You have finally decided to write a blog and now you would like to spread the word about your blog to the entire world. After all, it would be nice if someone actually read all your nice blog posts and articles. How can you get people to visit your blog, read your blog and even better, spread the word about your blog on the internet?
As we wrote earlier in the article named „Should I start a blog” it is very important with good content. But, content in itself is not enough if nobody ever finds your site and read your articles. The question is therefore how to let other people hear about my blog and how to draw visitors to my site.
How to draw visitors to my blog?
In the world of social media this is for sure something to look into at once if you want to spread the word about your blog. You could and probably should create a page for your blog on Facebook and on Google Plus. Add boxes on your blog making it easy for visitors to like your Google Plus and Facebook page, and thus they will hopefully follow you in the future as you keep up the good work with your blog. It is also a fact that the links from your Google Plus and Facebook page pointing back to your blog also has a positive SEO effect as these are links from high ranked domains. In the same way you can also consider making a Twitter profile for your page, Pinterest profile and use other social medias.
You should of course not forget your personal profile on all similar networks. Share the content you write with friends and family using your own Facebook profile. If you have somewhere between 500-1000 friends this is a very nice potential to get some readers to your blog. If you have some very good friends you could even tell them to share your blog with their friends again, as a nice little favor to you. As you keep on creating content post it to your profile and you might see some nice amount of visitors coming due to this.
Comment and encourage others
A blogger on the net should not only read his own blog. A writer is a reader, and for you to write good articles, you will also need to read a lot of articles written by others. As you surf the net for information and good content start encouraging others. This can be done simply through commenting on the blog posts of other bloggers. Often you will have the chance to enter the address of your blog as you write a comment, and this will have the effect that the writer of the post and maybe other readers of the blog who likes your comment will visit your blog to see what you write about yourself. This will also have a positive SEO effect as you get links from other pages referring to yours (even if you kind of did it yourself)..
A good idea is also to refer to other blog posts in your own posts. As you do this you recognize the work of others and you encourage them to keep up the good work as well. After referring to another blogger in one of your posts it is always a good idea to send them a message on Twitter or maybe an email telling them that you recently referred to them and that you really like their content. This is a great way to build relationships and in the future these connections might do you a favors back and spread the word about your blog. If you have good connections and know other people with blogs about the same subject as your blog you could also ask if you can write a guest post on their blog with content interesting to their readers. The one requirement doing so is that the article should refer to you as the writer and that the visitors can read more of your posts in your blog.
Another way of commenting is to use your Facebook page profile to comment on Facebook. If the name of your blog is „Fishing in Canada” then you can post comments with this name on Facebook always referring to your Facebook page with every comment. As you see other people writing about fishing in Canada, fishing in general and similar topics then you comment as well and hopefully lots of people will be attracted to your page to see what you are writing about, and this might also generate a lot of followers interested in exactly the subject you are writing about.
Do not forget that it takes a while before your blog gets popular and famous, and in this process you need a lot of patience and endurance. It might take many months, and sometimes even years, before your blog turns into what you would like it to become. If you are inpatient there are some ways which can make things happen a bit faster, but for this you need some money.
Facebook Ads
It is a very sad thing to have a Facebook page with only 5 followers. In the start this number does not increase rapidly, but if you want things to happen faster, why not spend some money on Facebook ads? As I started this blog about Business and Faith we had one follower in the start… me! I therefore invested some money on Facebook to spread the word about my blog and after spending 5 USD I suddenly had 50 new followers. If you multiply the number you can imagine what 100 USD would do as an investment in the start of your blogging career.
There is of course a minus with this as the people responding to Facebook ads often are people who respond to everything and have liked 500 other pages before yours. Still, you might in fact get some quality followers, so if you have the money, it is worth considering this!
There are other ad opportunities as well, so if you want to reach another group you could sponsor a story on Reddit. Make sure to sponsor a great story, because the people on Reddit are honest people so if your content is bad, they will for sure let you know. You can also try simply submitting your articles to Reddit. This might work out fine, but just make sure not to spam with your own articles only, but read the Reddit instructions and comment on other links and submit other links as well.
The traditional and most famous ad channel on the web is Google AdWords. Personally this is not my favorite because it might bring some visitors to your page, but the prices feel higher and it does not guarantee you any followers at all.
Paid stories and ads may give you a boost in the start, but it will never replace the need for making friends on the net, staying active on the social networks and taking care of your followers.
Do you agree? Do you have any other ideas on how to spread the word of your blog on the internet? Write a comment and share your thoughts!
Many thanks for your article. We have been unsure as to how to promote ourselves regarding blogging & guest blogs but I feel we now have a plan of attack.