27 Experts Reveal Their Most Powerful Blog Promotion Technique

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There are dozens of different blog promotion techniques and it can be confusing knowing which techniques to use.

So I reached out to 27 blogging experts and asked them:

If you had to promote your next blog post using just one technique, what would it be, and why?

This is how they responded…

#1. Mike Alton

Mike Allton - expert roundup

My top recommended technique for promoting blog content is to develop an avid list of email subscribers to whom you regularly and immediately send notifications of your latest posts.

This is where you will be able to consistently, and increasingly, drive more and more traffic back into your site.

And, since they’re repeat visitors, you’ll be developing a deeper relationship and great level of authority each time.

Mike Allton is an award-winning blogger, writing about all aspects of Content Marketing. The Social Media Hat covers social media, blogging and email marketing, and ties those techniques together in order to successfully generate traffic, leads and sales for businesses.

#2. Nathan Ambrose

blog promotion techniques

If I had to promote my next blog post by using just one technique, it would be strategic blog commenting. 

Why? Because that is one method that will give me the most control over where my links will appear.

Even when I don’t have time to blog, I still get traffic from my comments, which often leads visitors to read one or more of my blog posts.

Nathan Ambrose is a qualified and experienced accounting technician and website development consultant. He builds custom websites to help freelancers and entrepreneurs attract more clients. Visit Nathan at nathanambrose.com.

#3. Brendan Baker

blog promotion techniques

First thing I would do is make sure that I mentioned influential people or their work in the blog post itself. By doing this, I’m adding value to them and linking to their website.

Once published, I would simply let them know I mentioned them or their work in the article… and if my content is good enough, they will want to share it.

Brendan Baker is a high performance trainer at The Start of Happiness and helps people launch and grow their blogs through his First 1000 Subscribers course.

#4. Jeff Bullas

blog promotion techniques

The best type of promotion is to reach your target market and the audience when you want to. So having control is vital for savvy marketers and bloggers. Not restricted or strangled by Sergey’s or Mr Zuckerberg’s algorithms.

That is your email list. You can also toss in a little “call to action” and drive some more revenue to your online business at the same time. I sort of like promoting without paying Google or Facebook a cent.

Jeff Bullas is a social media speaker, blogger and strategist and works with companies and executives to optimise their global online personal and company brand utilising the power of social media networks. Jeff has a degree in Commerce and Economics and has spent most of his career involved with Information Technologies, Telecommunications and the Web. Bragging rights include: Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer 2012 – Ranked #14. Jeff’s blogis read by over 250,000 readers every month in 190 countries.

#5. Reginald Chan

Reginald Chan

Influencer Outreach, definitely. It goes in two ways. For example, influencer outreach will open more doors for me in terms of communication, while getting quality backlinks (you know how important that is to bloggers/writers).

If they would add the link into their posts or even share on social media, it would definitely be extremely powerful and successful!

Reginald Chan has been a writer and business consultant since 2005. He has worked with international and local brands especially in branding, social media marketing and leadership. On the side, he is often called the ‘cute dad’ and spends nearly all his time with his lovely baby boy. Visit Reginald at: reginaldchan.net.

#6. Patrick Coombe

Patrick Coombe

When promoting a blog post, my favorite technique is two fold.

The first aspect involves promoting on social media using traditional channels. I love to loop people into my initial share. Tagging people in the post that have a history of talking about it in the past will increase the odds of getting more exposure.

The other half of this is to write content about what people are talking about and what is trending. What I like to do, is seek out hot discussions on places like Reddit or other forums, find out what people are really talking about, and then do a writeup based on that. This works for basically all industries.

Of course, it helps if you do traditional SEO and social media marketing on top of this never hurts.

Patrick Coombe is an internet marketer, entrepreneur, SEO and blogger working full time for his agency Elite Strategies, LLC., Delray Beach, FL. He maintains a popular SEO blog and has guest posted on many different sites including Moz, Search Wilderness, SerpWoo and Inbound.org.

#7. Andy Crestodina

Andy Crestodina

Social Media / Influencer Marketing. Why?

