Promoting our blog posts. Effective ways and planning.

[isaac663]

Hi Guys.  I work for TOAD diaries, we make personalised journals and diaries.

So we've taken a dive into blogging recently to help with brand awareness/ loyalty and increase traffic to our site.  We don't have much of a social media following.  So I'd like to know about other effective ways to promote them.

The advice seems to range from extremely obvious and generic on the one hand i.e) post it to your Facebook, twitter etc, to seriously in depth, using a multitude of tools I've never heard of.  I mean it's pretty overwhelming

So I'd like to focus down on 5 or 10 ways I can 'get it out there' effectively.

Any thoughts?  What are the essential tools/ techniques/ jobs I should be doing?  Etc etc.

Note on our blogs: They are very different from one another, so far we've done how to make an origami boat and paper vs digital: part 1.  We're also working on a time management piece at the moment.  So they're all to do with paper, stationery, organisation, planning ect. But like I say each blog post is quite varied.  Thus the target market varies too.

Also, do let me know what you think to the blog posts Any area's we can improve upon?

Cheers guys.

Isaac.

[ofw12387]

Links are nofollow and are brand-name-based.

In my opinion a link that generate referral traffic is always good link, also in the eyes of Google

I would not worry about it

[isaac663]

Hi there!  This forum is so useful, thanks so much.

Can I just clarify a few things?

Using our customers as a springboard with a promotion.  Do you mean we could do a giveaway to encourage people to share our content on social media? Or something like that?

As for marketing content, I totally understand we would need to segment.  But how would you go about building the marketing list?  What are your go-to tools to build that list?  Mainly Twitter?

[isaac663]

Hi There.

Thanks so much for your response.  Really appreciate it.

That's a lot of traffic you're gaining!  Just one question (might be a little naive).  Will having a lot of links in comments on blogs look spammy from Google's perspective?  Even if you're joining the conversation meaningfully? (And even if they are nofollow)

Isaac.

[DonnaDuncan]

Because your business and target market is varied, I recommend picking an area of focus while you develop a process, evolve personal best practices, and learn. You have some good suggestions above. Pick on or two areas you can learn the most from, develop a plan, implement it, measure success and progress, and evaluate what's working, what's not working and where there's room for improvement. Adapt and go from there.

In terms of where to start, consider focusing on the product/services and customers you know best. Look to an area that already has established competitors so you can review what they've done well and no so well and learn from them.

[Fuel]

Hi Isaac,

The others have already provided some great feedback.

A few other ideas we had include:

1.) Guest blogging on relevant, high-quality websites or inviting other relevant businesses / bloggers to guest blog on your site.

2.) Similarly, reach out to industry leaders / related persons who already have a good following and see if they will do a short interview, give a few tips, etc.

3.) Share articles in newsletters / email blasts

4.) Share your articles via social (which you have already heard) but also consider paid advertising if you really want to invest in traffic. Most social sites have pretty granular targeting so you can reach a really specific audiences and tailor your ads to that specific niche.

5.) Consider trying different blog formats (video, for example) to see if those resonate with your audience more and perform better.

Hope some of these are helpful!

[gowebsol]

I would use your current customers to expand your influence. Do you have a mailing list built up? Like one person can have hundreds of Facebook friends, one customer can have many more friends that you can tap into. I say use them as a springboard, and run a promotion to get them to share your message and build your follower base several times over. It's pretty simple, quick, and leverages the relationships you already have.

Then, I'd put together some great content you can give away, and start building your list to market to. You seem to have a few different segments here, so I'd strongly recommend marketing to them differently. The business planning-time management crowd likely won't respond the same way as the crafty-fun crowd, so tailor your offers, segment the types of users using different lists, and market appropriately.

Looks like a fun product to market. Enjoy!

[ofw12387]

One thing I would recommend you is to write comments in the top blogs from your niche, most of thoses blogs allow you to link your website in your name.

The comments need to be good, so that the people that read the comment will join your website to know a little more about you

I´m doing this in my personal blog and im getting 600-800 users per month and those visitors are really interested on my niche, proof of it is the low bounce rate they have

Hope this helps

P.D: Despite you get a link,  it doesn´t have to do anything with link building ( link will be nofollow most of the times ), it´s just a practice to gain visibility which is actually working