How to Promote & Market Your Blog - 8 Fundamental Steps

There are countless reasons why someone starts blogging. Some start as a hobby and some do it for a living. With a blog, you can expand your networking opportunities with professional peers. Through a blog, you can establish their expertise and extend their online reach. I personally have started blogging as a side gig aside working in my dad’s company. Writing financial related contents for my blog can be a fun lifestyle that can potentially increase my alternative income. I’ve started my finance blog that you are reading right now since 2015. However, I was not really active in writing content for my blog for several years. It was just after this year, I started to put more time into it. I hope the contents I wrote can be beneficial for readers as well as helping me improve to become a better investor and businessman. Creating a blog is an easy matter that anyone can do. The challenge is being able to get your blog known by others on the internet. There’s no point of having a blog that’s beautifully made and has interesting content, but having no one coming into your blog. Promoting and Marketing your blog is a crucial step to become a successful blogger. By promoting and marketing your blog the right way can expose your content to broader audiences, which could lead to business and career opportunities. I am personally is still working my way to figure out how I can promote and market my blog. This led me to do more research on the internet so that I can be good at it. In this article, I would like to share the information and knowledge I learned and the experience I undergo to promote and market my blog. 

1. Remember That It Takes a Lot of Time and Work.

You’ve probably heard many stories about someone being able to stay at home make a living just by blogging. Some even were able to make a huge sum of money just by blogging. What you don’t hear, however, is how much hard work is involved in going from zero readers to thousands of visitors each day. Be aware that the process of getting your blog known takes a lot of time and hard work. You are required to be patient and consistently work hard to get there. 

My finance blog that you readers are reading right now is still far from being successful. I still have to put in work and time to write more articles and content into my blog. My goal is to write at least a thousand articles in this blog. I know that seems like an insane goal, however, I believe by having that amount of articles would help make my blog get known. This is because the more content and article you have in your blog, the greater SEO will work best for you. I’m going to explain more about it in the next section below.

2. Understand the Benefit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Apply It While You Blog.

When you optimize your blog, you’re making your blog more visible to people who are entering keywords associated with your content via search engines like Google. So the more contents and articles you post on your blog and have it updated regularly will make a huge difference to how your overall blog performs in the search engines. Google doesn’t want to deliver its searchers' outdated information. Blogs that are regularly updated signal to them that the blog is alive and offering fresh content. Moreover, it also gives the search engine algorithms more reason to index your blog more often. This keeps your blog more on their radar over time.

This is the reason why I want to have a thousand articles in this blog you are reading right now. By doing so, I can optimize my SEO for my blog. This will help get more traffic and visitors who are interested in the niche topic of my blog. Currently, my blog will focus on articles that cover investing topics, stock analysis, personal finance, passive income, wealth management, investment property, retirement topics, side businesses, but most important contents that focus on my journey to attaining financial freedom through dividend growth and value investing. I want to create this blog into a blog that can help others with their finances, investment, as well as career to become wealthy and successful people. 

3. Focus On Making Your Contents Interesting and Outstanding.

The reason why people visit your blog and continue to come back is a no brainer. It’s because they like the contents you wrote in your blog. Take your time to make high quality and interesting content for your blog. This is an important part of promoting and marketing your blog to the world. Having interesting and outstanding content in your blog will attract visitors to keep coming back to your blog. No one wants to read articles or contents that are boring or difficult to read. Moreover, you want your blog to look appealing as well as simple to navigate. It’s important to make your blog user-friendly. For example, if you have too many ads on your blog, this will make turnoff for visitors to come back to your blog again.

This is the step I’m working on the most at my current journey to blogging. My blog is still quite new and has not much content in it. Like I say, my goal is to write up to a thousand articles so that visitors have the opportunity to read different interesting articles in the investment and wealth-building niche. Furthermore, I am planning to create YouTube content for my blog in the future. That’s after I finished writing a thousand articles on my blog.

4. Stay Consistent.

If you are looking to keep your current fans interested and attracting new readers, then it’s crucial to stay consistent with your content production. This doesn’t mean you have to post multiple times a day. You also don’t want to end up writing content that is not great for your visitors. However, to have a schedule that works for you and stick to it can help your blog. This way, your readers will know when to expect updates to your blog.