Because it improves the content, increases traffic, it’s not super difficult …and it’s a lot of fun.

The idea is to include expert contributors to the piece, and then once it’s live, encourage them to share. It works well when you get a few things right:

  • Invite contributors who are generous with both their advice and sharing their network
  • Find people who are truly experts and add more value than the readers expect
  • Add value to the piece with additional analysis and insights. Don’t just copy/past a ton of answers
  • Make it super simple for the contributors to share, by sending an email with images, pre-written tweets, etc.

Think of it this way, we all know that content optimized for search includes keywords. But few people realize this: content optimized for social includes people!

blog promotion techniques

(image source: Collaborative Content Marketing: 5 Powerful Ways to Upgrade Your Content)

Andy Crestodina is the co-founder and the Strategic Director of Orbit Media, an award-winning 38-person web design company in Chicago. He is also a top-rated speaker at marketing conferences around the country. Andy has written hundreds of articles on content marketing topics for dozens of blogs and media websites. Favorite topics include content strategy, search engine optimization, social media and Analytics. He is also the author of Content Chemistry: The Illustrated Handbook for Content Marketing.

#8. Erik Emanuelli

Erik Emanuelli

I’d use social media, it’s my favorite marketing channel. There is Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Google Plus, LinkedIn, but I recommend in particular Twitter.

There are so many tools connected to this network, that may help you automate your marketing strategy

Here are some platforms I particularly suggest (just to mention some):

Erik Emanuelli is a Problogger and social media marketer. Visit Erik at NoPassiveIncome.

#9. William Harris

William-Harris

My favorite tool for promotion right now is Quuupromote.  It’s fast and it takes off on its own.  

You can quickly get your post shared by influencers in your niche, expanding your reach in ways that you can’t get on other platforms.

William Harris is an Ecommerce Growth Consultant at Elumynt.

#10. Jon Haver

jon-haver

First I would ensure that the piece of content is useful and the best on the internet for that given problem.

Then if I could only do one technique to promote my blog post I would email people who I know it would help. 

Even if I didn’t get additional amplification on the post due to sharing it I would have provided value to contacts.

Jon Haver is an online business builder and is passionate about developing businesses and systems that grow his and others businesses. His most recent business is ContentRefined which is a complete done for you content marketing service focused on systematically creating fantastic content!

#11. Andrew James

If I had to choose only one technique, I’d go with the Skyscraper. First, I’d do an extensive research and find 4-5 trending topics and posts that received 10+ links and a lot of social shares for validation. After that, I’ll go through the articles and find one or two that are ‘missing’ something that I might add with my own twist. After I create the upgraded/better article, I’ll go out and reach out to all those people who linked to/shared the first piece and let them know about my article & ask for a link/share.

 I can even take it one step further and reach out to the sites that link to those sites.

Andrew James is an entrepreneur, digital marketer, wine enthusiast, hustler (in a good way) & the guy behind BrandBuilders.io – a website that helps aspiring entrepreneurs jumpstart their online business.

#12. Brian Lang

Brian Lang

Guest blogging in most cases. Mentioning a relevant post on your blog on other high visibility blogs is a great way to let a lot of people know about your content for free.

If I wanted something to rank for SEO or to go viral, I might use email outreach instead since it’s faster and can get more links.

And, since they’re repeat visitors, you’ll be developing a deeper relationship and great level of authority each time.

Brian Lang is the founder of Small Business Ideas Blog, where he shares business tips and experiments with digital and content marketing techniques. If you want to learn more about how to market efficiently online, be sure to download his free resource, 50+ Tools & Resources to Grow Your Blog.

#13. David Leonhardt

David Leonhardt

I would ask my mastermind compatriots to share the post.  I know them, I trust them, and they have engaged audiences of like-minded followers.

That is the single best way to quickly reach an audience…if I had to choose just one method.

David Leonhardt runs THGM Writing Services, helping clients write everything from books to press releases, from blog posts to screenplays.

#14. James McAllister

James McAllister

There’s never a one-size-fits-all solution to content marketing because different topics will be best suited to different platforms. However, one of my favorites is influencer outreach. Because I tend to write evergreen content, I really want to make the most out of the long-term benefits of this. 

