how to promote your blog

A re you looking for ways to promote your blog? Publishing awesome content is only one part of blogging. So you’ll need to spend as much, if not more time, promoting your blog if you want to experience real growth. 

There are many ways to promote your blog, but not all of them work for you, depending on your niche. 

In this guide, we’ve broken down 26 promotion tactics into different categories, so you can quickly find the ones you want to start with.

Let’s begin!

Pre-Promotion Tasks

This guide focuses on ways to promote your blog after you’ve written and published content.

But there are several steps you should follow before you even hit publish to ensure your blog is in tip-top condition.

Most of these center around making your blog an enjoyable experience for visitors as they navigate your site. For example, making sure your pages load quickly and look just as good on desktop and mobile. 

Furthermore, you’ll want to ensure that search engine spiders can find and crawl your site so that all your pages are indexed and searchable.

For more details, check out these essential guidelines before you move on to the promotion tactics below:

Right, now your blog is ready, let’s start spreading the word!

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How to Promote Your Blog to Subscribers

Email remains one of the best channels to promote your blog. 

In fact, despite all the mobile messaging apps, the number of daily emails worldwide is expected to increase from 281 billion in 2018 to over 347 billion in 2023:

statistia number of emails per day worldwide 2017-2023

And over the same period, the number of email users is forecast to rise from 3.8 billion to 4.4 billion.

1. Email Your List

People are expecting your emails. That’s why they joined your list.

60% of consumers subscribe to a brand’s email list to receive promotional messages compared to 20% of consumers who follow brands on social media to get deals: 

how do consumers want to receive promotional messages

So go ahead and email your list when you publish new content on your blog and when you have special offers to promote.

For more information, check out our Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing.

2. Add a Signature to Your Emails

Aside from marketing, email is still a popular communication channel across all age ranges:

email usage in the us by age

One way to promote your blog through regular email communication is to add an email signature that includes a link to your latest post.

For example, WiseStamp lets you add your photo, website, social links, and your blog post:

wisestamp online marketer signature

3. Redirect First-Time Commenters to a Thank You Page

It’s a good idea to redirect first-time commenters to a thank you page as it allows you to welcome them to the blog and develop your relationship with them, as well as getting them closer to signing up to your mailing list.

You can easily create a beautiful thank you page with SeedProd.

SeedProd-landing-page-builder

SeedProd is the best drag and drop landing page builder for WordPress. It comes with a ton of templates to get you started and you can use pre-made landing page blocks to customize your page any way you want.

Here’s an example of a thank you page you can create with SeedProd:

thank you page template seedprod

4. Reach Your Non-Subscribers with Push Notifications

Not everyone wants to subscribe to mailing lists, so an alternative approach is to send push notifications:

push notification pushengage

With push notifications, you can send an alert to your regular readers about new blog posts or any other updates that you want them to know. Using an app like PushEngage, you can send notifications to a subscriber’s browser even if they’re not present on your website.

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How to Promote Your Blog on Social Media

Sharing your content on social media is an excellent way to promote your blog, get more shares, and ultimately drive more traffic to your site.

But you need to have a social media strategy in place before you start sharing: 

  • Choose the most relevant social networks for your blog.
  • Engage with people on those networks and build relationships.
  • Contribute to social media groups to share your expertise.

Social media is a two-way communication channel. Don’t just rock up at your chosen social network, blast a message, and leave. Take your time in-between sharing your content to engage with others.

5. Select Your Social Media Networks 

There are plenty of social media networks to choose from, and it’s no surprise to see Facebook is the most popular:

statista global social networks ranked by number of users 2019

But it pays to select a few that are relevant to your niche and concentrate on those rather than spreading yourself too thin across.

Pew Research has some useful demographic data if you’re unsure where your target might hang out.

For example: 

  • Instagram (67%) and Snapchat (62%) are popular among young people aged 18-29. But, on the other hand, Facebook is popular across all age ranges.
  • Other demographic patterns show that women (42%) are almost 3 times more likely to use Pinterest than men (15%). 
  • Around half of college graduates and those who live in high-income households use LinkedIn, compared with 10% or fewer of those who have not attended at least some college or those in lower-income households.

Pro Tip: Remember to vary your content according to each social network. For example, Pinterest works best with tall images (600 x 900px) whereas Facebook uses wide images (1200 x 628px). Use short messages on Twitter and longer posts on LinkedIn.

6. Join (Or Start Your Own) Social Media Groups

Social media groups give you a great opportunity to jump in and share your expert knowledge. Establishing yourself as a go-to resource helps build trust, and group members are more likely to visit your blog for more resources.

