How to Promote a Blog Post

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Writing your blog post is just half the battle, the other half is promotion.

Derek Halpern of socialtriggers.com has a rule for blogging – spend 20% of your time creating and 80% of your time promoting.

When the web is crowded with people vying for people’s attention, the ones that cut through the noise are the ones who knows how to market their themselves.

The following are ways you can utilize to promote your latest blog post:

1. Write amazing headlines

David Ogilvy, one of the best ad men in the last century has often said that that headlines are read 5x more than the body.

A good place to start to learn how to write good headlines is to Google the words “copyblogger headline formula” and go through the top posts.

Another tool you can use is the Portent Headline Generator. Just insert your subject and it will generate headline ideas for you.

2. Outreach to the influencers in your space

Look for people who have written similar blog posts and have it linked / cite their post in your blog post.

Email them telling them that you cited them in your blog post on the same topic and ask them if they are willing to share.

It can be among the lines of:

“Hey Eric, just wanted to say that I’m a big fan of your work.

So much so that I even linked out to you in my latest blogpost.

It would make my year if you share this.

Either way, keep up the good work.

Cheers, Robert.”

3. Always look for people who are sharing things already

It is much better to play to a story already in someone’s head than to convince them of a new story.

Use tools such as Buzzsumo to find out which influencers (Influencer tab) has shared content similar to this and outreach to them.

The other way to do it is to do a Google search to find out which blogs have written about this (and email the writers) and also look at who commented on these posts and do outreach to them.

4. Do paid ads – Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is perhaps one of the easiest and most affordable ad platforms to reach targeted groups of people.

There are parameters (location, age, gender, interests) you can set to target your demographic for your blog post.

Pro tip: start off with 5 different sets of parameters and allocate your budget evenly. Give it time. After that, look at the data and see which set performs the best and allocate the rest of the budget on that winning set.

There are two schools of thought when it comes to Facebook advertising.

The first is to boost the post and the second is to get page likes.

The first allows you to get as much exposure for your hard-earned blog post and the second allows you to get more exposure for your brand or page.

Due to Facebook’s ever changing algorithm, there is no certainty that just because somebody like your page that they will always see your content on their feed.

But Neil Patel has found that a good blog post shared to his followers will also get as much organic exposure compared to a good blog post being boosted.

In short, boosting posts work well short term if you wish to have instant and fast exposure.

Getting page likes is more of a long-term play and ideal if you wish to have a list of people you can still reach out to (although not as effectively) if you run out of cash for boosting posts.

Here is a good podcast on boosting posts on Facebook.

5. Build a syndication of people who will share your content

As your influence grows, your circle of influence will grow as well.

Syndication is one of the ways to have your content distributed in an effective manner once you lay the groundwork in the beginning.

It is important not to automate too much of it to avoid being penalized by Google.

You need to build relationships if you wish to have this work for you.

Start off with the people who are at the same stage of influence as you and agree to help each other in promoting in each other’s content. It can be on each other’s blogs or social channels (or even newsletters).

As you ranks go higher and higher, network with key influencers. All the while, never forget the golden rule of “always be providing value” to others.

Once you have built your network, you can start your syndication and have your work promoted on multiple channels.

In conclusion, to promote your blog posts:

1. Write amazing headlines
2. Do outreach to influencers in your space
3. Look for people already sharing similar content
4. Do Facebook ads
5. Build a syndication to distribute your content.

Ben Sim, LLB
Ben Sim is an online marketer and blogger. When he is not reading up on business strategy and persuasion, he spends his time writing about growth hacks. He currently works for iPrice group.

1 COMMENT

  1. Hello, Ben. Very insightful article. I agree with what you say: writing a blog article is only the first part of the battle. However, I have mixed feelings with Facebook ads. Sometimes they can be very costly and not super effective. I think they are a lot of free ways to promote an article before paying. This is the reason why my article is about promoting a blog with a low budget. You can read it here: https://blog.wiredelta.com/promote-wordpress-website/

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