One of the best and most common ways these articles will continue getting traffic when they’re older is through search engines.

Influencer outreach benefits you in the short-term by sending a burst of visitors to your new article (and the social shares that come with it!) but also benefits you in the long-run with valuable links to that content, boosting its rankings as well as the rankings of other articles on your site.

I try to reach out to at least 5 bloggers daily, knowing that even if 4 out of the 5 turn me down, I’ll still come out far ahead of everyone who reached out to no one. 4 out of 5 getting declined still means I’m getting at least 1 new link daily, and every month my search engine traffic increases as a result.

James McAllister is a Blogger, Marketer, and Entrepreneur. He teaches you how to build your business by teaching you what works instead of what you want to hear. Visit James at: HelpStartMySite.com.

#15. Mike Moran

Mike Moran

SEO. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. While email, social, and ads work to promote the post within a few days of it going live,  optimizing your post for the keywords people search for can allow people to find it years later. After the first few days, virtually all the traffic your post will get is from SEO.

Mike Moran is an expert in internet marketing, search technology, social media, text analytics, and content analytics. He is a Certified Speaking Professional and regularly makes worldwide speaking appearances. Mike is the co-author of the best-selling book Search Engine Marketing, Inc. (along with fellow search marketing expert Bill Hunt), and author of the acclaimed Internet marketing book, Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules, named one of best business books of 2007 by the Miami Herald. His newest book is Outside-In Marketing: Using Big Data to Guide Your Content Marketing, with co-author James Mathewson. Mike founded and is head author for Biznology®.

#16. Donna Moritz

Donna Moritz

It’s a tough question because I don’t think one technique is enough.

But if I had an established blog with regular readers and could only use one technique for promoting my post, I’d ensure that the post had an eye-catching header image including the blogpost title, and a helpful, engaging shareable graphic or infographic embedded in the blog post. 

That way my web visitors who use Pinterest have something to share and attract other people back to the read the post.

Of course that being said, I usually use a range of techniques, but I always make sure I have shareable images on each post.

Donna Moritz is the founder of Socially Sorted, based in Queensland, Australia. She helps businesses get more traffic, shares and sales using visual social media and content strategy.

#17. Mitt Ray

Mitt Ray

I would use email as it is one of my most effective blog promotion channels. I started building my list of email subscribers as soon as I launched the blog. This has helped me gain a lot of subscribers. So I usually get a good amount of traffic when I inform them about my latest blog post. These subscribers not only read my posts, but also share it. This drives even more traffic.

I also like to regularly stay in touch with my blog subscribers through my best content. Hence, emailing them about my latest blog post is an extra benefit.

Mitt Ray is the founder of Social Marketing Writing.

#18. Leanne Regalla

Leanne Regalla

I would use outreach to influencers, for a couple reasons.

First off, it’s a win-win for everyone. It helps influencers provide great content to their readers, and it also exposes me to a larger audience.

Plus, it helps to build relationships. I think outreach is just an all-around positive thing if done right.

Leanne Regalla helps brands and businesses to create engaging, authoritative online content that builds trust and loyalty. Grab her Compelling Business Writing Checklist and avoid the mistakes that send potential customers running to your competitors.

#19. Nicholas Scalice

Nicholas Scalice

I was tempted to say Facebook Ads, since that’s probably the most common way to quickly promote a blog post and get traction.

But instead, I’m going to share a lesser known strategy.

I’d use a network called Triberr. It’s a site where you can post your blog feed, build “tribes” with other influencers, and share each others’ content. If you invest the time to build strong tribes, it can be a very powerful tool.

Nicholas Scalice is a growth marketing consultant and the founder of Earnworthy. He helps brands design, automate, and optimize their marketing funnels, in order to earn more traffic, leads, and sales.

#20. Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

If I had to use just one technique to promote my next blog post, I would promote it on Pinterest.

Pinterest is my biggest referral and leads to thousands of new readers finding my blog each day. Plus, it’s very easy for others to share an article on Pinterest, so it could go viral quite quickly.