The key is to join social media groups that are relevant to your industry. For example, if you run a cooking blog, it makes sense to join groups related to cooking, rather than groups related to general blogging. 

If you can’t find a group in your niche, then why not consider starting one? For example, WPBeginner launched a WordPress Group providing help for non-techies that now has over 20k members:

WPBeginner Facebook Group

Imagine promoting your blog to an audience that size! 

Warning: It takes a lot of work to run a large group, so make sure you have the bandwidth.

Another social media avenue to explore is Pinterest Group Boards and Tailwind Tribes. Both of these can help to promote your blog and attract more visitors to your site.

7. Use Reciprocal Sharing Sites

Reciprocal sharing sites like Viral Content Bee and Triberr work on a system of credits. When you share other people’s content, you earn credits, which then lets you post your content, and in turn, gets shared by other people.

8. Try General Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Flipboard let you post your favorite content (including images and videos), and use tags to organize them. Other users can then add your posts to their boards and share them with their audience. 

These sites typically have a voting system where users can upvote their favorite posts. If your post gets shared or upvoted, you can expect to see more traffic visiting your blog. 

9. Zoom in on Niche Social Bookmarking Sites

Niche social bookmarking sites serve industry-specific communities. Sharing your content in these communities means you’ll attract and engage like-minded people. Here are a few examples niches:

Reddit is one of the biggest online communities, with an estimated 17 million monthly users and also has subreddits which offer more interest-based niches.

10. Promote Your Blog in Forums like Quora

Web forums are another source that can drive traffic to your blog. These online communities let you establish your authority by sharing and posting useful content. Many don’t allow you to link directly to your blog posts, so you’ll have to engage in discussions and ensure you have a great author bio that includes a link to your site.

You can try this search to find a relevant forum: intitle:forum {niche} 

For example, intitle:forum food returns these results:

how to find forums on food

Quora is a popular question and answer forum that can bring loads of traffic to your blog. 

Make sure you have a good author bio that includes a link to your site:

example of quora author bio

And provide detailed answers to questions that include links to other sites as well as yours:

example of a quora answer

Answers to questions on Quora can also rank in search results. For example, the search query, “how to play music and record on iPhone” ranks #1:

quora iphone example

Which is great if your blog is about iPhones! Now you can do two things: 

  1. Write a blog post on this topic that fully answers the question.
  2. Hop on Quora, provide a better answer to the question in the forum that links to your new super post, and get more blog exposure.

You can also use the advanced search filters in SEMrush to find Quora threads related to your niche. For example, say you have a blog on puppy training. 

In SEMrush, select the SEO Toolkit from the main menu:

select seo toolkit from the semrush menu

Then enter quora.com in the Organic Research > Positions report: 

semrush quora example

Next, enter your keywords (e.g. puppy training) in the advanced filter and select the Top 5 Positions to find relevant threads to target:

semrush quora filter example

Now you can comment on those threads in Quora and promote your blog.

11. Run a Giveaway

Running an online giveaway is an excellent way to drive more traffic to your blog, get more email subscribers, and increase social engagement.For example, WPBeginner’s Birthday Giveaway attracted over 36,000 entries:

WPBeginner Birthday Giveaway

Imagine growing your email list by that number! 

One of the best ways to promote your giveaway is to award bonus entries for social shares. For example, OptinMonster offered extra entries for sharing their Black Friday Giveaway on various social networks:

optinmonster giveaway social shares example

For more details, follow our step-by-step guide on how to run a giveaway on your WordPress blog.

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How to Promote Your Blog on Other Sites

In this section, we’ll take a look at some third party sites that you can use to promote your blog. 

12. Republish Your Existing Posts on Other Platforms

While it’s great to publish new content on your blog, you’re missing out on other platforms like LinkedIn and Medium. 

Content Syndication is the process of republishing your content on other sites. Which means you can reach a wider audience. And if that audience likes your content, then they’re likely to visit your blog in search of more.

Brian Dean from Backlinko republished one of his older blog posts on LinkedIn and got 3,800+ views. 

backlinko old post article views on LinkedIn

Not bad for a bit of copy and pasting!

What about duplicate content penalties? 

The good news is that Medium automatically adds canonical tags when you use their republishing tool. So no worries about duplicate content issues. But, if you republish on LinkedIn, you’ll have to add the canonical tags manually, using a tool like Yoast SEO.

