Friday 26 August 2011

Seven Tips to Promote Your Small Business Blog

You’ve started a blog for your small business, and you (or your designated writer) have been putting out some great content. However, no one seems to know that your blog even exists. How do you get the word out about your blog and get some people to read it?
Here are 7 fairly simple and practical ways to share your blog:

1.  Start an account with StumbleUpon and submit your posts there.  StumbleUpon is an excellent social bookmarking site that allows you to share content as well as discover some incredible websites, blog posts, and videos you would have never come across otherwise.  One word of caution:  If you “stumble” your own posts, you must “stumble” other people’s content as well.  StumbleUpon frowns on people who only share their own content, and it looks really self-serving, anyway.  Whenever I submit one of my own posts, I always spend a few minutes “stumbling” and “liking” other people’s content that I find truly engaging. I really enjoy StumbleUpon and know many other people who do as well.
Along with StumbleUpon, there are many other bookmarking sites that you can use to post your content, such as Digg, Delicious and Reddit.  Take some time to explore at least one of them and try posting your links to it.

2. Make sure that you give readers the ability to share out your posts by adding share buttons to each post on your website. WordPress and other blogging platforms make this pretty easy to add. However, you can also check out addthis.com for a solution to including sharing buttons on your site.

3.  Many of you do this already, but make sure you share your post on Facebook. Preface the link with a comment or question. Ask your social media power partners to share it out as well.

4.  Share a link to your post on Twitter, more than once.  Sure, you may already tweet your posts, but do you tweet them several times, spaced out over a couple of days, for maximum exposure?  Posting once is not enough. Try using a tweet scheduler such as Twaitter, Tweetdeck or Buffer.  Vary the tweets that you send out with the link.  Experiment with catchy headlines, questions and hashtags in your tweets.  Also, if you are going to use Twitter in this way, make sure that you are tweeting other content besides your post over and over again.

5. Comment on other people’s posts and include the link to your own post when you are asked to enter in your website URL for validation. In other words, instead of entering in your general website address, enter in the URL for your specific post. Don’t talk about your post in the comment, however- that is not cool. Be thoughtful and give an authentic comment; if you do, people are apt to take a closer look and check out your link. This tactic is more effective if you comment on a blog post in the same industry as yours.

6.  Share you post as a status update on your LinkedIn profile.  Also, post it as a discussion item in any of the relevant LinkedIn groups that you have joined. Each group has its own rules for posting, so check with the Group Rules for their guidelines (if a group has guidelines, they show up under “Group Rules” on the right-hand corner of the group’s home page above the “Manager’s Choice” box).

7.  Give your readers an opportunity to subscribe to your blog so that they receive an email each time you post something.  There are several services out there that allow you to add a subscription function to your website.  Aweber.com is one of the better known services, and they do charge a monthly fee, but they keep a database of your subscribers and give you many options for including an attractive subscription form to your website.
These are just some of the things you can do to get more pairs of eyes across your blog. Please share your own ideas.

Article from: http://www.mediavinemarketing.com/simplify-social-media/seven-tips-to-promote-your-small-business-blog/

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