How Do You Market Your Blog?

unaminhkavanagh

Moderator
Staff member
Oh wow! This is such an in-depth thing for me!

Online wise, there are so many channels that I use, but here's a brief outline of some of what I do:

Facebook
  • Through my own blog Facebook pages - at the moment, no sponsored posts because I can't afford them. I usually post my blog posts at night to target nighttime scrollers.
  • Facebook groups (like the Irish Bloggers group, many travel groups) are really handy, and many of them have daily threads. However, I try and customise my message to suit the group so it doesn't seem too spammy.
  • I also comment as much as I can on different pages, so that people become more familiar with my name and blog.
Instagram
  • This takes a helluva lot of work to grow, but essentially I focus in on a lot of commenting and consistent posting. I wrote a post recently about all the tactics I used to grow my account from 160 to over 1000, without paying or using the follow/unfollow technique. You can read it here.
Twitter
  • My biggest social media that I've had since I think 2009, where I keep the ratios low (i.e. I only follow 999 people and have over 6k followers). I have NEVER used the follow/unfollow method for Twitter. I follow who I'm interested in only.
  • Tweeting wise, I interact a lot with people and ask a lot of questions. I try not to focus on my blog a lot with tweets because people would see them as spammy. So when I have a post out I try and confine it to 5 tweets (one when it's posted, one in the morning, night, following morning and following night). I only create a blog post a week so it flows nicely into my tweets.
Pinterest
  • This is my next pet project. Personally, I don't fully get it at the moment, but what I'm trying to kicktstarted is repinning 20 pins and creating 5 pins a day or at least every second day.
  • In this case, I'm not too focussed on keeping my ratios low in terms of following and followers. Most of the bigger Pinners I see have pretty much a 50/50 split.
  • I also try and add a Pinnable image to my actual blog posts so that if someone is pinning then it's easy and more visually appealing.
Snapchat
  • I use this to show more personality to the blog or of more a "get to know me" tool. Not sure if it drives traffic, to be honest, but does market me.
Offline wise, I like to try different routes
  • I'm an introvert, or I suppose more of an ambivert, and meeting a group of people that I don't know and networking, absolutely terrifies me but I kinda force myself to do it (this is my networking for introverts guide).
  • I also got business made up so I can easily give them to people.
  • I would say that offline wise, make sure you're going to the right events - don't just go to anything make sure they're relevent to the blog and also that you actually introduce yourself to the organiser and thank them.
 

ballineurope

New Member
Mainly through Facebook and Twitter as well as some basic word of mouth stuff, suggesting columns to aggregators (have to be selective when sending these as don't want to overload them etc).
 

Alan O'Rourke

New Member
Instead of sharing what I am doing, these are the results:
40% of traffic is direct or search.
The rest of my traffic can be seen in this analytics report and is from sharing posts on each site.


All blog posts end in a lead capture which is pulling in about 100 new subscribers a week.


By the way I got a huge jump is search traffic by making this tweak:
 

Hugh Curran

New Member
So as a new blogger one of the things I find difficult is to figure out do I create a new social persona or do I continue to use the one I already have. Posting on Twitter and Instagram as @hughcurran has served me well and I'm posting my content out via these channels but now I'm wondering should I set up separate ones. I also, so far, haven't set up a Facebook page for the site and I'm kind of loathe to do so until I have some traction. I'm also sharing via my LinkedIn account.

I have an outbound email that goes out once a week and I put that up on the site too and have sign up forms all over the place.

It's been a slow start. Here's hoping for some traction in the coming weeks and months.

www.hugerants.com for any of you that are interested.

/Hugh
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
So as a new blogger one of the things I find difficult is to figure out do I create a new social persona or do I continue to use the one I already have. Posting on Twitter and Instagram as @hughcurran has served me well and I'm posting my content out via these channels but now I'm wondering should I set up separate ones. I also, so far, haven't set up a Facebook page for the site and I'm kind of loathe to do so until I have some traction. I'm also sharing via my LinkedIn account.

I have an outbound email that goes out once a week and I put that up on the site too and have sign up forms all over the place.

It's been a slow start. Here's hoping for some traction in the coming weeks and months.

www.hugerants.com for any of you that are interested.

/Hugh
Hugh

How many blogs are you trying to market?

What's the topic?

Michele
 

Hugh Curran

New Member
Hi Michele - It's just one blog and it's a digital marketing/tech blog. Pretty niche I would think but I do try and write about things in a way that those who don't work in the industry might be able to get into.
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
Hi Michele - It's just one blog and it's a digital marketing/tech blog. Pretty niche I would think but I do try and write about things in a way that those who don't work in the industry might be able to get into.
So is it "personal"? ie. your thoughts on stuff?
If it is I can't see why you'd want or need to create another "persona"
 

Hugh Curran

New Member
So is it "personal"? ie. your thoughts on stuff?
If it is I can't see why you'd want or need to create another "persona"
So it's my own personal take on things - which is exactly why I was shying away from creating new accounts. It just adds a layer of work on to the already time consuming process.
 

Airporter

New Member
I found that writing blogs is a cost effective way at promoting blogs. I learned from this site: https://www.thejoeeconomy.com that if you inform people of solutions to their problems, they gain your trust and engage further with your content and brand. Cheaper than social media promotion.
 

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