13. Repurpose Your Blog Posts in Other Formats

A neat way to get your content seen in new places is to repurpose your existing blog posts. Basically, this means transforming your content into another format such as an infographic, a SlideShare presentation, or a video:

repurpose content process

For example, Ana Hoffman from Traffic Generation Cafe has had tremendous success repurposing content into SlideShare presentations. 

Her case study reveals that she received over 200k views from 9 presentations (slide decks) over 30 days. The knock-on effect was 1400 visits to her website and several first-page rankings on Google that she wouldn’t have had before.

14. Consider Content Aggregators

Content aggregation works in a similar way to content syndication. Content aggregators automatically collect content from source sites and publish it on their site, with a clear link back to the original source.

3 popular content aggregators are: 

Getting your content featured in one of these places helps promote your blog and attract new visitors to your site.

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How to Promote Your Blog through Relationships

The relationships and partnerships you build with other bloggers, influencers, and your audience can be a tremendous help in promoting your blog.

But you have to approach this the right way. Building relationships is a two-way thing, and it starts with you giving. 

Better to be a giver than a taker, right? 

Also, you’ll want to start small with your immediate circle of contacts before growing and reaching out to more prominent influencers.

Here are a few ways to promote your blog through relationships.

15. Reply to Every Comment on Your Blog

If you ask your audience to leave a comment and they take the time to do that, then don’t ignore them. It’s rude. Jump in regularly to thank them for their comment and answer any questions they may have:

respond to blog comments

Replying to comments lets you build an active community on your blog. Build a loyal audience who really appreciate your blog and eagerly await your next piece of content.

Pro Tip: WordPress commenters aren’t notified of followup comments by default. So we recommend using the Subscribe To Comments Reloaded plugin, which adds a checkbox allowing users to get notified of new comments on a specific post.

16. Comment on Other Blogs 

Leaving useful comments on other blogs in your niche can help build your authority. Blog owners and other regular commenters will see your name and start to take notice of what you have to say. 

Over time, as you connect with these people on various channels, you’ll build long-lasting relationships. And when it’s time to ask for their help promoting or sharing a piece of your content, they’ll be ready to step in. 

The only caveat here is that you need to choose blogs that have an active comment section and community. Otherwise, you’ll end up little return on your efforts.

17. Build Two-Way Relationships with Your Peers and Influencers 

Using influencers to help promote your content rather than trying to reach that audience on your own can be a massive help. But this doesn’t happen overnight. And it means giving as well as asking.

Take the time to connect with individuals that can influence your target audience. Share their content and engage with them before asking for anything in return.

Here are 3 ways you can use influencers to promote your content:

Mention Influencers in Your Posts

Let influencers know you published a post that refers to them. You don’t have to ask them to share. If it’s good content and they’re happy to have their name associated with it, they’ll naturally share the content.

Interview an Influencer

Ask an influencer to answer a question or provide a quote to include in an upcoming post. This usually works a treat as it adds more authority to your content. And, again, if you’ve approached this the right way, most influencers will be happy to share the content with their audience.

Interview a Group of Influencers

You can take things one step further and invite a group of influencers or experts to contribute to your blog. The key to making this work is to aim for quality input rather than a high number of contributions. 

In other words, it’s better to avoid the “127 Experts xxx” type posts as this dilutes the “expert” or “influence.” Instead, go for a smaller group interview that provides real quality. For example, 14 Email Marketing Mistakes You Need to Avoid

18. Notify People That You Mentioned

If you’ve included quotes, references, or expert contributions in your blog post, then make sure you notify those people to thank them for their contributions and let them know the post is live.

email people mentioned in your post

As long this is done correctly, they’ll appreciate the mention and happily spread the word about your blog. But, if you just randomly add people and email them, it can come across as spammy. 

It all comes down to building and maintaining relationships.

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How to Promote Your Blog with Guest Appearances

On the back of building relationships and building your network, start looking for opportunities where you can make guest appearances in roundups, interviews, and on other blogs. The key to each of these guest appearances is to generate a link back to your site or a specific piece of content. You should always get an author bio link but look for ways to add contextual links in your material, too.

19. Publish Guest Posts on Other Blogs

Guest posting is an effective way to promote your blog. As well as writing super content on relevant blogs in your niche, try and offer an incentive to get readers back to your blog, for example, a free checklist or ebook

For example, Henneke Duistermaat invites readers of her guest post on Copyblogger to get her Snackable Writing Course:

henneke duistermaat guest post on copyblogger

This incentive is highly-relevant to the Copyblogger audience!

