10 Great Tips for Free Blog Promotion

Promotion is, in fact, the hardest part of successful blogging. It’s hard because
it requires a good amount of effort and time. However, the joy that sharing your posts with others brings is truly worth all that effort. Considering the time and research that writing a quality blog post takes, it’s extremely important that you get as many people to read your content as possible. There are several blog promotion tips that you can use for free.

Given below are ten blog promotion tips that cost you $0.00. Please check these tactics out to make sure you are using them all.

1. Produce Superior Quality Content

Without quality content, no promotion tips will ever bring you any value. Always remember to spend at least 2-3 hours to write a blog post. The twohourblogger (by Martyn Chamberlin) is based around the same concept. While writing a blog post that even your mom would love to read, you need to keep a number of things in mind.

Write headlines the provoke the audience to read the rest of the content Make sure you post on a regular basis (it’s good both for people and SE) Avoid sophisticated writing (you have a global audience) Introduce the central idea in the first 1-2 paragraphs Divide the blog post into multiple coherent paragraphs Include lists and tables to enhance reader engagement Leave adequate white space to make readers feel comfortable Good content is actually where the promotion of your blog begins. Don’t forget the above mentioned tips when you create your next blog post.

2. Submit Your Blog to Blog Directories (with no reciprocal links)

One of the most proven tips for free blog promotion is to submit your blog to high quality blog directories. While submitting to blog directories, you should always pick those that don’t require a reciprocal link. One-way blog directory links are known to have excellent value in terms of SEO too.

Good examples of blog directories include –

Blogarama (PR 6)
Globe of Blogs (PR 6)
Bloggapedia (PR 6)
BlogFlux (PR 6)
Bloggernity (PR 5)
Blog Listing (PR 4)

Google PageRank is an important factor to consider while submitting your blog to blog directories. Handsome PR directories bring you the maximum benefits in terms of blog promotion.

3. Join Blog Networks or Communities

There are a number of blog networks that you can join to promote your blog for free. These sites feature millions of bloggers you can immediately connect with. Blogs networks list multiple industries and sub-categories. You should always submit your blog to a relevant category. Such blog communities or networks have features that visitors can use to discover new blogs. By joining such networks, you can attract visitors to your blog quickly.

Popular blog networks include –

NeworkedBlogs
Blogged
BlogCatalog
Bloggers

4. Claim Your Blog on Technorati

After 2-3 months of starting my blog, the first thing I did was to claim it on Technorati. There’s no doubt that adding my blog URL to this huge blog directory has come as a big boost, both in terms of SEO and promotion. Claiming your blog on Technorati is free.

Here are the steps you’ll need to follow –

Create an account on Technorati
Enter Your Blog URL
Add the description of your blog
Collect the claim code and paste it into your next blog post
Let the review process complete
You’re done (view your claimed blog)

5. Use Trackbacks

Trackbacks are a useful way of free blog promotion. But what’s a trackback? Well, a track back is something that allows you to comment about or link to someone else’s blog and then the software informs the other blogger of the referencing that you have done. Using trackbacks is an excellent way of getting noticed by other niche bloggers. Trackbacks can immediately boost your blog traffic. Trackback requirements may vary from one blogging software to another.

While using trackbacks, keep these things in mind –

Use trackbacks only when you have something valuable to add
Don’t bombard your blog posts with trackbacks (it’s spamming)
Always trackback to a recently published post
Make sure you write for a blog that belongs to your niche

6. Leverage Online Forums (or Community Forums)

A useful way of promoting your blog for free is joining popular online forums. What’s important is that you participate at only those forums that relate to your own niche. In addition, you should focus on becoming a contributing member rather than just being a participant looking to get links. Blatant self-promotion is a complete no-no at online forums.

7. Pay Attention to SEO

Though optimizing for people remains at the top, you also need to pay some careful attention to optimizing your content for search engines. Conduct some keyword research to find out potential search terms. There are various WordPress SEO plugins that you can use to boost your SEO.

8. Become a Guest Blogger

Guest posting for someone else’s blog is also a proven tactic for blog promotion. I write for various niche blogs myself. Whether you are looking to get backlinks or attract quality traffic, guest blogging is just the option. However, you should learn how to write a superior quality guest post.

9. Use RSS & FeedBurner

An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is like a wake-up call to your loyal readers. It doesn’t only help visitors read your content, but also informs them every time a new blog post is published. FeedBurner does a great job to promote an RSS feed to a wider audience. And it’s free!

10. Respond to Your Readers

If you are really serious about your blog’s promotion, you should never ignore any of your readers. Whether readers connect by leaving a comment on your blog or send you an email, you need to provide timely response. Keep on working to build an emotional connect with your readers. You never know what potential promotion opportunities a reader can bring to you blog!

Which of the above mentioned promotion tactics are you using? Please feel free to share more free tips that you may have in mind.