Your job as a blogger is far from done when you hit "publish". Unless your goal is to write a super secret online diary, promotion of your posts is something you should get used to doing regularly. And don't be alarmed because it's self-promotion - if you have something valuable to say, then people will be grateful that you've pointed them to your direction. Besides, there's no one else who will do it (unless your girlfriend is very much in love with you).
Promoting a blog post isn't all that difficult, with time it will become a part of your routine. But many people just don't know where and how to do it, so we have a list of 14 ways and places you can use to share your content with the people who will be interested in reading it - and, hopefully, share it further.
Social media websites
1. Facebook is one of the few "musts" of social media. Even if you still don't have a huge fan base, you should create a fan page that your friend can help you promote, and share your blog posts there. In the beginning, share them on your private profile as well - your friends won't mind even if the topic doesn't interest them much, and you can score some interesting business offers when people see that you're blogging about something related to their work.
2. The same goes for Twitter, only while on Facebook you can post once a day and still get your content seen, on Twitter you should schedule your tweets 2-3 times per day (with different titles).
3. Pinterest - to use only if your post has interesting images that are highly relevant to the content of your post (very visual platform, but can be very rewarding in terms of shares and traffic).
Social bookmarking websites
4. StumbleUpon - if your title and topic resonate with Stumblers, you can expect to see large numbers of visitors who will further recommend your article
5. Digg - slightly less big, but still important
6. Reddit - the dinosaur of social bookmarking. As with all bookmarking websites, make sure that you put your blog in the right category (the narrower the better)
Your connections
7. Include the post in your email newsletter to let your subscribers know about it. Give an interesting description and ask them for the feedback, this will increase their engagement.
8. Share it on the forums and other groups you belong to - again, ask for the feedback, and ask them to further share it if they've liked it.
Other blogs
9. Comment on other blogs. Important: if you're expecting to see traffic from your comments, you should comment only on relevant blogs, and make your comments really interesting and insightful.
10. Send the link to an influential blogger and ask him to link to your piece (only if it's really good!). If you can get a famous blogger to recommend your article, it will very probably get you a lot of visits, and possibly new links and new visitors.
11. Submit a guest post with a similar topic to a related blog, and link to your latest post where the readers could find more about the topic (make sure that you've explained that!).
Syndication
12. Alltop, the website that syndicates content from every category, will send loads of targeted visitors to your blog.
13. Amazon allows you to publish your blog post as an e-book, and even get paid when Kindle users read it.
14. IFTTT will allow you to syndicate to over 50 different websites.
Now, don't go crazy and try to do it all at once. Pick a few things and do them right; for the next time, add a few more and, well, be careful not to crash the server.
Nicole Gore from IPP is a passionate blogger and Internet marketing consultant for many small business companies. While creating content for them, she is always trying to get the maximum out of her posts by sharing them at as many place as possible.
