How to Promote Your Blog: 7 Proven Strategies

Search for “how to promote your blog,” and also you’ll see a whole bunch of methods.

But not all of them work. Believe us—we’ve tried them.

These are the seven which have labored for us.

1. Build share triggers into your content material

People usually tend to share content material with distinctive insights. Data, experiences, opinions—something they will’t discover elsewhere.

Here’s an instance that illustrates this. In 2015, our chief advertising officer, Tim Soulo, wrote a guide to strategic writing on his private weblog. He crammed every thing he knew and thought he created a masterpiece.

Yet, when he requested advertising influencer Rand Fishkin to tweet the submit, this was how Rand responded:

Just a few years later, Rand retweeted our post on podcast advertising with none prompting:

What was the distinction? 

In Tim’s submit, he rehashed the identical recommendation from different articles on the subject. No doubt it was helpful, however nothing was distinctive. In the latter article by our Rebekah Bek, every thing was solely primarily based on expertise. 

I’m not going to easily simply inform you to create “unique content.” You will need to have heard it 100 occasions by now. So quite than repeating the identical outdated recommendation, I like to recommend constructing share triggers as an alternative. 

Coined by professor Jonah Berger in his e-book, “Contagious,” share triggers are psychological rules that make folks wish to share one thing. They are:

1. Social foreign money – People share issues that make them look good to others.
2. Triggers – People share issues which can be prime of thoughts.
3. Emotion – People have to really feel one thing to share one thing.
4. Public – People are likely to imitate others’ conduct if they will see or observe it.
5. Practical worth – People wish to cross alongside sensible, helpful info.
6. Stories – People don’t simply share info—they share tales too.

Here’s how one can put them into motion (you’ll wish to incorporate not less than one or two):

1. Make your content material sensible – Create one thing the reader can use straight away. For instance, our suite of free tools generates a variety of hyperlinks and shares.
2. Make your content material opinionated – Give the reader one thing new to consider. Tim’s rant on email outreach and our submit on podcast promoting are some examples of opinionated content material.
3. Evoke emotion – People used to share Upworthy articles as a result of these made them really feel awe, shock, and happiness. Appealing to those feelings—alongside detrimental ones like anger and disappointment—can compel folks to share extra. 
4. Make your content material visible – Visual content material makes consuming content material simpler, thus rising the chance that somebody will share it. 
5. Make your content material newsworthy – Journalists and bloggers are consistently looking out for tales to cowl. Data is one kind of story. So when you have distinctive knowledge to share, create a chunk of content material round it. 
6. Tell a narrative – Humans love telling and sharing tales. A very good story that captures folks’s consideration can result in extra shares.
7. Include what different persons are sharing – If persons are sharing and linking due to sure causes in competing pages, we are able to assume that these causes are essential to that matter.

For the ultimate tip, right here’s how yow will discover out why persons are linking:

• Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
• Search for a subject you’re writing about
• Look on the SERP overview
• Find the same article with a lot of referring domains
• Click on the quantity within the Backlinks column
• Skim the Anchor and goal URL column for commonalities

For instance, if we analyze this submit on the right kettlebell swing, we see that persons are linking due to the advantages:

It’s one thing we are able to take into account including to our content material. 

Learn extra: What Is Link Bait? 7 Successful Examples 

2. Write about “easy to rank” subjects 

You need visitors from Google. But should you’re new to the sport, many subjects are out of your attain—not less than for now. They’re too aggressive, and also you’re outgunned by web sites with extra sources. 

But what if I inform you that yow will discover subjects which can be simple to rank for? Here’s how:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
2. Search for a related time period (e.g., “beards”)
3. Add a Referring domains filter to max. 10
4. Add a Page visitors filter to min. 500
5. Add a Domain Rating filter to max. 30

Since backlinks are an essential ranking factor, pages that nonetheless get tons of search visitors with out loads of backlinks must be comparatively simple to rank for. 

In this instance, you’ll see >2,000 pages that get >500 search visitors a month with fewer than 10 referring domains. 

Click on any article after which on the Organic key phrases tab to see what key phrases they’re rating for.

If you’re working a weblog about beards, you’ll be able to goal the identical subjects too.

Learn extra: How to Find Low-Competition Keywords for SEO 

3. Run an outreach marketing campaign

If you’ve revealed a tremendous piece of content material, why not present it to folks in your area of interest who’ve a big viewers?

It’s why Tim reached out to Rand. In digital advertising, we name this “outreach.” 

The key to profitable outreach is to ask your self this query every time you’re about to ship a brand new e-mail:

Why would anybody care about no matter I say?

There are two sturdy outreach causes:

1. You talked about that particular person (or their work) in your article. 
2. Your article has one thing groundbreaking that this particular person doesn’t learn about however is genuinely eager about.

The latter cause is why technique #1 works. There’s no trick to getting prime folks in your area to advertise you. You must do notable work.

