The 7 Worst Ways to Promote a Blog
For every example of successful blog promotion that I see online, I see a dozen examples of people making terrible mistakes in an attempt to promote their blog. To help you avoid making those mistakes, here are the seven worst ways to promote a blog:
- Blog Comments: If you are only leaving comments with a couple of words, or adding links to every one of your comments, don’t be surprised when bloggers start flagging all of your comments as spam.
- Directory Submissions: Not only will submitting your website to 100s of low quality directories fail to result in generating any traffic, but doing so could actually result in a penalty from Google.
- Forums: Telling others to “Check OUT my sig link” in every forum post you make won’t help you gain new readers, but it is a quick way to get banned from participating in a forum.
- Link Requests: Although there are effective ways to send out link requests, if you are sending large amounts of generic “Dear Webmaster” requests, you will quickly get a reputation as an email spammer.
- Social Icons: With the exception of The Huffington Post, social media users are only interested in a blog’s top posts, so there’s no reason to cram your posts full of icons that link to every social media website on the Internet.
- Social Media Websites: While it’s acceptable to Digg or Stumble a few of your best posts, submitting every post you write to these websites is never going to get you to the front page or bring in a flood of traffic.
- Twitter: Unless you are a well-established blog like TechCrunch, no one is going to follow you on Twitter if you are only using your account to drop links to your latest posts.
(Photo from dweebydude5)
Comments
Tyler, excellent points. The primary take-away from your post is Be Genuine. People don’t like to be used or yanked around. Inauthentic behavior is as transparent in social media as well as “meatspace” aka the real world.
I’d add another suggestion on how to harm your blog: Be impatient. Cram it with plagiarized content, never add to the discussion, link to yourself repeatedly. We all like that guy in the room.
Shannon
PS: Hey everyone, please follow me on Twitter! (lol)
@Shannon: Yes, “Be Authentic” is a great way to summarize this post.
Also, on your point of plagiarized content, bloggers are much better off writing one high quality, original post a week than posting five posts a week that are 95% recycled from other sources.
Very good points presented here!
Great post! Too many bloggers focus all their time on generating traffic to their blog any way they can, that they lose focus on what’s really important…creating great content! It doesn’t matter what you do, if your posts are dull, unoriginal, and poorly written. So focus on writing great original content, and trust me…the traffic will follow. Looking forward to reading more from you!
@Eric: I know your blog is brand new, but you’re a great example of the advice you left in your comment. By writing thought provoking content instead of regurgitating content from others, the task of attracting readers for your blog becomes much easier to accomplish.
These are all good points.
I think avoiding “spammy” type behavior is the best policy.
Excellent blog! Interesting article and very informative! I will necessarily subscribe for this blog.
Hello there man , Then how should we promote our blog… ???????
By throwing away leaflets in College Stairways?????
By Graffiti..???
Or By a T.V. Commercial …Duh??????
Hey, I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say GREAT blog!…..I”ll be checking in on a regularly now….Keep up the good work!
I’m Out!
What a great blog, I’ll be visiting more often from now on. On the post I think avoiding behavior that looks like spamming is the best policy. Good work!
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