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Best Ways to Promote Your Blog Online

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blog promotion

It’s undeniable that blogging today is one of the most effective and powerful tools for promoting brands, products and services. But it’s not enough that a business owner or company creates a blog. There should also be an effort to further promote the blog through various avenues particularly on the web.

Promoting your blog online means making sure that more people are aware of it and gaining more readers and customers moving forward. This may take time and patience but those who are doing it and are reaping the rewards can testify that it’s worth the effort.

So while the new year is just starting, consider taking these steps to raise awareness of your blog on the web.
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The Legal Risks in Guest Blog Posts

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Swim at Your Own Risk

Ideally, guest posts are great for both your site and for you as the webmaster. For the guest post author, it’s a way to expand their reach and talk directly to your audience. For you, it’s a way to take it a little easy one day, offer some variety for your readers and improve the discourse on your site.

However, like almost anything you do online, guest posting comes with a set of legal risks. For the author of the guest post, these risks are pretty clear, they’re the author of the post so they bear all of the usual risks that come with publishing anything online.

But what about the owner of the site? They didn’t write anything and are just accepting and publishing the works of someone else, do they have legal risks to worry about?

The answer, sadly, is yes. You can’t simply publish anything that someone hands you and expect that you face no potential liability or other consequences. Depending on the details of your guest post, you can be held accountable for what your guest authors publish. Fortunately, there are simple ways to mitigate that risk and prevent guest posts form causing you trouble down the road. [Read more…] about The Legal Risks in Guest Blog Posts

How to Work With Bloggers for Social Media Contests

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How to Work With Bloggers for Social Media Contests

Bloggers that cover topics within your business’ industry can be a great untapped resource when it comes to promoting your social media presence to your target market. Some bloggers may be willing to post company-sponsored giveaways and guest posts on their blogs. These two options can help a company reach people who are interested in their products without spending a lot of money on advertising or branding campaigns.

Reaching Out

Send an inquiry letter to the blog owner or head writer offering to either do a blog post or giveaway on their blog. Try not to come across as salesy or spammy– otherwise your inquiry email might just get deleted immediately without consideration. Bloggers are getting requests for these types of promotions on a regular base so do your research. Come up with one or two specific things you like about their blog (such as a certain post or reoccurring feature) to prove that you are a regular reader. Be respectful and positive– bloggers encounter so much negativity and scrutiny on a regular basis so it’s important to come across as a great company to work with.

Guest Posts

Offer to do an original guest post on their blog (or compensate them for writing it) that includes some information about your business’ products. This content must also not be too salesy or spammy, as it can affect the blogger’s reputation and may turn off readers. At the end of the post, some blogs may allow you to give your social media profile links to get their readers to further interact with you online if they are interested.

Giveaways

Another option is to offer to host a giveaway of your products (or of a gift card to a well-known retailer, like Amazon) to readers of the blog. The acceptance policy of giveaway promotions will vary widely depending on the blog, so be sure to follow all the guidelines. Using a giveaway widget like Rafflecopter is an easy way to integrate social media into the giveaway. Make sure that the giveaway items are worth the effort it takes to enter. For instance, if a hair product company only gave away 1 hairbrush, it might not entice readers as much as a hair products gift basket with shampoo, conditioner, a flat iron, styling spray, and a Beauty Brands gift card.  Bigger giveaways will get more attention.

These are just two options when it comes to working with bloggers to promote your social media and overall online presence.

Do you have any other ideas? Let us know in the comments.

How to Write a Good Blogging Bio

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As an introduction to someone who may know nothing about you, it just happens to be the most important aspect of any guest post you’ll write. Without a good bio, you risk losing credibility and significant traffic. Consider this your elevator pitch. As such, it should be short and to the point. There are three details you don’t want to miss.

 

  1. Spell Out The Specifics

First and foremost you want to introduce yourself, and briefly explain what you do. “Your most important details should go in the first sentence,” according to Brand Yourself.

You want put it forward with intention and a strong sense of purpose. Your goal should be to move readers, and engage them so they’ll be compelled to click through to your site. Consider using phrases such as [Read more…] about How to Write a Good Blogging Bio

Picking And Choosing Guest Posting Opportunities

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Not all guest posts were created equal. Guests posts offer a variety of different advantages for your blog – one that isn’t summed up with just one Internet marketing strategy like providing your web site with more “link juice” or getting a trickle of traffic because of your opportunities. No – guest blogging is more than just that.

There are many blogs out there that are strictly dedicated to the idea of guest blogging and what it can do for your website. It is something of a huge phenomina in which whole websites were created for to help people find better and more guest blogging opportunities. It is a marketing strategy that has taken hold of the SEO and it seems as if it might be here to stay for a while because of all the benefits it provides, not only the people that are doing the guest posting, but websites that are created from guest posting. [Read more…] about Picking And Choosing Guest Posting Opportunities

How to Find Guest Post Opportunities For Your Blog

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Guest posting is a great way to increase traffic, network with other bloggers, and build links. But how do you know which blogs are good guest post opportunities?