Michelle Schroeder-Gardner is the founder and writer at Making Sense of Cents, where she helps readers learn how to make extra money, save money, and reach their dream life. Michelle and her husband sold their house in 2015 and currently travel full-time in an RV with their two dogs.

#21. Bill Sebald

bill sebald - tips for bloggers

Even though I’ve always been in inbound marketing, it’s become very clear that promotion is now vital to forcing the signal through the noise.  

It creates buzz and influences the signals Google is now measuring for SEO.  

So, I prefer paid social media to get the post out there. Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, or any other network that might be best suited to the kind of content I created.  With minimal cost, you can light a post up!

Bill Sebald is owner at Greenlane Search Marketing, blogger, and Adjunct Professor of SEO for Philadelphia University.

#22. Eli Seekins

Eli Seekins

Influencer marketing. Hands down.

Email and social media marketing are the #1 strategies that almost everyone uses to promote their blogs.

That’s because they work. 

But your success is determined by two things: the size of your audience and their engagement rate. If your list is small and you’re not really connected with your followers, you’re not going to do well.

If you do have a great list, then maybe focus on email. Or if you have a huge following on social media, then use that to your advantage.

Play to your strengths.

If you’re just starting out I would definitely focus on influencer marketing — email and social media won’t really help you.

Influencer marketing is sort of a broad ambiguous strategy. It’s basically the art of leveraging relationships. There are lots of different ways to do this. Guest blogging, roundup posts, podcasts, video interviews, and social media shoutouts are just a few.

To use influencer marketing to promote your next blog post do the following:

  1. Find influencers in your niche and start doing blogger outreach, things like leaving comments, sending thank you emails, sharing posts, etc.
  2. Grow authentic relationships with those influencers and find out what sort of topics they are interested in.
  3. Create a blog post that these influencers will enjoy. And maybe even link to them in your post.
  4. Once you publish your post send the influencers a nice email letting them know about your post and why they might like it. Be quick, and don’t ask for any favors — just let them know about the content you created. They’re busy, and if you ask for too much they’re likely to just skip over your email to the next one.
  5. Say thank you and continue to cultivate your new friendships.

Imagine if 10 – 20 successful bloggers in your niche shared and promoted your next post. What sort of difference would that make for your blog?

For more detailed tips about how to execute these strategies check out my guest post How I Got 103 Shares and 42 Comments When I Had Zero Traffic and No Email List

Eli Seekins is the founder of  Launch Your Dream. He helps entrepreneurs turn their passion into a business. He’ll help you start your blog with a boom, get noticed quick, become an authority, and make the money you deserve. Check out his FREE Job To Blog Virtual Summit — where expert bloggers teach you how to quit your job, start a blog and make money doing it.

#23. Sean Si

Sean Si

That’s a tricky question. I have tons of ways to promote a blog post of mine – because frankly, there’s too much noise out there.

One very effective way of promoting my blog posts is through push notifications.

But that assumes a captive audience. That assumes that my readers have opted in to my push notification platform (Pushcrew).

If I was to promote to a new audience, I would most probably go for Quuu.co. So far as my campaigns with Quuu goes, I have gotten new eyeballs and new subscriptions. The engagement rate is not extremely high but hey, for $30 I really can’t complain.

Sean Si is the CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker, an SEO company in the Philippines and Qeryz. A start-up, data analysis and urgency junkie who spends his time inspiring young entrepreneurs through talks and seminars. Check out his personal blog where he writes about starting up two companies and life in general.

#24. Ramsay Taplin

Something that has been working for me for a while now is producing a huge article with a lot of resources and helpful content and then linking to influential bloggers throughout the post.

I then tweet them to let them know and, if the post is good enough, they usually give it a share.

Ramsay Taplin is the founder of Blog Tyrant – a website with tested blogging tips and strategies that aims to help you blog smarter.

#25. Mark Traphagen

Paid social promotion targeted to relevant media people. If the post is newsworthy, such as a data-based research study, getting it into the social feeds of writers and journalists can result in articles linking to it.

