Best Ways to Promote a New Blog

[MrSelfDevelopment]

Any ideas on the best way to promote a new blog?

[Dot]

Continue blogging.

[Andrew Gubb]

Good content I reckon is key. The rest is being really open about your stuff. Contribute real value to other blogs and forums so that people realise you exist. Tell your friends about it. Doing this, I've got quite a steady increase in traffic since I started a couple of months ago. I can't say I'm an expert, though... be nice to hear the other answers to this thread.

[floslib]

As was said, keep writing. If you write often, then people have a reason to come back... and so do the search engines.

Submit articles you think are really good to social networking sites like Stumbleupon and Reddit. If you can get a big enough following, use Digg as well, but it's difficult to get much traction on Digg without either something truly exceptional or a good support network of diggers.

Also submit to blog carnivals, since you can get links pointing to your site in this manner, which is important to the search engines in ranking your site.

It's also helpful to build an XML sitemap and submit it to the search engines that accept sitemap submissions. With Wordpress, you can use XML Sitemap Generator to do the work and updating for you. The sitemap helps search engines find all your pages, which can be helpful in letting other people find them too.

Finally, post on relevant forums, and put a link in your signature. Add to the community, and people will likely be curious about your site. Just be sure the forum community doesn't frown on this first. Most won't if it's just a link, but there are some who might, and it's good to respect the community you're joining.

Those are my ideas. They seem to be working decently for my new site, as traffic has started coming in a bit faster for my new site than it did when I first started my old site and was still trying to figure this all out. There are probably some other things you can do too though, so experiment, see what others have to say, and let us know if you find anything else that works.

[ginkgo]

Steve's blog has some info on this. Get lots of links going to your site. If someone gave you a link from the home page of webmd with a million visitors a day, your server probably could not handle all the traffic.

Here is one place that it will take you 5 minutes to get a link to your site from a prominent site: If you have a website, see this thread for a great free way to promote it

[mysticmadness]

i think content is really the key. The biggest challenege is to convert new visitors to repeat visistor and only content can hold that magic.

[pauldickinson]

I agree with content being the highest priority. Write for your blog first, and get the visitors second.

Social media seems like the best option at the moment, as it is a very powerful tool for finding great websites, and Google seems to love it too. Zen Habits became popular through this kind of marketing, and appeared on Digg's front page repeatedly!

[oscardelben]

Originally Posted by ginkgo

Steve's blog has some info on this. Get lots of links going to your site. If someone gave you a link from the home page of webmd with a million visitors a day, your server probably could not handle all the traffic.

Here is one place that it will take you 5 minutes to get a link to your site from a prominent site: If you have a website, see this thread for a great free way to promote it

That link doesn't work for me

[bluedragon]

I think the activity of promoting a blog is something different from "creating value". Of course high value attracts visitors, but this is not "promoting". Promoting is when you do something to let people know that your content exists, not the content writing process.
I'm looking for advice on this topic too, but some of the best things I know are link-building by partnering with theme-related sites that you appreciate, submitting articles to article directories with high PR, submitting your site to major Directories, posting in forums, participating in blog carnivals... trackbacks to (or from) other blogs (I guess), and social bookmarking.

[CubicleBailout]

There are a couple of sites I've been paying attention to:

Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging - ProBlogger and How To Make My Blog

The second one has some really good tips on how to get started. Problogger has a challenge going now with tips and exercises for being a better blogger.

The value you are creating is helping others with something, whatever your blog happens to be about. In my research, one of the keys was consistently writing new things that provide some value to your target audience.

I read somewhere that the majority of blogs on the net don't last longer than 6 months and become stale. My goal is to keep chugging and make it past that mark.

[MrSelfDevelopment]

Thanks for ALL of the feedback thus far....I think Bluedragon along with others are correct. I see it as a four prong approach (I have an article on this (not related to Website promotion of course, that I've not yet posted)).

Four Prong Approach to Success:

1. Become an Expert
2. Create Value
3. Promote
4. Monitize

Four very different and distict task, with very different approaches.

I think it would be valuable to come up with/continue this list of ideas as to what works in the area of "Promotion" and what doesn't work:

What Works (as an example):
1. Advertisements on StumbleUpon and Adsense
2. Networking with different bloggers and in multiple forums
3. Guest Posting

What Doesn't Work (effectively enough)
1. Submitting your site to directories
2. et cetera

I also have another question, I have about 70 articles already written....should I post those and then start advertising (while constantly adding more) OR slowly add them one by one.....a few every month...and promote each one.....

[AfteraDream]

Originally Posted by MrSelfDevelopment

Thanks for ALL of the feedback thus far....I think Bluedragon along with others are correct. I see it as a four prong approach (I have an article on this (not related to Website promotion of course, that I've not yet posted)).

Four Prong Approach to Success:

1. Become an Expert
2. Create Value
3. Promote
4. Monitize

Four very different and distict task, with very different approaches.

I think it would be valuable to come up with/continue this list of ideas as to what works in the area of "Promotion" and what doesn't work:

What Works (as an example):
1. Advertisements on StumbleUpon and Adsense
2. Networking with different bloggers and in multiple forums
3. Guest Posting

What Doesn't Work (effectively enough)
1. Submitting your site to directories
2. et cetera

I also have another question, I have about 70 articles already written....should I post those and then start advertising (while constantly adding more) OR slowly add them one by one.....a few every month...and promote each one.....

I'd go slowly because if you post it all at once then you will get one big spike of traffic for a day or two and then it will wind down.


And your 4 points are right on target. If you do those you will succeed. I'm now stuck at promoting myself since I just started blogging.

Good luck

[Angela Leeds]

Jack Humphrey at BlogSuccess.com has the best blog-training around. He has a 60-day program to get your blog out there & noticed. I got to Day 2... will return to finish that program when I finish releasing the stuff I want in place before I generate buzz.

[AfteraDream]

Forgot to mention Skelliewag.org - it has a lot of unique and helpful content on succeeding online

[mysticmadness]

can you tell more about blogsuccess. it does not seem to be a two month program.

[Gazzali]

Originally Posted by MrSelfDevelopment

Any ideas on the best way to promote a new blog?

I have written an article on this read here

all the best

[Brutha]

Originally Posted by oscardelben

That link doesn't work for me

That link boils down to the idea of doing viral marketing on this forum which kind of isn't a great idea as we don't like it when people come here primarily for marketing and therefore deleted that thread and the related viral marketing.

[Angela Leeds]

Originally Posted by ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

can you tell more about blogsuccess. it does not seem to be a two month program.

It is a membership site. Within the site, Jack Humphrey has a "60-day program" that will take you through how to grow the site using social marketing techniques. Nobody forces you to follow that program at that pace -- you can do it faster, slower...or not at all.

If the free membership still stands, you can get in and see about all of that for yourself. He's put together a very well-organized site.