This can also be why each time we ship outreach emails to promote our content, we concentrate on pitching the article—not a sneaky request to tweet it. 

Assuming you’ve created one thing noteworthy, right here’s how yow will discover folks to doubtlessly attain out to:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
2. Search in your matter
3. Click on the Authors tab

These 100 folks have written many articles in your matter, so it’s affordable to imagine they’re . Find their emails, attain out to them, and share your distinctive insights.

Learn extra: Blogger Outreach: How to Do It at Scale (Without Feeling Like a Jerk) 

4. Update different folks’s posts

Here’s one other sturdy cause you should utilize in your outreach: You observed somebody’s weblog submit is declining in visitors, so that you provide to assist replace it. 

In truth, this was what Irina Maltseva, the previous head of selling at Hunter, did:

Why does this work? Four causes:

1. It is essential to replace older content material—you don’t need outdated info, and up to date content material helps increase search visitors.
2. Keeping observe and updating outdated content material are burdensome duties. By providing to replace outdated content material, you’re providing to take it off their palms.
3. While guest blogging is a respectable approach to drive visitors, you’re oftentimes “guessing” the form of subjects they’re eager about. But you don’t have to guess should you’re updating their outdated content material. 
4. They’re greater than prone to permit you to hyperlink again to your web site and/or your content material. 

Here’s how yow will discover content material that’s declining in visitors:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
2. Search in your matter
3. Set the Trends dropdown to Last yr

From right here, you’ll wish to eyeball the listing and look out for pages with declining web page visitors:

Click on the article to see the Page visitors chart intimately:

Looks like this explicit article has suffered a drastic drop in visitors. If you’re on this area of interest, you’ll be able to attain out to the editor and see in the event that they’ll be eager about updating the submit. If they’re, counsel doing the work for them—it’ll sweeten the ask.

Learn extra: Republishing Content: How to Update Old Blog Posts for SEO 

5. Share barebones posts on Reddit

There is a subreddit for nearly something. That consists of your area of interest too. There’s little doubt that Reddit is a good place to advertise your content material. Do it proper, and it might even result in a hug of death.

But let me throw a wrench in your plans. Redditors hate promoting and advertising. If your content material smells like self-promotion, they won’t hesitate to throw you out.

So you’ll be able to’t simply waltz in, drop a hyperlink, and watch for the flood of visitors.

Reddit, nevertheless, does love helpful content material. So to resolve this conundrum, you’ll be able to share a barebones model of your content material. Strip every thing out, particularly your inner and exterior hyperlinks. Leave solely a hyperlink again to the unique on the backside of your Reddit submit, so anybody who’s can examine it out. 

Here’s an example of it within the wild:

6. Repurpose your content material into movies

We have a video on blog post templates you’ll be able to swipe. But do you know that it was initially a blog post?

Not everybody desires to learn. Some wish to watch movies. By turning your articles into movies, you’ll be able to doubtlessly attain a brand new set of viewers.

You’ve already created the content material anyway. Why not reap the benefits of it and provides it a brand new lease on life?

Let’s be sincere, although. Repurposing is tough work. It’s one factor to say, “Turn your blog post into a video,” and one other to truly do it. So should you’re happening this path, you’ll must prioritize. 

One means to do that is to concentrate on subjects that persons are already looking for on YouTube. That means, your repurposed movies can generate search visitors too.

Here’s how one can discover these subjects:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
2. Select YouTube
3. Enter a number of related key phrases
4. Go to the Matching phrases report

Look by the listing to see if there are any subjects the place you have already got present weblog content material. Those are the subjects you must repurpose. 

For instance, this was how we determined to repurpose our article on influencer advertising:

Learn extra: The Complete Guide to Content Repurposing 

Most people who find themselves in search of methods to advertise their blogs are literally in search of free promotion methods. They don’t wish to pay for promotion as a result of they suppose they haven’t any funds for it. 

But what they don’t notice is that, in actuality, no weblog promotion methodology is free. While it might not value upfront money, it takes time. And time is cash. Even the richest particular person on the planet can’t purchase time.

So you truly do have the funds to advertise your content material with advertisements as a result of they unencumber your valuable time—time that might be higher spent elsewhere. 

At Ahrefs, we run advertisements for all our newly revealed content material. Facebook advertisements are our go-to:

If you discover Facebook advertisements too complicated or too costly, don’t overlook that there are different platforms you’ll be able to take a look at too. For instance, we additionally run advertisements on Quora:

And Twitter:

Learn extra: PPC Marketing: Beginner’s Guide to Pay-Per-Click Ads 

Final ideas

Ryan Holiday writes in “Perennial Seller”:

Creating extra work is likely one of the only advertising methods of all. 

If you’ve revealed a tremendous article and obtained tons of success, the perfect factor you are able to do to advertise your weblog additional is to publish one other superb piece of content material. 

A constant output of nice work is the muse behind all of your weblog promotion methods. It supercharges every thing. 

Any questions or feedback? Let me know on Twitter.