In the time it takes you to read this sentence, 3 new blogs will have come into existence. There can be no doubt that the world wide web in general, and social media sites in particular, are becoming more crowded and more competitive every second. The result? Standing out from the crowd is getting harder and harder.
Social media marketing is both necessary and extremely challenging. Blogs are an integral part of SEM, but simply building one isn’t enough. You need to get people to read what you write!
That being said, there are myriad resources that have become available which can help you promote and measure the success of your blog. Below you will find a definitive guide to some of the best resources online.
Overview of Blog Promotion
Some sweet, simple and easily actionable tips for blog promotion from Google itself, although we also love their disclaimer: “This is in no way a science or guarantee; it’s simply a few suggestions with which many bloggers have found success”. If you know little to nothing about blog promotion, it’s a good place to get an idea of the basics without getting overwhelmed.
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic
SEOmoz offers some great, detailed advice for bloggers who want not just more traffic but better, more targeted traffic. There’s a lot here to help diagnose why your blog might be fledgling, and what to do to remedy the situation.
Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do
If you know nothing about branding, heed the advice of power blogger Leo Babauta, who shows you how to figure out what your readership is thinking and use your insights to enhance the core identity of your blog.
A Look Back at the Last 5 Years in Blogging
Several blog marketing rules that worked well a few years ago no longer apply, while numerous new ones have cropped up. You have free platforms and social media at your disposal, but you’re also competing with online publications that have more resources and established traffic. Learn more about how blogging has changed and what lies ahead.
How I’d Promote My Blog If I Were Starting Out Again
Darren Rowse has found great success in blogging and promotion, so it’s worth finding out what he’d do differently based on his experiences and lessons.
Launching a Blog Successfully
10 Things to Do Before Launching Your Blog
To give your blog its best shot at success, cover your bases, make important decisions and strategize both content and promotion before the launch.
101 Ways to Promote a New Blog
Consult this check list of popular blog promotion ideas that include everything from blog networking to paid advertising.
14 Attention-Grabbing Tactics for Launching a New Business Blog
Move beyond the obvious with this resource which shares both the essentials and the ‘extras’ of blog promotion. The latter is where the competitive advantage lies.
A 3-Step Blueprint for a Brilliant Blog Launch
Finding blog success doesn’t have to be a slow and lonely process. Start strong with this blue-print; create content, set up your network and finally launch an attractive, already-thriving blog.
10 Ways to Launch a New Blog with a ‘Bang’
A list of classic promotional techniques applied to launching a new blog, highlighting the importance of being creative and setting yourself apart right from the get-go.
How to Get 6,312 Subscribers to Your Business Blog in One Day
Not just in one day; the very first day! Business blogs have assets and resources that can give them an immediate and ongoing edge over the competition. Learn how to start leveraging your data and content to gain followers in social media.
What it Takes to Start a Successful Blog
Several things are important when it comes to priming a new blog for success. Design, social networking, identity and adaptability are some of the things that set some blogs apart from the outset, while others might take longer to learn those same lessons.
Creating Popular Content
Go from blogging newbie to content strategist in 10 steps, starting with figuring out what you need and finally coming up with a blogging plan you can commit to.
Writing advice from one of the most well-respected web magazines. It doesn’t claim to teach you to become a great writer, but it can definitely help you avoid some common unforced errors of blog writing.
The Three-Step Guide to Getting More Traffic by Writing Less
You don’t have to write a post every day or even every other day in order to succeed — in fact, Copyblogger recommends once a week. Learn how writing occasionally as a guest blogger for others can be more profitable than writing a lot on your own blog, among other content-based promotional strategies.
Use These 10 Tips to Write Your Most Popular Post Ever
All posts on your blog are not created equal. It’s up to you to give some posts extra effort and turn out your best work. These tips can help spice up your blogging routine.
How to Create Viral Content (The Key Element behind Every Successful Blog)
Viper Chill makes the case that viral content (content that becomes popular on social media networks) is what sets successful blogs apart from the rest. Learn, with examples, what makes for a blog post that has all the right elements — headlines, introduction, main content and summary — to go viral.
