From the smallest local businesses to the largest global enterprises, blogging has been a consistently popular content marketing strategy for many years. But while the importance of blogging is widely understood, blog promotion itself is not always included as part of a content marketing strategy.
Without a consistent promotional strategy, it will be hard for a blog to thrive amidst the growing competition for attention. And with 56% of consumers saying they have purchased from a company after reading a blog post from them, this is a strategy worth getting right.
7 Blog Post Promotion Tips for Increasing Website Traffic
1. Write Google Business Posts
Google Business Profile (GBP) posts are a great way to promote offers, events and products. In addition, a business can update its customers on relevant news. This feature works well with blog post promotion, as the updates can be found in Google Search and Google Maps, and will drive visitors to your website to learn more. If you’re not sure where to get started, here we share how to write GBP posts easily.
2. Get Active on Social Media
Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter feature active communities involved in a wide range of niches. By building a following on Twitter and creating a Facebook Group, businesses can reach an enthusiastic community with every new post. And if you don’t have the time to manually promote your content on social media, you can schedule it.
For example, Facebook has a native scheduler that will allow you to schedule posts to your business’ Facebook Page in advance. You can schedule tweets through Twitter’s TweetDeck, plus there are other tools (such as Hootsuite) that also allow for scheduling.
At Rocks Digital we set up Dlvr.it for our clients, so whenever a new blog post publishes, it will automatically post to Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn. The free version of Dlvr.it only allows for posting to two social media profiles, so the client will need to select which platform we post to for them.
3. Create an Email Newsletter
Email newsletters have been used to successfully drive traffic to blog posts for many years. Among other things, newsletters offer a high return on investment, with many readers staying engaged over long periods. Many of the tips for writing website blog posts can be applied to newsletters.
At Rocks Digital, we recommend you do a monthly newsletter using a tool like Mailchimp. Set up an automated email to send to your subscribers every time a new blog post publishes – and Mailchimp is great for this. Be sure to set up your email list so your subscribers can select how often you contact them.
4. Monitor Google Analytics and Google Search Console
Google Analytics is a useful tool for determining what readers want – and where they are coming from. By continuously monitoring visitor behavior, it’s possible to find social platforms, forums and other sites that drive traffic, then dedicate more resources to them. In addition, the search console data can help spot opportunities for long-tail keywords.
You can take tracking even further and apply UTMs on the links that you post on various third-party websites. If you do this, you can see how much traffic is visiting your website from the link. You can even find out how many goal completions were completed on your website from a specific third-party website.
5. Use Internal Linking
Internal linking to other pages and posts on your website is extremely helpful and important. It helps Google find the content on your website, and takes the user on a journey through your website to other relevant content. If a blog post needs a push to reach a higher placement search, internal links can help.
As a best practice, place an internal link within either the first or second sentence of a blog post, one more in the middle somewhere, then one in the bottom as part of your CTA. If you add links to third-party websites within your content, ensure you have those set to open in a new tab or window.
Be cautious not to add too many links within your content, and ensure the links are on a keyword phrase that makes sense. This helps the user as well as Google, since you are passing link authority through internal linking.
6. Design Custom Graphics
Designing custom graphics to promote your blog posts on social media can be helpful and encourage sharing between others. At Rocks Digital we have a graphic artist on staff to design custom blog art – we realize not everyone has this resource. So thankfully, there are tools (Canva, for example) to customize images you purchase on image sites like Shutterstock. When you name these images properly and write SEO-optimized alt text, your blog posts can get discovered in Google image search too.
On your website, make sure you only use images you have the license to, and ensure you give the proper image credit. You definitely don’t want the owner of a photo coming to you later with an invoice for using their image without a license, or even worse, a lawsuit.
7. Repurpose Blog Content
The content of a blog post is its most valuable asset, so look to leverage the information across other platforms. Repurpose the post into a Twitter thread, YouTube video, FAQs and Facebook Group discussion, with the goal of driving traffic to the main article.
At Rocks Digital, we like to build custom graphics from the blog content, then share those within the blog post and on the business’ Google Business Profile.
There are many other ways you can repurpose blog content, such as building a custom infographic that you submit to infographic sharing sites. This will help you build links to the website and generate more website traffic.
Need Help With Blog Promotion?
Rocks Digital is a full-service digital marketing agency providing SEO, content writing services, content marketing and web design solutions. If you want help promoting your blog posts and driving traffic to your website, don’t hesitate to contact us. To find out how we can help, call (214) 989-7549 or request a website evaluation today.
