You don’t have to wait until your blog is mature before you start getting some exposure. If you start early, you can take advantage of helpful critiques and feedback.
There are quite a few ways to get some sunlight on your new blog. I’ve listed 4 of them here. These should really help you get started. You don’t have do all of them, but that should be the end goal. Please feel free to add more ways or speak up about any of the ones I have listed here.
4 Ways to Get Your New Blog Some Exposure
- Create a system to promote each new post. Use Twitter, email marketing and article marketing to promote your content. There is a lot more of this to come on Friday, with the “Spread the Word: Creating an effective system to promote your blog” post, so please be sure to subscribe to this blog so you can get notified when it goes up.
- Use social bookmarking. For starters, create an account on Kirtsy.com and start submitting the URLs to your blog posts there. Your posts will get some visibility if you post the links during high-traffic times of the day: between mid-morning and early afternoon. Aim to bookmark a max of 50% of your own content; the rest should be content submitted by others. This means that for every URL you submit, be sure to vote on at least one other link. In Kirtsy, you vote by clicking on the submitted content titles. You can also leave comments on them or save them.
- Updated: I no longer really use Kirtsy. But give su.pr a try (you need a StumbleUpon account). Su.pr really has changed the way my blog is exposed, and after using it, I got a massive spike in traffic to my blog (200 page views on the 2nd day I used su.pr).
- Use good on-page SEO (search engine optimization) for your blog. Download the Quick On Page SEO Tips for Your Blog and have a read (it’s just one page, step-by-step). If you’re unfamiliar with the term, SEO basically means making your content easily to understand and index (i.e., file away) so that search engines can find it and show it in the results list when someone searches for keywords or phrases that are relevant to your content.
- Join some social networks and seek feedback. Try the Problogger.com Forum, Biznik.com, TheBusinessWoman.co.uk or a newer one called TheLadyBloggers.com. These are all great places to create a profile, list your blog URL and even re-publish your content or import the RSS feed (the up-to-date list of all of your posts). The most important thing to remember is to connect with people and make friends, so you will grow your network of connections (like we discussed on the Successful Blog post). Also, asking directly for feedback lets people know that you’re serious about your blog and value their input, and then they will be happy to give it to you.
Your Turn
What do think about these strategies to get visitors to your blog? What works for you? What does NOT work for you? Let me know.
As always, if you enjoyed this post and got something out of it, please re-tweet it using the big link at the top! And, your comments are not only welcome, they are coveted. If you have a thought on how to get more exposure for your blog, or if you’re having trouble getting exposure, share your comment here and we’ll figure out a solution.
About Tia Peterson
