You're a passionate blogger and have churned out great posts. You've published them on your blog and are worried why the posts haven't been driving as much traffic as you would have liked? They need promotion. The Internet is vast and you just cannot sit back and wait for folks to discover your posts. Drive traffic to your blog posts by promoting them handily on social media, using these five simple tips:
#Don't forget to remember smaller social networks
The scope of social media extends way beyond Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn. Newer sites away from the spotlight present excellent promotion opportunities since your posts need to compete with lesser posts on these sites.
Sites like Tumblr, Empire Avenue and Quora to name a are a bunch of smaller social networks that have active and focused community members. Morph your blog posts according to the requirements of smaller networks and create visibility on those networks.
#Unleash your creativity
Attention grabbing posts garner promotions through electronic word of mouth. EWOM makes sure your blog posts stay in the limelight, months and months after you've stopped promoting them yourself.
So how to tap eWOM you ask? Here's how:
1. Use Vine to create micro videos for your post. These micro videos loop every 6 seconds are a great way to provide a short theatrical trailer of sorts for viewers. Later, tweet the video with a backlink to your post, share it on Facebook, Google+ and other sites.
2. Use SlideShare to create an overview of your blog posts and share the slides on other social media sites as well.
#Keep them small silly
Instead of writing huge descriptions to introduce your blog post or copy-pasting whole paragraphs on Facebook, use smaller snippets from the post. Sharing views and statements from the post in the form of short attention grabbing posts works as good on Facebook as it does on Twitter. Of course, as is with any successful SEO strategy, remember to backlink to the full blog post.
#Pin them, bookmark them, Instagram them
This tip ropes in the basic assumption that you abide by the golden rule of including at least one image in all your blog posts. If you didn't already know that, learn it now. A picture is in fact worth a thousand words and your blog post must have one photograph in it at the very least.
Now back to the tip, one easy way to gain more promotion on social media is to pin the image you use in your blog posts on the Pinterest contributor board. Pinterest continues to be one of the hottest social media sites since late 2012 and pinning the images featured in your posts on the website increases exposure to the content.
Another easy promotion comes from bookmarking the blog posts. Social bookmarking sites like Delicious and StumbleUpon, though not as glorious as they were a few years ago, do continue to have a dedicated fan base.#
#Use your personal brand to promote posts
Elementary, but extremely overlooked, commenting on related posts and forums is one of the easiest ways to promote your posts. Google for related topics and then be a part of the conversation by adding comments and views. One great trick is to include the link to your blog in your signature. Make it a habit to comment/reply on five or six threads on a forum a day.
Apps and websites like Topsy.com, Tehnokrati, Twello and Klout will help you search for keywords and influential people of your industry. Check the activity of important people and groups of your industry and get yourself new visitors by adding high-quality, value-adding comments to popular posts.