How can I promote a blog that is completely unread?
There is little to almost none engagement on my blog. As an aspiring writer, it is my main goal to start increasing my reads and spreading word of mouth about my blog. I've set up Google analytics for my blog, and I can see there is no traffic coming to it. What are my options for affordable promotion techniques?
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Jun 30, 2015
Learn inexpensive and easy ways to implement SEO. It's worth learning and it will save you a great deal of money. It can and will build any business if done correctly.
Think "Globally"
Jun 24, 2015
Start sharing posts out through every form of social media. Improve your SMO until you get a clear consensus of who your readers are, then tailor your SEO to attract more of them.
Jun 24, 2015
Engage SEO + social media are two basic works need to do. Submit article to popular website to gain more audiences too.
Jun 23, 2015
Caitlin, how long have you been writing your blog? Consider writing with two audiences in mind . . . your end reader and Google. Google wants to deliver your content to those who are most attracted to your blog topic. Perhaps do some research on highly searched "keywords," and structure your writing to appeal what readers are wanting to read. This will help over the long haul with Google organic searches. Obviously, you can try to target your audience and consider ads to drive people to your blog site.
Are you a specific industry where you can submit an article, taking two to five blogs of similar content for electronic or print publication.
Just some thoughts . . .
Rick
Jun 23, 2015
Hi Caitlin, I'm in no way affiliated with Don Crowther, but I highly recommend his Content Max online blog training program. It includes tons of information about how to get the most out of your blog content. He is a great teacher, he instructs in an easy-to-understand/non-technical manner and the content is mostly in video format with some worksheet downloads. Cost is around $200 including a 30-day money back guarantee. You can find out more here: http://doncrowther.com/contentmax-2
Jun 23, 2015
Daniel has the right idea, in that the key to your situation based on budget and the objective you want to achieve, is to engage in forums that your customers are engaged on.
The only thing I want to add is that it is super important that you are engaging on the right forums. Being super active on the "Single Parents" Group on linkedin may not be as effective as commenting on articles on parents.com, and even that may seem like a good idea until you think about engaging with a site like singleparentadvocate.org. With the latter the audience is intentionally going there for help and advice and people are more likely to be engaged without being tied to the brand so much as what they can get from it, as opposed to parents.com which is much more popular for entertaining articles and recipes and the audience is looking for something very specific that the brand is already offering, making them less likely to leave to your site.
It's really important to think about it strategically and devote your resources to the right places.
Jun 23, 2015
I suggest you to participate in social media & forum discussion.Try to find the relevant or needed people who really interested in content you post.
Jun 23, 2015
As an aspiring writer, I'd suggest your main focus initially should just be on writing, not on traffic or views. Find your voice, perfect your style and message, and create for the love and passion of creating.
If you're initial focus is on traffic and monetization you'll be much more likely to get frustrated and give up. You'll also be putting up a wall between you and the people who will be most naturally attracted to you and your message and style.
You also may find that it's not in your best interest to attract a huge amount of new readers while your trying to work out some of these things. But as you find your voice and your style you'll be able to shift toward promotion and making yourself visible, available, and attractive to your audience.
In terms of building traffic, I've been a big fan of Derek Halpern at Social Triggers. Also, a little more generally with respect to marketing, I Love Marketing with Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. From those two you can branch out to almost anywhere.
Best wishes with your writing and if you have any other questions please reach out :)
Be great!
Jun 22, 2015
There are several forums and blog sites which can promote yours blog and if you are submitting valuable content Google can directly pickup your blog just because of your Content.
Jun 22, 2015
I always suggest people to complete buyer's persona first before writing a blog post. Most of the time I have seen people with excellent content, but no one is reading it. The main reason is that they do not know whom they are writing that blog post for and how it is going to help them out.
Once you know your target audience for that particular blog post then, it's time to bring it in front of their eyes. Depending on your niche market, you need to finalize that on which social media platform you would like to advertise it.
Jun 22, 2015
Buy traffic to the blog's best articles. Start with a small test of 10 different articles, $25 of traffic to each. Then measure:
- shares
- likes
- time spent on article
- page views per session
(don't worry about bounce rate, it's a garbage metric for weighing one article against another whereas page views gives us more to work with).
then from there, buy more traffic to your top 3 articles.
Write more like the top 3.
Buy traffic again.
The goal is to buy less traffic by having at least 25% of your sponsored visitors return from each buy.
Jun 22, 2015
DEAR BLOGGER,
We can help you with optimizing your blog. There are are various steps to the SEO process, but we will begin by researching key words used for searches related to your blog's content...We then need to look at the key word density of your site (how often these key words get mentioned)...SEVERAL MORE LITTLE THINGS TO CHECK, BUT...The other two most important things you will need to do ensure quality search engine optimization (SEO), will be to:
● Embed links into your site leading to similar websites or sites with content that is in common with your content. Leave your site's links on their sites when possible...For example, in most social media platforms your given the opportunity to list your website or multiple websites of interest to you, so let's say its Facebook: you put your website's URL where they allow you , both on your personal profile and any business pages that you may have created in relation to your website. Then on your website, or blog site in this case, somewhere and potentially multiple places, you list the URL to your Facebook profile, your facebook biz pages, and/or simply link Facebook.com...Search engines like to see links there and back or front and back links, as they say.