We’ve used this to get mentions in many top publications. Beats spammy outreach emails!

Mark Traphagen is Senior Director of Brand Evangelism for Stone Temple Consulting, an award winning digital marketing agency serving major brands. He regularly writes and speaks about social media and content marketing.

#26. Codrut Turcanu

codrut turcanu

I am a big advocate of email outreach. So, what I’m about to do is simple:

  • It takes about a week to research relevant contacts and collect their details.
  • I’ll be using Google and Twitter to find the right people who can promote my blog post; I aim for 100 contacts.
  • After that I’ll be sending a custom personalized email to each individual. You can use a bulk mailer tool (try one for free, there are a dozen) and email your connections.
  • I’ll be asking them to share the post and link back from their site if they like the post.

Usually I get a 20% positive response rate.

Codrut Turcanu is a reputable affiliate marketing coach who started from ground ZERO in November 1999. He enjoys educating people worldwide on how to make money online through affiliate programs & Google Adsense. Since 2004 he has created many info-products and tutorials. His success story has been featured in many online and offline publications. Visit Codrut at: codrutturcanu.com.

Summary

First off, a huge ‘thank you’ to all the above experts for sharing their knowledge.

What I love about the above responses is that they illustrate a truth about blogging that is easy to forget – there is no “right” technique, no single method that all successful bloggers use.

The fact is, there are many different techniques for promoting blog posts. What matters more than chasing after the “right” blog promotion technique is committing to one or two techniques and becoming a master of them.

Having said that, Influencer Outreach stands out as a very effective way of promoting your blog post, especially for beginning bloggers.

‘Influencer Outreach’ is really a catch-all term that covers a whole range of techniques:

  • Guest blogging
  • Roundup Posts (like this one)
  • Podcasts and Video Interviews
  • Social media Shoutouts
  • Blogger Outreach (asking for links to posts)
  • Mentioning Influencers in your post/article

The last one, ‘Mention Influencers in your blog post’, definitely works. I can attest to that.

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post titled the ‘The 7 Business Models of Highly Successful Webpreneurs’. In that article I referred to Yaro Starak and quoted from his free eBook, ‘Blog Profits Blueprint’.

As soon as the article was live, I sent Yaro an email, letting him know that I’d mentioned him in my recent post.

About 2 weeks later Yaro replied, thanked me for including him in my post and said he had just tweeted it to his followers (all 32,000 of them).

This is the tweet:

blog promotion techniques

The tweet was on 7 February. My traffic exploded over the next few days:

Other very effective blog promotion techniques that have been mentioned in this Roundup are:

– Send To Your Email List

  • subscribers not only read the post, they also share it – this drives even more traffic
  • may not be so effective for new bloggers with small lists
  • email subscribers are already interested in your content and message
  • highest conversion rate in terms of opens and clicks
  • having control is vital for savvy marketers and bloggers – you don’t want to be at the mercy of Google’s or Facebook’s algorithms.

– Strategic Blog Commenting

  • gives you the most control over where your links will appear.
  • ongoing traffic – even when you don’t have time to blog, you still get traffic from your comments

– Writing about Hot-Topics

  • Find hot-topics in your niche using tools such as: BuzzSumo, BuzzFeed Trending, Facebook Trending, Twitter Trending, Google+ What’s Hot, Reddit, Topsy, What’s Trending
  • Because of the research you’ve done, you know the topic you’re writing about is in high demand (lots of shares, lots of backlinks)

– Sharing on Social Media

  • Tagging influencers who have written on that topic
  • Optimizing the blog post’s shareability through eye-catching header image

– Promoting on Twitter

Twitter is great for building relationships with other bloggers. It can also deliver traffic (as I discovered). For maximum effect, use a platform that links to Twitter:

  • ViralContentBee
  • JustRetweet
  • Triberr

– Using Push Notifications

Through PushCrew (this requires an existing audience who have signed up for push notifications – doesn’t allow promotion to a new audience). Other services similar to PushCrew are One Signal, Web Push, Pusher, and Urban Airship.