20. Make Guest Appearances on Podcasts

Podcasts are growing in popularity every year. Being interviewed by a podcast host is another way to share some expert tips and advice to build credibility. 

Here, web consultant Gill Andrews shares copywriting tips on the Marketing Study Lab podcast:

gill andrews guest podcast on marketing study lab

And, as with a guest post, you’ll get a link back to your site. 

If you’re looking for podcasts to appear on, start by searching Google with “podcasts accepting guests” or similar. You can also search your podcast app to find relevant shows that you could contact.

There are free directory sites like the Interview Guests Directory and Podcast Guests, where you can find podcasts that are looking for guests. You’ll have to research the sites further to see if they’d be a good fit for you.  

And there are also paid services like Interview Connections and Interview Valet that can book you on podcasts.

21. Make Guest Appearances on Live Video 

Live video broadcasts on social media channels like Facebook and Instagram also offer another opportunity to get yourself in front of a new audience and attract people to your blog.

As with podcasts, you may already know some social media accounts that run these types of broadcasts that you can contact and ask. For example, The Copywriter Facebook Group hosts live interviews:

facebook live broadcast example

Try searching Facebook and Instagram to find relevant shows that you could appear on.

22. Get on Roundup Posts to Reach New Audiences

If you know fellow bloggers or writers in your niche who curate roundup posts, then it’s a good idea to get on their radar. Make yourself known and say you’d be open to contributing to their next roundup post.

You can use an advanced Google search to find these opportunities: intitle:”expert roundup” + your industry/keyword 

For example, intitle:expert roundup + bitcoin returns these results:

bitcoin expert roundup example
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If you have the budget to invest in paid promotion tactics, then check out some of these options.

23. Social Media Ads

The main social media networks all offer various forms of advertising. For example: 

As mentioned earlier, only advertise on the networks where your target audience is. 

To get started, check out this short guide for advertising on social media and OptinMonster’s guide to Facebook ads.

24. Quuu Promote

Quuu Promote helps promote your blog by getting relevant people to share your content with their audience:

quuu promote

For example, you could position your content as suitable for the ecommerce industry, and people in that niche would share the content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn with their audience. 

The shared content doesn’t have any “Sponsored Ad” alongside as it’s shared by real people. Pricing starts from $40 per promotion and runs for 30 days.

25. Reddit Ads

Reddit’s advertising costs are cheaper than other social media sites. Nate Shivar has an excellent guide on how to advertise on Reddit.

26. Search Engine Marketing Ads

Look no further than Google Adwords or Bing Ads if you want to invest in search engine ads. 

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Wrapping Up

That’s a load of promotion tactics to help you promote your blog. But please, don’t try to do all of them at once because you’ll feel overwhelmed. Plus, not all tactics will be relevant to your industry or niche.

Take your time, try a few tactics, and test what works for you and your niche. And then report back, and let us know in the comments what worked best for you.

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  1. frank calio on January 13, 2020

    I had a very successful following on my blog around the time blogging was at its peak; got away from it, now going back to writing after retiring from writing a weekly column for a newspaper.
    Finding it tougher to capture an audience this time around. Would like to expand readership and maybe pick up a few dollars.
    I’m not computer savvy, thus reading and applying what you want will be tough.
    But I welcome any help I can receive.

  2. Johnpaul Onwueme on January 29, 2020

    This is a well detailed content. It is very useful for anyone that want to promote his or blog.

  3. I’m new to blogging and am loving writing content. Promoting my blog (and myself!) is a big learning curve. Thanks for the great strategies, and for your awesome blog!

    1. Thank you Sally! Glad you found it useful 🙂 You might want to check out our article on how to get more traffic next!

  4. Mark Harris on August 16, 2020

    Thanks for sharing it and I must tell you that you have done GOOD JOB on the list. I really like WordPress as it is easy and there are many options available for plugins that are required for many tasks and beautify the website.

    thanks again.

  5. evisionatlanta on January 26, 2022

    gone through the blog list and they are amazingly information.i well definitely follow them.

  6. I’m starting to promote my site. Your advice is very useful to me, thank you. I understand that I will have to work very hard, but I hope for success)))

  7. I really liked the article. What do you think, is it realistic: to promote the site in the TOP 10 in 3 months?

  8. Discountler on September 9, 2022

    Thanks for the great article! Social networks are losing their significance, and promotion in them is losing relevance.

  9. Santos Dikens on October 8, 2022

    Good article! We are linking to this great post on our site. Keep up the great writing.

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