● lastly and arguably the most important part of search engine optimization moving forward after completing the form engine steps to be kinky continuously updating your content which is done relatively easy with a blog site simply by creating blog posts on a regular basis.
you want your blog post or website content in the case of a website to be as you would have guessed consisting of content that is in relation, again, to your keyword search preferences.
And also keep in mind the previous steps when posting. It does not hurt to add URLs from other sites, especially when you mention anything relatively close to the content they offer similar to yours in the same post.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Remember to use common sense. If you comprehend the principles I've mentioned above and the logic behind them...you can get a site optimized relatively fantastically, just by using your common sense and drawing logical conclusions about what content to add or additional links you could be using on your site...or as I like to say, "Just learning how search engines think." Learning the basic general ideas and concepts that they consider when ranking your site is relatively easy. if you read this then you pretty much now know the powerful amount Search Engine Optimization.
Just don't forget these aren't people...calculating and ranking sites...these are computers calculating based off of pre formulated algorithms people made and that they have parameters they must follow when determining search rank. study of in further detail about search engine optimization because there's much still yet to learn that I did not mention. But the amount of knowledge I've outlined here should take you from night, to day with your blog...that you say has next to no traffic.
Utilize what I've mentioned here and you should see a significant increase in the traffic to your blog and also it'll be probably the biggest chunk of search engine optimization that you ever get complished at once. Everything after this will be fine tuning and knit picking in order to inch head of someone else's site. with that being said one of the most powerful metrics other than what I've mentioned is longevity of a domain name's registration ...this is means BE PATIENT. Stick to the tactics that you know and overtime search engine optimization of your site will seem much easier, as the search engines begin to take into consideration the length of time that your domain (hosting your site ...with pertinent...up to date content) has existed online.
And regardless of anything I just said, you want to regularly run your site through search engine optimization software of some sort...that will grade these metrics and criteria we just mentioned above. This will show you where you're lacking, what you could be doing better, etc when compared to similar blogs or competitor websites.
ALSO, PLEASE FORGIVE ME:
Much voice to text was used in the creation of this advice. I am on the road and I'm not going to carefully at this.
Cheers and good luck!!
Austin Lewis
AUSTINS.club
DigitalMarketing
Jun 22, 2015
Do you have a marketing plan? If so, how have you planned out who your target markets are, where they are, what type of info they need/want, the type of content you'll create, how often, where it's going to be posted/distributed, etc.?
Why do you want/need people to read your blog? Are the reasons and desired results of that also built into your marketing plan - so you know what you are doing, what to expect and why - then be able to ask the question you are asking now and see from an overview why something is broken?
Sounds like you haven't thought through a plan, written it down, and are tracking your progress through it while you correct and fine-tune it from time to time to make it better.
Did you just decide to start a blog, assume people would find it somehow and then magically be motivated to engage?
I don't mean to be harsh, but all the answers so far are good if you've answered the above. If not, you can get in front of the whole world and you'll still be unsatisfied because you need to define the specifics I touched on.
Jun 22, 2015
Go hangout (online) in groups (FB etc.) where your "reader" target market frequent. Be nice, say productive stuff, and eventually post links back to your articles.
Unless you are prepared to spend money, this is one of the simplest ways to get readers.
Jun 22, 2015
Caitlin,
If you haven't already, set up a Twitter and Facebook Page for your Blog. Post your blogs on them as you write them. Then, I would recommend adding some limited advertising to create more awareness for the site.
cheers,
antony
Jun 22, 2015
Share your Blog link to Professional networking sites like Linkedin or mosaiHub...i think this will help!!
Jun 22, 2015
Caitlin: I would reach out to the folks at Parent Society (http://www.parentmediainc.com/) and ask they if you can be a contributing author. They are now owned by LifeScript, Inc. (www.lifescript.com) -- you could reach out there as well. In return for your content, request a profile on their site to build your personal brand and credibility along with a link back to your blog for additional articles that you do not publish on their site(s).
I would suggest you reach out to Penny Weisblatt, Office Manager at Parent Society and ask her to direct you to the right individual (https://www.linkedin.com/pub/penny-weisblatt/64/49b/526). I would also suggest reaching out to Laurie Berger, SVP Content/Editor-in-Chief at Lifescript.com. Laurie is the right person to speak with at Lifescript (https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurieberger).
Best of luck.
Jun 22, 2015
This is an enormous topic, as you may have already realized. You might want to just start educating yourself on how to create a successful blog -- there are many, many articles available on the subject. To help out people just like you, we publish a free digest newsletter that links to the best articles on the web -- we cover how to build traffic to your blog, how to use social media effectively, and how to monetize. You can subscribe here: https://www.facebook.com/SocietyOfShop/app_100265896690345?ref=page_internal
We send it out every Sunday night; it includes just a few links so it's not too overwhelming. We send it through MailChimp so you can of course unsubscribe at any time.
Good luck!