Promoting your blog posts is just as, if not more, important than writing your blog posts. If you don’t have a clear promotion strategy in place in order to grow your audience and convert that audience into customers, then your blog is wasting time and money.

If this is you, don’t worry! If you don’t have a clear promotion strategy in place to increase your readers, you are not alone. Whilst the vast majority of companies now understand the importance of a company blog, many are lagging far behind in making it work effectively for their company, and even less spend enough time promoting their content.

I am the founder of Boost Business Support, we help companies like you to stay consistent with their company blog and grow their audience. I’ve put together my top tips for driving blog traffic, so let’s jump in!

1. SCHEDULE YOUR BLOG POSTS VIA BUFFER

Social media updates can be time consuming, meaning that companies often forget to promote their blog posts via their social media channels. Using a scheduling tool like Buffer means you can block out time once per week to ensure your Twitter and Facebook feeds are sending traffic to your blog posts every day.

Ideally, you should aim to tweet your blog post 4 to 5 times in the following days after it has been published, and then several times over the following weeks. Don’t be shy about buffering old blog posts! Just because you have a new post you are promoting, doesn’t mean you should completely forget about your other blog content.

2. INCREASE BLOG TRAFFIC WITH PINTEREST

Think of Pinterest like a visual search engine, users go on to the platform, search for the content they are interested in and then save posts they enjoy on their own boards. Whoever follows their board will then get access to their latest pins on their Pinterest feed.

Pinterest is a great way to drive increased traffic and shares of your blog content. I highly recommend signing up and doing some reading about how to market in the most effective way through Pinterest. It is still a channel that many businesses are not using and so it is a huge opportunity waiting for you!

3. USE LONG TAIL KEYWORD RESEARCH

If you haven’t heard of SEO before, this might sound a bit daunting, so I’ll break it down. ‘Keyword Research’ is an activity you can perform to find out how your customers search online in your market. ‘Long Tail’ refers to the type of keyword.

There are two types of keywords, Short Tail and Long Tail.

To give you an example. For my business, “Blog Management Service” is a short tail keyword. It is a focused keyword which states exactly what my service is, because we help companies manage their blog.

A Long Tail keyword could be “How To Get More Readers To My Blog”, this is a search phrase which fewer people are searching for, but has less competition. Potential customers searching for this phrase may need a blog management service but not even know it yet.

With less competition, you are more likely to rank your content for this term, driving traffic back to your blog. Use a keyword tool like Keyword Planner and start writing your blog content around long tail keywords to drive more traffic to your blog.

4. GROW YOUR AUDIENCE WITH SYNDICATION

Our secret weapon of blogging success is syndication. We have had fantastic results for our clients by syndicating their blog content through Medium and Linkedin, and we highly recommend this tactic!

One of our clients had their article re-published on Tech In Asia which gets over 2 million monthly visits, just because an editor found and liked one of their blog posts on Medium.

It is very easy for you to sign up to Medium at any time. We recommend you post every blog post on this platform and link back to the original blog post at the end of your post with the phrase;

“This is a republished post, the original blog post can be found here: [Insert Link]”

You should also do the same on your Linkedin Profile, republishing your blog content is a great way to engage with your current network.

5. QUOTE INFLUENCERS IN YOUR BLOG POSTS

Growing your blog audience quickly is a lot easier the more people you get involved, and quoting influencers is one tactic you can start using straight away. Other voices, experiences and examples add extra weight to your arguments.

Spend a little time researching what other experts are saying and quote them in your blog post, linking back to the original post the quote came from.

You can very quickly find influencers on any topic by using… Wait for it…

Google!!

The results on the first page are likely to be from high quality, popular blogs. Make sure that you note down the contact email and name of the person you’re quoting.

Once your blog post is published, reach out via email and share your post with this person stating that you thought they might like to check out the quote you included about them.

The chances are, if your blog post is any good, this influencer is going to share it with their audience. Smiles all round.

6. SEND THE POST TO YOUR EMAIL LIST

Hopefully you have been collecting email addresses, if not, then start now! Email marketing is one of the most effective methods of growing your blog’s audience. If you sell products online, a very easy way to start growing your email list is to add an option for customers to be added to your email list during the checkout process.

This is a natural way to grow your list, as new customers are very likely to want to hear from you again. Assuming you have a targeted editorial calendar, based on long tail keywords that your target customers are searching for, your blog posts are going to be very useful for your existing customers.

Sending them high quality, weekly blog content is a great way for you to stay top of mind without seeming salesy or pushy. And, when you email them about a new product, service or offer, your email list will be more engaged and so you are likely to get a better response from your promotions.

7. GET MORE READERS FOR YOUR BLOG VIA FACEBOOK GROUPS

Our final fast and effective blog promotion tactic is Facebook Groups. This is a very good way for you to grow your online network of brand advocates. There are plenty of groups in your local area, or, find groups based on topics of interest related to your company.

Join 4 or 5 and start by interacting on those groups weekly. Just block out 20 minutes once a week in your calendar to get familiar with the group, respond to questions and be helpful. The key is not to go in with a ‘sales head’ on.

Behave in these Facebook Groups like you would at an informal networking event. Be friendly, professional and helpful. For this traffic generation tactic to work you must use your personal profile, and also ensure you have your company website in your Facebook bio. If you make an impression, users will click through to check out your profile, website and yes BLOG. You will be surprised by just how effective this tactic is at driving traffic back to your blog.

Yva is the Founder of Boost Business Support a blog management company helping small business’ drive traffic and sales through blogging. Get in touch to see how she can help you grow your corporate blog.