Top 6 Ideas for Incredible Viral Content
Social media expert Tamar Weinberg is not the only one who believes that viral content is king, but she’s definitely one of the most qualified people to tell you what makes content go viral, and how to use those insights to give your own content a facelift.
5 Effective Linkbait and Link Generation Strategies
Linkbait is content designed to get back links on blogs and social media web sites. Back links not only bring in more traffic but also tell search engines that your blog is valuable to others and worth showing in the top results. Learn some tried-and-tested strategies to create content that succeeds on social media networks and gets tons of back links.
Using Social Media Networks
233 Social Networking Sites for Marketing Your Blog
Submitting your posts to common, general-interest networking sites like Facebook and StumbleUpon isn’t enough to give your blog an edge. Consult this super list of networking sites, organized by niches, to know where you can find a more targeted community for your topic, be it parenting, pets or comics.
9 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts
Social media and communications expert Chris Brogan offers insights into the blog promoting strategies that work best and are worth applying to every post you publish.
How-to: Write Effectively for Twitter & the Social Web
To promote your content on the social web, consult IIG’s comprehensive list of resources on the subject, which covers everything from how people read online to writing a great Twitter headline.
Mastering Shameless Blog Promotion
Learn how people spend their time on social media sites and what kind of “shameless” promotion techniques can be geared to those habits.
How I got my blog post retweeted by @problogger, @GuyKawasaki and 250 more
Find out how a relative newbie got the attention and recommendation of power bloggers and catapulted his blog to the next level.
How to Promote Your Blog Using Facebook Pages
Step-by-step instructions for creating a Facebook feed for your blog and publicizing your page on your blog.
Search Engine Marketing for Blogs
20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To
A list of the top blog directories that will not only get you targeted traffic but also valuable back links and more search engine props.
A guide to basic on-page SEO techniques for blogs — meta tags, keywords, sitemaps and robots.txt.
4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts
In addition to giving great content to your readers, you need to make it easy for search engines to understand what it’s about. Use these four tips to get the most SEO benefits out of every post.
How to Grow Your Blog to the Next Level with SEO
If your blog has a lot of content already, your analytic tools can reveal a lot about what your blog is good at. Build on its successes by optimizing old pages and creating content around the keywords that are already working well for you.
More Blog Promotion Tips
How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies
Some promotion techniques are great, some are inefficient and some are downright broken, doing more harm than good — so knowing what to avoid is as important as knowing what to do.
Guest Blogging: Tips, Advice, and Best Practices
Guest blogging can be a great way to gain exposure on other blogs and get targeted traffic, but it’s also one of the more challenging ways of promoting yourself. Keep these tips and best practices in mind as you pitch your idea and write a quality guest post.
8 Prime Locations to Promote Your Blog’s RSS Feed – What Are You Missing?
RSS makes it Really Simple for readers to keep up with your content, and it’s a significant indicator of your blog’s value to readers. Beyond just having a feed link, there are a number of things you can do to promote your RSS feed, from submitting it for auto discovery to having effective calls-to-action.
Blog Metrics and Tools
Blog Metrics: Six Recommendations for Measuring Your Success
As author Avinash Kaushik notes right at the beginning: “blogs are not websites.” They compete and perform differently than other web sites, and the metrics used for measuring blog success are accordingly unique to blogs. Kaushik further breaks those metrics down by type of blog: Diary, personal blog and business blog.
Meaningful Metrics for B2B blogging
The metrics that apply to regular blogs don’t necessarily apply to business blogs. Other types of questions are more important for business bloggers than for the rest — find out which ones.
A conversation between WordPress expert Joost de Valk and analytics expert Avinash Kaushik on the relative merits of various blog metrics and what they use to track and measure their own blogs.
A list of useful resources and tools that blogs can use to track their effectiveness, conversion rates and other metrics.
Guest Bio: Seth Persily is the President of Penn Multimedia in Atlanta, GA. He also leads the online marketing department for Premiere Tree Services.
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