You throw down your laundry and pick up your laptop, you spend the next hour crafting the most brilliant blog post and hit PUBLISH. Surely, hundreds and thousands of people are about to hit your site to read the post…it’s just THAT good. You wait…and nothing happens. So you publish the blog post on Facebook, thinking WOW…it’s about to get viral, YO! Half an hour later you check your stats….Facebook Reach is 40 people and not one person has liked it. Whomp, Whomp, Whomp. I want you to know…it’s not you….it’s not your content…it’s something else, it’s the one thing that blogging consultants don’t always mention.
Content is NOT King
There’s this notion amongst pro blogging consultants that “content is king” and that if you write something powerful, your audience will find you, and it will be shared a billion times and you’ll be rich and live happily ever after. But as you may have already experienced…it doesn’t always work like that. Actually…it rarely works like that. What you don’t see is that while YES, content is important…promotion of your content is even more important. As a matter of fact, I once read that you should spend 20% of your time writing and 80% of your time promoting your content.…and I totally agree with that. Most of us bloggers spend so much time putting hard work and effort into actually writing the blog post and then totally blow it when it comes to promoting it. This is our downfall!
Learn to be self-promoting blogging machines will likely be new…and slightly uncomfortable for some of you. Hell, I’m still kinda nervous every time I have to promote a new blog post, but at the end of the day, it’s the only way that your blog posts will be read by the people who need to read it. Below I’ve put together 15 ways that you can promote your blog posts in a non-creepy or pushy way!
15 ways to promote your blog posts
- Publish a link to your blog post on your blog’s Facebook page
- Publish a link to your blog post on your personal Facebook page
- Boost the post on Facebook for no more than $5.00
- Publish a link on your Twitter account (multiples times a day)
- Publish a link to your LinkedIn account
- Publish a link to your Google + account
- Share a link to your blog post to one of your Pinterest boards
- Share a link to your blog post to several relevant Pinterest group boards
- Share a link to your blog post in a newsletter to your subscribers
- If you mentioned to or linked to any other bloggers in the post, send them a quick note and let them know that you mentioned them in a blog post and include a link to the post.
- Share your new blog post on Instagram be sure to link to the post in your BIO URL
- Sign up for StumbleUpon and stumble your link
- Find a Sub-Reddit on Reddit.com that relates to your niche and post your link
- Find websites that have Weekly linkups and add your link
- Add a link to the new post on an older blog post that gets a lot of traffic
Now that you’ve got a few ideas on how to share your content, I want to remind you not to get discouraged if when you are first starting out, your blog posts do not get as much traction as they deserve. The bigger your readership becomes, the more viral your content will be. The best part is that in a few months you can re-share that totally brilliant piece to your new followers and it will be brand new to them!
Do you have a favorite way to promote your blog posts? I’d love to hear how you do it. Leave me a comment in the comments section!
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Love your new blog. I love that you tell it how it is! Thanks for sharing part of your story, I think I read all of your posts so far! Excited to follow along.
Shonee
http://www.hawthorneandmain.com
Hi Chrystie,
Thank you so much for this post!! As a new blogger, I’ve been looking for ways to promote my blog and this list is so helpful! Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
-Michelle @ http://www.livelychicken.com
This was very helpful Chrystie! Thank you so much for sharing!
Great tips. I find link parties to be the in thing right now. At first it is difficult to find the right fit, but it can be a very powerful tool.
Loved this post, Chrystie. NO ONE tells you how hard it will be to get eyes on your blog posts, let alone how to get comments, social shares, etc.
I’m already doing most of the things on your list, but I’ve never tried boosted posts on Facebook. What’s your experience? Do they work? Are they worth the money?
Exactly..so many people out there make it look easy..but the truth is…it takes a lot of work!
Love it! It’s so true, and I’m guilty of it myself. Publish and run! lol.
You’ve given me some great ideas for how to promote my blog more, thanks!
Awesome! I definitely believe it’s sooo important to promote your posts!
Thank you!!!!! I always felt overwhelmed with the whole concept of “content is king.” Well, there’s so much out there that you don’t know WHAT to do for content. I meant, what exactly does “content is king” mean? Promoting is definitely hard to do but I’m glad to see someone else who does it this way and makes me feel better about it! Thank you!
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH FOR THIS! In all my research on how to grow my blog, get traffic, blah blah, I keep reading that it is ALLL about content. Which as you said, is of course very important. But when I know I have legit content and my blog is still not blowing up, it gets discouraging. Thanks for these tips!
– – Rachel @ Tidy&Teal
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Thank you for sharing, I’m a new blogger and it is definitely hard to gain traffic as a new one. This seems to add a bit of traffic and hopefully will be catchy to some readers, 😌