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of guest posting for various blogs so I thought I’d share what I learned from my experience.

Check Blogs For Previous Guest Posts

The strategy that worked the best was checking blogs to see if they published guest posts previously. If a blog had published them in the past, then there was a really good chance they would publish my guest post.

You can search for “guest post” if the blog has a search box. If not, you can type in “site:example.com guest post” on Google to search the blog.

This strategy also helps because you can get an idea of the kind of guest posts that are published. You can then use that information to create similar content.

Investigate Forums

Blogging or internet marketing related forums can be a good place to find guest post spots. I had success finding some opportunities on the ProBlogger forum.

My Blog Guest forum is another good option. I like it because it’s caters primarily to guest bloggers. It was recently created by Ann Smarty, a prominent search expert, and she’s attracted a good number of quality sites looking for guest posts. I’ve already gotten a post published on a PageRank7 blog.

In forums, you’ll find many off-topic blogs so you might have to do some digging to find a blog in your niche. To save time, you can create a thread saying you’re interested in guest posting and hope that a relevant blogger finds you.

Also, if your niche is relatively obscure, you may not find a related blog. Still, you can get good off-topic links, which is fine for SEO just as long as you get them from trusted sites and you don’t overdo it.

Over to You

How do find guest post opportunities for your blog?

3 Great Marketing Strategies for Bloggers With Limited Time

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If you’re anything like me, you don’t have much free time to blog. Many of us just don’t have the time to spend four hours a day blogging. We’ve got the day job, family, social life, and other things taking up our time. So anything that can really help improve our blog without spending too much time is a good thing.

In this post, I’ll share the top three methods in my experience that provide the best results in the least amount of time. One disclaimer before we start. Just because these methods don’t take a lot of time doesn’t mean you won’t be working hard to implement them. The methods are based on creating something of value and doing that requires a little bit of determination, focus, and effort.

With that in mind, let’s go to the first strategy.

1. Keyword-Based Posts

One thing I’ve found is that if you’re intentional with using keywords in your posts, you’ll get a lot more traffic than simply writing whatever comes to mind. I’ve checked out many of the popular blogs in my niche and they don’t use keywords well. These blogs have many more links than me but I outrank them for key search terms because I do keyword research and insert the keywords in my posts.

You don’t have to spend months learning SEO to use this tactic. The process is simple.

First, do some keyword research.

Check out your keyword logs and see what keywords are driving traffic to your site. You can usually find keyword patterns that you can capitalize on. For example, let’s say you have a pet blog. You check your logs and see that you have a bunch of traffic for the keyword labrador retriever training tips. With this in mind, you can be sure to get traffic by targeting similar keywords by just substituting the name of the dog breed. Create posts that go after keywords like dachshund training tips and german shepherd training tips.

Also, think of some common search terms in your niche and then enter them in Google’s keyword tool. The tool will give you a lot of related keywords that you can use.

Then, simply include the keywords in the title tags of your posts.

That’s all there is too it. Yet, many bloggers don’t take use this strategy and they end up missing out on a lot of traffic.

2. Flagship Posts

I got the term “flagship” from Chris Garrett’s great ebook, Killer Flagship Content. Definitely check it out for more information. Flagship posts are posts that have a ton of value. They are comprehensive and longer than your average post. They are the type of posts that people bookmark and send to their friends.

You won’t be writing these posts in less than an hour, but they are great for your blog. Most posts are just not very good. This is sad to say but if you look at the average blog, their posts are not memorable at all. Flagship posts are therefore great at setting yourself apart and helping readers remember your blog.

For example, one of the blogs in my niche has really grown to be very popular. They’ve only been around for less than a year and they don’t post very often – around two posts a week. But each post is very good. They average about 1200 words per post and they routinely go over the 1600 word mark. Each post has relevant pictures and they use formatting wisely with headings and paragraphs so the posts look organized and are attractive to the eye. Their posts are so meaty that they only show 2 posts on their front page.

You can tell they put a lot of effort into their posts. As a result, they have a big audience with many repeat visitors that regularly comment on their posts.

This strategy may need a little promotional push especially if you have a new blog and don’t have an existing audience to spread the word about your blog. That brings me to the third strategy.

3. Guest Posting on Popular Blogs

Sending a guest post to a top blog and then having them publish it brings many dividends. You get your blog exposed to a big readership base and you connect yourself to a top blogger. Also, you brand yourself as an authority figure since you were able to get published on a reputable site.

The quality of your guest post is important. Most top blogs won’t take any post. They are looking for something of high quality. As such, I would treat these posts just like flagship posts from the previous strategy. Also, the better your post is, the more likely people will visit your blog and become a regular reader.

If you can’t seem to get published on the top blogs, then a publishing on popular forum can be an alternative. However, it shouldn’t be too hard to get a guest post on top blogs as long as you have a really good post for them. Therefore, don’t be afraid to send them quality guest posts. Blogs are always looking for fresh content so you have a great chance of being published.

Trade your money for our time and effort. Performancing offers blog management services to improve your blog.