You have published an outstanding blogpost. Well done! But we are not done yet. The bigger job is to drive traffic to your blog and get people to read this post. So, the next step is – How to promote your blog for free? How to increase traffic on your blog?
Here goes an ultimate list of 19 ways to promote your blog and increase traffic for free. Do this after every blog post you publish.
1. Shorten your URL
Use a URL shortner for at least three reasons.
- It makes your link manageable and reduce by at least 20 characters. Useful for social networks like Twitter.
- It tracks your click data
- It promotes sharing since readers wouldn’t be biased for a popular blog or a new one.
You can opt for bitly, Shorte.st, or tinyurl. I personally love Google url shortner.
Resource – Read this complete guide for URL shortening
2. Ask for your bloggers’ community help
You can personally email some of your trusted blogger friends to help you promote your blog post for free and get instant traffic and engagement. They always have rich social networks that you can utilize for your advantage. Never resist from returning the favor though. Sometimes, even when your blogger friends didn’t ask you, do promote the best of their posts on and off. To increase traffic on your blog, help your fellow bloggers to increase their blog traffic.
3. Share on social media
Social media platforms are all traffic. Share it on all social networks where you’re active and have a decent fan following. Facebook is my favorite because I can share it with my personal network of friends on profile and business network from my Facebook business page.
Your social media description for the post makes a huge difference in the engagement your blog will receive. Write a powerful and thought-provoking reason why one should read. #bloggingtips #sunitabiddu #howtoblog
Make sure that you write a strong reason or benefit mentioned in the post and invite people to read more of it.
To get even more benefits, share it on multiple social networks..
A handy tip: Make sure you promote your blog post on your Facebook personal profile only when it is truly valuable to your friends. They primarily connected with you for friendship; not to read your business and money posts.
Try Pinterest with title variations and watch your blog receiving loads of traffic and backlinks at the same time.
4. Post to aggregator websites
Reddit, digg, Triberr and BuzzSumo are some of the most sought after and best places to promote your blog for more free traffic. The key is in becoming one of the active contributors not only for broadcasting your new posts but for participating on others’ post too.
5. Mention your references and sources in the post when sharing on social networks
Mentions of external sources and articles can help you two ways;
First, they add authority to your content with external sources. Second, they help your content get more shares and readers from the networks of those who you mentioned.
Send them personalized email and messages with a reference to your post and how mentioning them have made your content richer. Invite them to give their feedback and share among their networks if they feel like. This is one of the finest ways to promote your blog with influencer marketing, build a network and the perfect answer to your ‘how to increase your blog traffic’ question at the same time.
6. Repurpose the post into a video
Youtube is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your blog for free.
Take precise points from your blogpost, grab some cool clips and pictures from creative commons and transform it into a video. Distribute it to YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion to reach out to a totally different audience.
7. Convert the Blogpost into a Slide Deck
Just like videos, pick up the precise power points along with trailing description and catchy images and transform your post into a slide deck on SlideShare. Slideshare receives over 75 million unique visitors every month and it is known as one of the ways to increase traffic to your website and blog.
If you create useful slideshow, you may get featured on their homepage and even receive 10 times more free traffic and exposure to your blog.
One of my posts on 10 awesome ways to write opening paragraph for your blogposts was featured and it sent a little over 5000 new visitors every day for some time.
Moreover, SlideShare presentations, as YouTube recordings, regularly rank higher so you get an additional SEO boost for your targeted keywords and brand name.
Resource – Read how to get massive traffic with slideshare
8. Submit to Content Communities
Another great way to increase traffic to your blog is using communities like alltop, blog catalog, Inbound. These communities allow you to submit your blogs and posts which eventually promote your blog over time. However, such high-profile communities have an editorial team to screen how your blog and content are. Once you’re through, your blog gets great traffic.
Here are a few great reads on using reddit & inbound for massive blog traffic
https://www.trafficgenerationcafe.com/reddit-blog-traffic/
How to promote your blog on Reddit
9. Customize your email signature
This is one of the easiest one-off ways to increase free traffic on your blog and inform those with whom you communicate on a regular basis. Tools like Wisestamp allow you to create cool email signature over multiple email platforms and add your blog feed. Since it is a tiny, cool-looking part of the signature, it is subtle.
10. Make your presence in link roundups
Becoming a part of the lists and roundups is a rich ways of promoting your blog and receiving free traffic. Blogging world has hundreds of blogs in every niche that do week after week or month to month roundups; toward the end of the week, or month, these web journals will distribute an article with a rundown of fascinating content they read in a specific month.
