So you have a desire to kick off a new blog, or perhaps rekindle a blog that has been neglected and now you have a new plan to bring that old blog back up to being productive instead of sitting there silently in the dark?
The first challenge you have is knowing how to get your voice heard and bring some early traffic to your new blog
Here are 8 ways that we cover inside Information Marketer’s Zone 6-Week Info Product Formula to get traffic to your blog even if it is brand new and doesn’t have a single visitor to this point.
Marketing a new blog – some approaches you may not have thought of:
1. Leverage PR
Create a blog post around a current event that you link back to your topic, then issue a press release — this can work very well if you do a good job of aligning a current even with your target audience and their desire for information
2. Paid Ads
With solid content, run some ads – Facebook or Adwords to drive initial traffic to your blog via a particularly good piece of content. Do a good job of linking out to other content from that post (ex related posts, highlighted posts, etc…) and try to work in a call to comment – in my experience, my posts with strong and ongoing comments rank highest in SE’s, some of my posts have been near the top for years in a nice cycle of high ranking combined with ongoing comments
3. Cross-Reference Content
Make sure to cross-reference your content as much as is possible (and natural). You want people who find one of your posts to continue to consume content until they are hooked, and ideally take action such as comment, subscribe or sign up for list you are promoting from your blog
4.Targeted Syndication
Actively approach other blogs that target the same audience, offer to write them a piece of content with a link back to your blog and offer to run a similar post for them…sort of “selective syndication” – I have done a few dozen of these on most of my blogs and it works very well
5. Social Engagement
You have no doubt heard of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pintrest – choose one or two of these that most applies to the audience and type of business you are running. Example, Instagram and Pintrest work well for highly visually oriented audiences such as camera buffs, fashion topics, or even health and fitness where visuals are important. Begin to build a community by participating (searching and entering into conversations) – once in a while you can then post your blog content and you will begin to get visitors using this approach
6. Email List To Blog Post
Make sure, as you build your email list, that you continue to drive them back to your blog posts through ongoing post notices or weekly archive notices – this helps build a community and can improve participation rates which, in turn, helps SE rankings
7. Podcast
Starting a weekly (or even twice weekly) podcast around your topic and posting that on your blog can be an excellent source of bringing in traffic. Cross reference your blog in your podcast and post it on your blog with a Podcast plugin, this has become a main source of traffic for us on one of our blogs this past year
8. VideoÂ
Take at least one of your best blog posts each week and turn it into a 4-8 minute video returning the traffic to your blog for more details. Your video can be a “talking-head” video where you record yourself either talking to your audience, demonstrating something to them or in front of a whiteboard OR your video can be a screen capture where you are showing them something online – again this brings in great traffic if done well and consistently
Over time, you will find that traffic will build naturally toward your blog through search engines, referrals and social engagement…stick to the plan of using multiple techniques outlined above for the first month supported by consistent posting of at least 3-4 posts per week and you will find you quickly ramp to 100+ visitors a day and start to see some nice results in terms of participation and conversion
