As the picture to the left indicates, content is king, but even if you have really fantastic content, you still need to consider promoting blog posts to increase traffic and sell whatever products you have available on your website. For this post, we will assume that you have done all of the good things regarding creating your post in terms of well-written content. Also, original content and you solve a reader’s problem or answer his or her question. You have also addressed all of the SEO requirements to ensure that the search engines will index your blog post well. But there is more to ensure that you maximize your traffic – promoting blog posts!

Promoting Blog Posts – How Do I do That

The best way to promote your blog posts really depends on the type of website that you have. Also the products you are selling. There are lots of traditional methods of promotion as well as online approaches to help to promote blog posts.

Traditional Ways of Promoting Blog Posts

These include placing your web sites URL on your business cards, all of your stationery, including invoices, advertising in traditional print, TV, and radio venues. There are lots to choose from and they cost money so you will need to manage your budget well.

Online Methods

Posting to Twitter, Facebook and other online social media areas that are related to your business interests is a good start. Submitting your URL to Reddit, Stumbleupon, and other online news venues are also needed. Most are free, but some you will need to pay for as well. Google Adwords for example is one way of taking advantage of online advertising, although you must pay for each click. The more opportunities you have for your readers to become aware of your website and your blog posts, the better the chance of them actually reading your posts!

Blog posts need to have great content that answers readers’ questions. They must be unique from other content that can be found on similar websites. They must also be SEO compliant to ensure that the search engines rank them well. Finally, you need to have a great catchphrase.  Even though you are on the first page of the search results, the reader may select some other post. They may go to another title because it has a great-sounding title that is closer to what the reader is looking for. If you have done all of these things you may feel that you’re ready to move on to other activities. However, there is another major step that many bloggers forget and that is promoting your blog posts.

Promote Your Blog Posts – How

There are many ways to promote your blog posts. However not all will apply to your blog, so choose them with the audience in mind that you are after and also your budget. Some are free while others will cost something and you may not have all that much money to spend until your blog really gets going.

For example, Google offers their Adwords product which costs something every time a reader clicks on one of their ads. The amount depends on the competition and how much you have budgeted for each click. Others are free and you merely have to submit the URL of your blog post to the site in order to be listed and ranked. Sites such as Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, etc can be used as part of the social media experience. These are methods of getting your post out to the people who follow you on social media.

Advertising on your business card, your invoicing, and any other correspondence that you may routinely circulate are also good ways of getting your blog noticed. LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Scoop.it, Yahoo answers, etc should also be included. There are other ways to get your blog noticed and more people coming to your site. Make sure you have buttons to easily allow them to share your site and posts to their social media contacts. Twitter, Facebook, etc. all have buttons that can easily be added.