Any serious blogger will tell you that promoting your blog is vital to making blogging successful, meaningful and fun. We all blog to reach out to people, and the only way to reach people is by sharing what you have to offer. Social media makes this incredibly easy. But there are some clearly effective ways to promote a blog, and there are plenty of things to avoid. Follow these tips to avoid the 5 most common things to avoid when promoting your blog:
- Do not promote during off-peak hours. Online visitors follow a very regular pattern of peak hours. Lunch time, around 11am, is a very popular time to browse the Internet. 3pm tends to be another time of heavy traffic. It’s when kids are getting home from school and the web surfing begins. And 7pm, right after adults get home from work and have eaten dinner, is perhaps the best time to promote your blog. People will be online during these times. Do not waste your time, energy and money on promoting at any point before 8am or after 9pm. Stick to promoting at those times that are known for high traffic.
- Do not neglect your blog. You may get so carried away with promoting your blog that you forget to update the actual blog. Keep new and relevant blog posts up during periods of heavy promotion. Your advertisements may draw interest, but visitors will shy away from any blog that does not have a recent post or any posts that interest them.
- Do not be shy. Your friends and family may be your biggest promoters. So add your blog address to your email signature, Facebook info, business card and Christmas card. Your relatives and close friends will do a lot of free promoting for you, without even having to be asked. Just make the information readily available to them.
- Do not forget that there are other blogs out there. Commenting on other blogs and forums will get you noticed by the online world. The great thing about blogs and forums is that you always have the option to either link your name to your blog’s website or add the link to your signature. Do this and then get out there and start adding your opinions. Befriending a popular blogger can be the key to the perfect free promoter. Blogging is just like any other job, and networking is a big part of it.
- Do not post the same ad repeatedly. You do not want your advertisement to look like spam. Make it personal by adding fun, creative and unique every single time that you post something to promote your blog. It is fine to post the same ad on your Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, but you do not want to post the same exact ad repeatedly on the same page.
Blogging is exciting when you are first starting out. It will only get better as you gain more visitors, and you will be surprised how many visitors that you will get overnight as long as you keep these 5 tips in mind.
Which of the tips above will you apply in your blogging this week?
Dan is a blogger with a background in social media marketing. He is also a contributing writer for a Web hosting review company. You can see more about it here.
Great tips, especially reminding people not to neglect their actual blog. I’ve seen that happen quite a bit.
Jon recently posted..How To Stick WordPress Comment Labels Inside Input Boxes
Hi,
Amazing post! I believe that you have done a great research on promoting a blog/website and your tips and facts are really informative. These 5 points are avoidable really because it is barrier of the back-links.
Thanks for sharing the great article.
Which tip am I following this week – read some other blogs! Hey, I’m doing pretty well on that one today. Seriously though, some good solid tips here. The first is very pertinent, I find that I go in cycles betweening promoting content and generating content. I’m sure that is not the best way, but I find it hard to manage doing both simultaneously.
Gary recently posted..Wedding Venues in Buckinghamshire
I believe that you have done a great research on promoting a blog/website and your tips and facts are really informative.
Do not be shy.
That definitely applies to me as I was shy at first in telling them that I am blogging. But now I am sharing what I wrote with them as I know that this can also help me get feedback from the post that I wrote and promote my guest post as well.
Neal B. recently posted..Guest Post: 5 Things to Avoid When Promoting Your Blog
The thing that most resonates with me is to not neglect my blog. I have a very distinct market working with left-brained advisors so posting regularly and at the right time is important. What I’ve learned from this post is that somehow I need to alter my work schedule so that I am creating posts in the slow internet traffic period (Friday through Sunday) and posting right before the traffic picks up for me (Monday through Wednesday). Thanks, Suzanne
Suzanne recently posted..3 Ways to Make your Practice Work for YOU So That YOU Can Create the Life You Want
Great tips! I’ve been trying to figure out peak times for when people are online.
Adelina Priddis recently posted..Kitchen {Wordless Wednesday}
Good tips. As far as time of day goes, I assume you’re using Eastern standard times.
Amanda recently posted..Celtic Festival
Great reminders! Recently, my site has suffered from not posting regularly. I am trying hard again to write everyday.
I also need to keep the peak times of day for promotion in mind.
Annie recently posted..Harvesting and Drying Parsley
Thank you for sharing these tips with us. You have done a great research for your blog ! Again thank you so much.
I really like #1. I think it will help me promote my blog more efficiently and also help me not to waste time at the wrong times. Thank you for this article. It was helpful!
Thanks for these great tips! I can see that I have been promoting my blog much too early in the day. I am going to change my post times to see if that makes a difference in my blog traffic.
Elaine recently posted..Tried and True Recipe File
Great tips thanks! I pinned it to my Blogging: Promotion board on Pinterest!
Kathleen recently posted..Twitter Lead Tuesday 8/27 #bloggers
these are the very valuable points.you have to concentrate on these points while you have promoting your blogs.i would like to thanks you for sharing this points
seo services recently posted..Red Olives Official Website Launched
Glad to have found your site. I was wondering about twitter and timing – thanks. I also wonder if it matters what timezone your looking at (I’m west coast, but readers could be 3 hours ahead of me for those in Can/US East coast)
Jackie recently posted..Summer Draws to a Close
Nice list.
About the peak hours…what time zone should you go with? My readers are mainly in the US, but that broadens the range of peak times. Suggestions?
Thanks!
Stacey recently posted..Simple Ways to Improve Your Home while Saving Money
Stacey, I would suggest playing with it a bit – post for the EST zone and see what happens, then the CST, PST, etc. Pay attention to your stats and then stick with the one that works best for you. I’ve found that posting on EST works here…
Thanks for the great tips! I pinned to pinterest!!
Melissa S recently posted..Rape Girl by Alina Klein #review
Nice tips
As you said off peak hours, but we get visitors from all over the world
so how can we decide which is off peak?
Reeja Mathews recently posted..Choose The Best Forex Trading Platforms For Your Trading Ventures
Reeja, I would suggest experimenting with different times of the day and see which one works for YOUR blog.
i seem to have been doing mistake number one
)
maybe that’s the reason i get few retweets
thanks for the post
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Awesome Tips! Really i appreciate that you have done a great research on promoting a blog and your tips and facts are really informative. and definitely it will help for your blog. I would say thanks for sharing this post.
it is really a helpful post,it will help me lot,
thanks for sharing such a helpful post…!!!!