Let’s be honest with ourselves: at the end of the day, you could have the greatest, most insightful blog content in the world, but if you aren’t doing anything to boost your blog traffic, you might as well not have written anything at all.
Sound a bit harsh? Maybe. But that still doesn’t change the fact that you need to devote at least some of your time and efforts towards…you know…actually trying to gain more blog traffic.
But I Don’t Have the Money!
Ah, budget constraints. The bane of pretty much any up-and-coming blogger’s existence. After all, you’re probably already devoting a bit of money to SEO, PPC, and other marketing methods. How are you going to find extra money for promoting your blog content?
But you don’t need to go bury your head under the covers in despair quite yet, because the strategies I’m going to tell you about won’t cost you a dime.
That might sound too good to be true, but these are real, actionable methods for driving traffic to your blog. Let’s dive in with five unique ways you can promote your blog and get more traffic flowing to your site:
1) Blog Syndication
Syndicating blog content to sites like Medium or LinkedIn Publisher is a popular choice for increasing the reach of your blog content. This is especially true of Medium, where content is featured based on its quality, rather than an author’s popularity.
Because of this, you have a great chance to expand your audience on these platforms—but you need to be a bit careful. The last thing you want is for Google to think you’re posting duplicate content.
Thankfully, there are a few simple tricks to help you avoid the dreaded curse of duplicate content.
One good rule of thumb is to always wait about two weeks or so before sending your blog post on to a syndication platform. This way, your original post will have already been indexed. Adding a canonical tag to the original content can also help you out.
Other popular options include the so-called “evil twin” post and the tease. Essentially, you take the original post—let’s say it was called “5 Ways to Screw Up Your Facebook Marketing”—and create an “opposite” version. In this case, our evil twin would be something like “5 Ways to Totally Rock Your Facebook Marketing.”
Alternatively, you could syndicate a short summary of your blog post—or maybe just the first few points—then send readers to the original post to get the rest of the story. As long as your syndicated content directs readers to the original post, you can build SEO and drive fresh traffic.
2) Facebook Groups
Yes, Facebook advertising has delivered increasingly diminished returns to advertisers across all industries, but that doesn’t mean you need to jump ship quite yet.
Sure, your reach may have become quite limited through your Facebook page or some of your paid social media efforts, but with Facebook Groups, your blog content can still reach the people who would be most interested in reading it.
Facebook Groups cover just about every interest and profession imaginable—from marketing help for photographers to Dungeons and Dragons enthusiasts. So trust me, you can find groups relevant to your blog.
So what do you do once you’ve found some relevant groups? Start by behaving like a real, normal person. Answer questions, comment on others’ posts, and build rapport with other group members. Only link to your content in these comments when it will actually be beneficial to other group members, and make sure to follow all group rules regarding self-promotion.
By engaging in authentic, meaningful ways, you can gradually build a loyal readership through Facebook Groups. Just make sure to choose your groups carefully—some large public groups eventually become so overwhelmed with spammers that people who would actually be interested in your content are longer be sticking around to see it.
3) Quora
In a somewhat similar vein to Facebook Groups, many bloggers have turned to Quora as a method of establishing their niche authority and driving blog traffic—and like Facebook Groups, much of that success depends on being authentic and truly helpful.
Your ability to drive blog traffic through Quora starts with your profile. Quora makes it easy for you to share your knowledge by allowing you to enter topics that you know about, and then providing suggested questions for you to answer. You can also search for questions on your own.
To get the best results from your Quora efforts, it helps to be selective when answering questions. It’s only worth your time to answer questions where you can provide real insights—and of course, link to one of your relevant blog posts as part of your answer.
The best questions are those that have many followers and have potentially been asked multiple times. It’s okay if others have already answered the question. Quite often, you can piggyback on a popular topic and gain a lot of traction for your own answer.
Remember, nobody on Quora wants to read a shameless plug for your website. Just like in a Facebook Group, only link to your blog when it is genuinely relevant and helpful.
4) Repurposed Content
If you’re approaching this whole blogging thing the right way, you’ve probably crafted some pretty impressive posts, chock full of juicy data, unique insights, or helpful tips. At the same time, you’re probably trying to boost your digital marketing efforts through videos, infographics, and other formats.
So why not kill two birds with one stone? When you repurpose your blog content for videos, SlideShare presentations, or even live chats, you can better pool your resources and help a single piece of content go that much further.
Now, you don’t need to try to cram everything from your 1,000+ word article into the repurposed content.
For example, you could create a short video that discusses two of your article’s main points, and then directs viewers to your blog post for more information. Or you could highlight statistics from your article with an eye-catching infographic. You could even live stream a chat session where you discuss your blog post!
The greatest value of repurposed content is that it gives you several new avenues for sharing your blog materials and linking back to your website. From YouTube to Infographics Showcase, you can find new audiences for your blog with your repurposed content.
5) Strategic Guest Posting
Love it or hate it, guest posting continues to serve as a valuable means of getting new audiences to discover your blog content. Sure, while it might seem like a sacrifice to send an article to someone else’s site instead of your own blog, the results can be well worth it.
This doesn’t mean you should try blogging for anyone and everyone. Start by finding quality websites in your niche that accept guest posts. If a site doesn’t specifically mention guest posting, it’s not worth your time.
But you still need to carefully vet the sites that do accept guest posts. These are sites with a high domain authority and an engaged social audience. Even more importantly, the best sites will give you “do-follow” links that boost your SEO.
With that being said, make sure you follow a site’s guest posting guidelines to the letter. There’s no room for spamming here, and many editors limit your affiliate links to your bio. Carefully read the editorial guidelines before submitting so you don’t miss out on the chance to promote your blog.
Parting Thoughts
As great as these free blog marketing techniques can be, they’re really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of winning new blog traffic. For the best possible results, quality SEO and other digital marketing techniques need to be included as well.
After all, to truly stay afloat in the great sea of the internet, you’ll probably have to part with some of your hard-earned cash.
But as long as you have these free methods of driving blog traffic in your arsenal, you’ll be well on your way to reaching new audiences and growing your blog.