You can get mentioned in these roundups by messaging these bloggers and requesting if they can include your article in their next gathering or even one of the existing ones.
Here go two great reads to get into Link roundups easily.
Readers’ Choice : https://bloggerjet.com/link-roundups/ & https://www.quicksprout.com/university/how-to-build-links-and-traffic-from-link-roundups/
11. Use Quora
Without an over-promotion by throwing a post link in every answer, Quora is one of the favorite places bloggers use to promote the blog and increase traffic for free. These readers are genuine and looking for an answer. They are your closest prospects for conversions. Moreover, you can use Quora for finding new blog topics as well.
Resource – Read How to turn Quora Into a great Traffic Source
12. Use email newsletter
Use email marketing strategy to share your latest posts to your email database and drive instant traffic to your new blog posts. If you write on daily basis, sending a newsletter clubbing all your weekly posts into one email every week will be a subtle strategy.
Email tools such as Mailchimp, Aweber and ConstantContact have user-friendly interface, brilliant feature and easy to use templates for you. All what you need is to drag and drop and shoot the letter.
Just make sure you take care of the right timings, right day and right design. Keep it as simple as possible.
Resource – A well written guide to use email for blog marketing
13. Message influencers on LinkedIn and social networks
Getting into an influencer’s inbox is achievable. Most of them are humble. It is easier when you’re connected to some of them on Linkedin.
Inform your close contacts and influencers on Linkedin and other social networks with the new post link and ask for their feedback/inputs. Ensure that you don’t stuff your influencers’ inbox every now and then. Once in a month or two is okay.
Remember, they are humble, not free.
And here are two great reads to use influencer marketing to promote your content and increase traffic to your blog for free.
Resource – Read How to use influencer marketing for more blog traffic
https://www.jeffbullas.com/2016/02/02/use-influencer-marketing-boost-traffic-conversions/
14. Make the image sharable at Pinterest
I get a burning question every other day. How to use Pinterest to drive traffic to the blog. Pinterest can be an awesome source of traffic to your blog and numerous bloggers have utilized it with catchy, attractive and even unusual imagery in their posts. You only have to add the Pin it button to your post images and there are several good plugins for this.
Creating a dedicated blog board for your posts can ease people follow and share your board for future.
Consider reading
15. LinkedIn and Facebook groups
Facebook Groups –
There are millions of groups on Facebook. Having your post shared on these groups can promise decent traffic and social signals to boost your search rankings. Just make sure not to spam. Create a good reputation in these groups by active participation.
LinkedIn –
If you belong to an educational, learning, R&D and leadership-oriented niche, Linkedin groups can serve as another potential source of free traffic and subscribers.
Just make sure that you share your posts in the groups where you’re most active. Else it may be seen as spam.
16. Submit URL to Pinging Sites
How about using a tool that broadcasts your new posts to the Internet world. Use Pingomatic, Pingler and Feedshark to your advantage. They facilitate your posts indexing by over 80% (Your posts get indexed in less than a minute).
17. Use Sniply and Scoop.it
They permit you to snip content from any website page, select a picture, remark on, and share just the piece one finds fascinating. These sites not only help you with more traffic but even leads and subscribers. I found Snip.ly an absolute fun. You use others’ content to get leads and subscribers. That’s a WOW!
18. Use import story feature of medium.com
Medium has millions of high profile authors, writers and readers. Establishing authority on Medium can give you several long-term benefits. In case you can’t write exclusively for this channel, importing the post you just published can be equally good.
Medium offers a simple approach to import it with their Import Story highlight: This feature will snatch every one of the words and pictures and store them into a fresh out of the plastic new Medium story.
19. Add Audio version of your post
Podcasts have made a solid resurgence in the last a few years. With chaotic timetables, people are always on the go. It makes total sense to hear post while you travel or jog rather than read them.
Even if you manage to apply half of these steps, you can claim hundreds of visitors to your post right after you publish. Isn’t that great for motivation and money, both?
And last method, utilize commentluv plugin from the blogs that have it installed (Check-in comments).
Now next time when you question yourself – how to promote my blog and get free traffic, refer to this post.
Could you find this post useful? Share your thoughts and it’d pull your latest post in the comments.
Sunita Biddu is a digital business coach and power blogging mentor helping coaches and small business owners. She helps with building a strong and profitable online presence and reputation that creates a self-sustaining business. Sunita writes on this blog once a week about easy-to-use guides and articles about business, coaching, social media and blogging. You can grab some of her free resources and ebooks from the resources section.
Taking advantage of the social media is one of the best ways to generate massive traffic for your website. Social media has billions of users online that you can reach out in order to spread the word about your business, products and services.
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