How To Advertise Your Blog (and not be super annoying)

It’s the start of another month and therefore time for another blogging tips post!

Now that G&J turned 3 months old (!!!), I think I’ve picked up a few tips on how to advertise your blog.

Getting traffic to your blog is probably the second most important thing for a blog (I’d say the first is creating stellar content). Now-a-days, there are SO many ways to do this. Everyone has a different technique and different publicity channels but everyone is going for the same goal at the end of the day: maximising users and page views.

Firstly, let’s chat about tracking. You can gage how big/who your audience is through anything from comments to data collection sites. You’ve heard it a million times and you’re going to hear it again: use Google Analytics.

So now that you can track what’s what on your blog, we can start thinking about how we’re going to enter the bloggersphere. I came up with the following tips by thinking about how I’ve stumbled across some of my favourite blogs.

+ Comment, comment, comment.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably heard me gush about how much the bloggersphere means to me. It feels like everyone is out there to support you, not compete with you; which I think is amazing. Comment away and leave a URL link on blogs you follow (big and small), blogs that comment on those blogs and any other commenting opportunities.

+ Friends are good.

I was really shy about this blog when I first started it. I was wondering what my friends would think about me talking into this little corner of the internet. And while I still can’t talk about the blog in a totally serious way (it’s often referred to as the “blerg”), some of my most popular posts were ones I shared on my personal Facebook. The feedback was amazing too.

+ Get Social.

Of course you knew this tip had to be on this list. There are SO many platforms to choose from: Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, Instagram, Tumbr, Bloglovin’, Polyvore, Periscope… the list goes on. Even though I rushed to create a bunch of social media channels for this blog right away, I’d argue that starting slow and mastering them one by one is the way to go. Each audience is a little different and taking time to figure it out is definitely a good idea.

+ SEO.

I know you’re probably heard this one also scream from the high heavens. Search Engine Optimisation is pretty important and useful. It allows you to bring in new audiences to your content. Many people ask what is the best way to audit my site? To which I usually answer, use website that audits existing websites and then find a Whitehat SEO company to make changes to it for you. To be honest, I’m no SEO wizard but I do use the Yoast SEO plugin. It’s quite powerful and super simple. I’d definitely recommend checking it out. If you are unfamiliar to the world of SEO, Yoast is a good place to start off. However, TrustRadius can recommend more tools to streamline the process and rise your blog up the ranks even more!

+ Step Outside the Box.

So far all these tips have to do with advertisement coming directly from you. Let other people do the work sometimes! Take a look at influce.com if you like the sound of getting other people to help you improve your blog. There are collaborations, guest posts and networks; all that can help you on how to advertise your blog. This isn’t a proven technique but you can even hang up posters or stickers with your URL if that’s what you’re into.

Advertising your blog is definitely no small feat. There are so many things you can do that it can sometimes feel like it’s own full time job. I usually take an hour to just go through all the blog I religiously follow (I have them in bookmarked folders. Yes Chrome, I do want to open 17 tabs).

There are definitely a bunch of tip on how to advertise your blog but I hope these help a bit! Happy blogging!

What are your tips to get your URL out there? What other blogging tips would you like to see?

** header image from here