Once you’ve finished writing a blog post, the first thing you need to do is promote it. But where are the best places to promote your blog and reach a wider audience?
Your content is key but getting readers onto your blog is just as important. At the start of your blogging journey, you need to work just as hard to drive traffic to your blog as you do creating your content. Once you have an established audience and following, promoting your blog becomes a lot easier. Here’s a list of places to promote your blog for maximum traffic.
1. Pinterest
Pinterest is by far one of the best places to promote your blog posts and grow your traffic organically, it’s simple to use and is by far the easiest way to grow your audience. Many people mistake Pinterest for a social platform, but it is in fact a search engine with a social element. If you use Pinterest correctly you can attract a huge audience because it acts like a search engine, with a social element.
You want to be pinning at least 50 times a day, pinning your own pins and other people’s too. Create several pins for your blog posts and see which one performs the best. Then every so often, create new pins for old posts to keep driving traffic to them. You can read my Pinterest blog post for a step-by-step guide to growing your blog on Pinterest.
2. Email list
You will need to bring a decent amount of traffic to your blog to build an email list. But once you have subscribers, you can update them weekly with links to your latest blog posts.
You can grow your email list quickly but creating an opt-in. Your readers aren’t always going to give you their email addresses for free, but by creating an opt-in that your audience will love, your email list will grow much quicker. Your email opt-in could be a checklist, access to an online course, a resource library or a discount code if you sell physical or digital items on your blog.
3. Twitter
Twitter is another great place to promote your blog posts as you can post direct links to your blog. As Twitter is a social site you should also engage with others and share links to other bloggers’ posts. If you’re only posting links to your own blog posts, then it may come across as spammy. You will want to create a community on Twitter in addition to posting links to your blog.
4. Facebook
Create a Facebook page for your blog and share direct links to your latest blog posts. Try to engage with your audience by asking them questions and replying to comments. To help build up your following you can ask your friends and family to share your Facebook posts, or you can create an ad to help get those first 50-plus followers.
5. Join Facebook Groups
One of the best strategies for getting your blog in front of readers is by joining a Facebook group. It may take some time to find the right groups which you can resonate with but it’s worth the effort, eventually, you will make friends and find collaboration opportunities. Some of my favourite Facebook groups are:
- Blogging Boost
- Bloggers Supporting Bloggers
- Creative Superheroes
- Bright Bloggers + Business
- Bloggers Camp
- Blogging with Purpose
- Bloggers Supporting Bloggers
- The SITS Girls Facebook Group
- Bloggers United
- Inspired Bloggers Network
- Blogging Newbs
- Boost Your Blog
- Grow Your Blog
The best way to become noticed in Facebook communities is to be social and helpful. Don’t just post links to your content and not share other people’s work. Answer questions and help others thrive, and they will support you in return.
6. Collaborations
Collaborating with other bloggers or brands is a great way to drive traffic to your blog. There are a few ways you could do this, you could either reach other brands that you would like to work with. Or you could do a roundup post with lots of other bloggers, for example, “20 experts share their opinion on…” this will help your blog reach a wider audience and help you build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.
7. Google Search / SEO
Optimize your blog post for search engines by using relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and image alt tags. This will make it easier for people to find your post when they search for related content. Once your blog posts start ranking high on Google you will notice a huge increase in your blog traffic.
If you haven’t been optimising your posts with SEO, I suggest you go back through all of your posts and make them SEO friendly. You can install an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or AIO SEO, which will rank your blog post and tell you exactly how to improve your SEO for each post.
8. Guest posting
Reach out to other bloggers in your niche and ask if you can guest post on their website. This will give you exposure to a new audience and help drive traffic back to your own site. Guest blogging helps you gain traffic because you’re able to get in front of a new audience, Google will also rank your site higher if you have other websites linking to your blog. Guest blogging also helps you build relationships with other bloggers in your niche.
9. Paid promotion
Running a paid advertising campaign on social media or Google AdWords will help drive traffic to your blog. But before you spend money on advertising, consider doing some research on paid advertising, to make sure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns, and you’re not wasting your money.
10. Instagram
You’re unlikely to get massive traffic from Instagram, simply because of the way the platform works. It’s much more visual and you can only put links in your stories or in your bio. But Instagram is a great platform to establish more meaningful engagement with your followers and potentially work with brands.
11. TikTok
TikTok is similar to Instagram in terms of bringing traffic to your blog. It’s harder to promote your latest blog post on this platform, but it is a good place to build your following and get your blog name out there. Plus you can reuse the content you’ve created for TikTok on Instagram reels.
12. Commenting
Leave comments on other relevant blogs and websites. Make sure your comments add value to the conversation and include a link back to your own blog post. Remember, Google will rank your website higher if you have more backlinks!
Leave meaningful comments on other people’s blog posts as this will help you build up a good relationship with bloggers and hopefully they will check out your blog in return.
