As this blog is new on the scene, I’m doing a lot to try and promote my posts. It therefore seemed like a great time to write a post about what I’ve done, and what I’m planning on doing, so that others can use it to help them on their way too.
In time honoured tradition, I’m going to make this a ‘10 things…’ post, but I’m going to try to suggest things that might not spring to mind straight away. I would still recommend doing all of those normal things, such as Technorati, Digg and Feedburner, of course.
EDIT: The post is tailored towards those in the same field as this blog, i.e. WordPress, but the tips are of course transferable. The Key, as Lorelle highlights, is to target the right demographic when submitting your news to news sites. Enjoy!
This is the first in a two part series, the second post will deal with monetization.
- Lorelle’s Resource Page for Content Topics - There is no use submitting your site to Digg, or creating a Technorati Profile if you have no content to promote. Getting started on a blog can be a daunting process, and it seems like you have a massive void to fill. Lorelle has a great post listing a huge number of resources to find things to write about, I would seriously consider using this list to find inspiration if you are struggling!
- Now that you have your new content, the world needs to know about it. Aside from the afore mentioned methods, I also suggest searching for your post topic in google and visiting as many of the blogs as you can that discuss the same thing, and let them know about your post. There are two ways you can do this, firstly ‘Pingbacks/Trackbacks’. Copy the URL of the post you were just reading, and add it to the bottom of your post under a ‘Further Reading’ header, this way you are providing more useful content to your visitors, and also letting the other post author know about what you have written. The other method involves posting a comment directly on the similar post that you have been reading, saying that you have written something similar that the readers might find interesting. Commenting on lots of related sites can also help build up your web identity, and provide valuable traffic.
- Weblog Tools Collection News. Did you know that Weblog Tools Collection has a section on their site where you can submit news? It is basically a bb-press forum, but the main guys at WLTC look their, and it is where they find out about the new plugin releases that they feature that you might have seen in the RSS feed on your WordPress dashboard. Not only might the article get picked up by them and featured, assuming the content is interesting enough, but you will pretty much guarantee yourself some traffic. I submitted one article there, and I got 50 hits within the first day (I know this through Google Analytics).
- Similarly to above, lots of sites have places that you can submit news, for example:
These are just a few to get you started, but searching for more WordPress resources on Google will find you some more.
- When you submit your posts to these sites, the chances of people visiting your site are dependent on what they read on that news site, the post title. Writing an effective post title can be a tricky thing, but there are plenty of resources on the internet to help you out. I suggest starting at CopyBlogger and taking it form there.
- Make sure you sign up to Google Analytics so you can track how all of this work you are doing is helping get you traffic. I cannot recommend any other stats software, as Google Analytics is the only one that I’ve used, and I have to say that I’ve never needed to consider another one.
- On the same note, Google Analytics will help you to reduce your bounce rate. It shows you top exit points from your blog, in other words, which post people were reading when they left your site. Knowing this can help you in several ways. Take a look at the post were people left from most, is it lacking quality? Is it too long? Or did people get what they wanted from it and then leave? In my case, it is the later (;-)). People were visiting my blog and downloading my plugin, and then leaving without looking around, so I knew that I had to encourage people to stay here somehow!
- This brings me to the next point. I believe one of the most effective ways of keeping people on your site is by showing them related content to what they were just looking at. Say, for example, that someone came straight to a post on your blog, and didn’t see the homepage, how would they know what else you had written. I have just installed a great plugin called Related Posts. What this plugin does is generate a list of other posts that you have written with the same tags. Therefore it is quite likely that the people reading that post will be interested in these others. I have placed these links at the bottom of each post, so that they are there when people finish reading. The more people stay on your site and see the quality of what you are writing, the more likely they are to subscribe to your feed, and through that keep coming back.
- Give something away free. You need to be careful with this one, make sure you have some visitors before you try and do this, especially if it is a contest you are running, otherwise it might be a bit embarrassing if no one enters!! If you have the knowhow, writing a plugin or a theme is a great way of getting people to come to your blog. (I’m releasing a theme when my exams are over in May) If this isn’t something you can do, then maybe give away something that you have bought or can buy and has a lot of value to someone. Depending on your niche, maybe a membership to something like WPDesigners Theme Club would work (admittedly that a bit in limbo at the moment, but you get the idea). Publicising this contest in the blogosphere can easily bring people to your blog.
- Keep at it! I know from experience that if there is a drought in posts, that this will adversely effect your hits. Keep commenting on other peoples blogs, and keep finding high quality content to post about.
I hope that you’ve found this post useful, and can use it to promote your new blog to bring in visitors to help you with the next part of this series: monetization. I will be posting updates to this post if I find other good methods.
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