Personally, I have been lazy writing content and articles for my blog. This is the reason why my blog has been empty for several years. It was just after this year, I decided that I should set a goal towards my blog. I now dedicate my time and effort to write at least one article a week. This way my blog can slowly build up and get recognized on the internet. If I am able to write an article once a week, this will make my blog to have 48 articles in one year. Furthermore, I am planning to increase my goal of writing twice a week probably by next year, so that I’m able to have 96 articles in one year. By being consistent with writing articles, your blog will be filled with useful and interesting content for visitors to read.

Don’t set too high of a goal in the beginning. Just try by writing once a week in the beginning. Once you are able to stick with that, then you can increase your target later on. It’s similar to working out at the gym. When you first started, you shouldn’t force yourself to bench a really heavyweight. You could injure yourself during the process. You should start with a lightweight and slowly increase it over time. This is the same as writing articles for your blog. Once you get used to it, you are able to contribute one article a day.

5. Leverage Social Media.

Social Media such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, and many more can be a powerful tool and goes hand-in-hand with building your blog readership. Every time you post a new content article on your blog, you should promote it across all of your social media channels. This way your blog will have more exposure to the internet, and people will notice the content you wrote in their social media newsfeed. If you happen to have a relationship with someone who has a large following, consider asking him or her to promote your content on their social media. This way you can increase your readership to your blog content.

I personally have used social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, and even Pinterest to promote and market my blog contents. Every time I finish posting a new article in my blog, I would automatically spread the link of the content in all the Social Media Apps. I was able to get more traffic and visitors to my blog because of this method. In addition, people who are interested in my blog would follow my social media accounts so that they automatically updated when I post a new article.

I also include my blog link in my social media profiles. The idea works particularly well if you’re sharing content on Instagram. The reason is that you can’t actually include a link back to your blog post from the Instagram posting. So a method that I’ve seen people done involves sharing a sweet graphic from your post, then mentioning that the link to the post is in their profile.

6. Re-promote Your Older, Most Successful Content.       

Promoting your older content that is successful can help boost traffic to your blog. Don’t just spam your old content in social media, but by re-promoting content that has many visitors reading. If you simply spam your old content on social media, you can experience a traffic drop from your social networks. But when you shared only your best content, you can grow your traffic. 

I personally haven’t tried reposting my older content article on social media. I only post content on my social media platform after I posted an article on my blog. I only want to post content that is new and fresh in social media. However, if you think a popular older content you have can be a repost, you should give it a try.  

7. Collaborate with Other Bloggers.

Creating content in collaboration with another blog means that you’re able to tap into each other’s audiences. It’s a win-win situation. You will get new readers from his/her blog and he/she will also get the audience from your blog. You are required to work with blogs within the same niche as yours. Start by messaging bloggers you have an existing relationship with and ask if they’d like to work together.

Personally, I have collaborated with other bloggers that are within my niche. We decide to put each other’s blog link on our website. This way the reader from my blog will notice the other person’s blog I’m working with. At the same time, his or her audiences will notice about my blog as well.

8. Monitor Online Conversation for Opportunities to Promote Yourself.

People talk about all sorts of things on the internet such as in Facebook Group. You should join groups on social media like Facebook that is within your niche. This way you can exchange ideas as well as promoting your content in the comments section. This is a very engaging way to promote your blog since you are having a conversation with others who talks about the same topic.

A scenario online conversation I use to promote myself is when people are discussing a stock topic. People in the group like to mention the stocks they recently purchase or it can be a stock they are interested in. Since the group I’m in has a topic that is within my blog niche, I can reference them to read an article about a stock analysis I had written and share it with them in the conversation. This way they are able to go into my blog to read the content I have written. 

In Closing

Becoming a blogger can be a hobby as well as a fun activity you can do during your free time. A successful blog can generate income that you can use on the side. However, to make a successful blog that generates income requires hard work and dedication. You are required to promote and market your blog strategically. I hope this article I have written can help you readers have a better understanding of how to promote and market your blog. I’m also currently in the process of making my blog more noticed on the internet. I have done most of the steps that I have written above so that my blog can generate more traffic and visitors. Hopefully, with my hard work and dedication, my finance blog that you are reading right now can be viral on the internet in the future. If you are also in the process of working on your blog, the steps I mentioned above can help your blog’s traffic and visitors coming in. Of course, not all of the tactics I mentioned will be suitable or work for you. You’ll need to experiment and find what works for you. Marketing is about trial and error, but you have to keep going again and again until you succeed. Remember to be patient! A successful blog requires time and effort to build up its audience. But once your blog is established and known out there, it will be even easier for you to scale up your blog.