– Article Promotion Services

Use curated content platforms such as:

  • Quupromote
  • PromoRepublic
  • Collexio
  • Riple
  • ZEEF
  • Listly
  • ContentDJ
  • Contentools
  • Marketing Stack
  • Uberflip
  • Roojoom

– Skyscraper Technique

  • You already know that the topic is popular and attracts links
  • You can approach people who have linked to similar posts and ask them to link to your (similar but superior) post

– Sharing through a MasterMind group

  • You already have mutual trust
  • Your post gets shared to engaged audiences of like-minded followers

– Blogger Outreach

  • You get links to the blog post
  • You make connections with other bloggers

– SEO (Organic Search Traffic)

  • Optimizing the blog post for the search engines (using a tools such as Yoast plugin for WordPress)
  • Other kinds of blog post promotion my result in a burst of short-term traffic, but optimising your post for the search engines delivers an ongoing stream of traffic

– Social Media Sharing platforms

  • ViralContentBee
  • Triberr
  • JustRetweet

– Pinterest

I used to think that Pinterest only worked for niches that are highly visual, such as cooking, travel, gardening etc. Then l listened to this podcast of Kat Lee interviewing Rebekah Hoffer and discovered that Pinterest can become a major source of traffic for virtually any kind of blog.

– Paid Social Media

Many bloggers wouldn’t consider paid social media as an option. But it can get your article in front of a highly targeted audience with laser-like precision and with much less work than the other promotion techniques discussed above.

What’s your  favorite technique for promoting blog posts?

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AUTHOR
Rob Powell
Rob Powell shares the traffic building techniques that are working for him. Join him as he 'cracks the safe' on search engine traffic for bloggers - find out what works (and what doesn't).

11 thoughts on “27 Experts Reveal Their Most Powerful Blog Promotion Technique”

  1. Hi, Rob.

    Thanks for sharing this. I liked the way you presented it.

    This wasn’t just another round-up post, but you isolated the various responses and analysed them. The mind-map was a great idea too. I’m a big fan and user of them.

    I need to look at some of those curated content platforms. I’m familiar with most, but a few are new for me. Likewise with the bloggers.

    Thanks for sharing. Tweeting soon to my followers.

    Nathan.

  2. Thanks Nathan, for your feedback on the analysis, glad you liked it. I love mind maps, the process of mapping out the information makes it so much easier for me to go to the next stage of writing. I had a look at some of those curated platforms as well – there were quite a few resources that I hadn’t heard of before. Thanks for the Tweet!

  3. Hi Great list,

    I really agree with the fact, Creating evergreen content, guest blogging, and blog commenting is the best strategy to drive relevant traffic to the website. For social media also we need content, we need small snippets of curated content that can attract a lot of attention. We need to write for the target audience and optimize for the search crawlers.

  4. Hi Nishant, thanks for your comment. Curated Content (for example Roundup Posts) is still a great technique for driving traffic (and building relationships with Influencers in your niche). It involves quite a lot of leg work, though. All the best,
    Rob

  5. Hi Victor, thanks for your comment, glad the article on JB was helpful 🙂 I create most of my infographics using Sketchapp. It’s like a very simplified version of Adobe Illustrator – very easy to use. For annotating screenshots, I use Skitch. All the best, Rob.

  6. I must say social media is a very effective way to reach out to the people. It not just stays interactive but also pulls the audiences towards future posts. The sole drawback is that you need to put constant efforts to build your social reputation. Thanks for sharing these vital tips and opinions here.

  7. Hi Vidya, thanks for your comment. Yes, that’s my big issue with social media – the short lifespan of each post. I much prefer organic search. All the best, Rob.

  8. The Blog is impressive and I would like to emphasize more on what Reginald Chan said as that is the more ‘in’ thing right now and I would like you to give more details about it.

  9. Hi Nirmit,

    Thanks for your comment. I agree with you (and Reginald): Influencer Outreach has the potential to expose you to a very large audience and at the same time can result in some very high DA backlinks. Good point. Please feel free to comment further.

    Bets regards,
    Rob.

Comments are closed.