5 WordPress Plugins to Promote Your Blog

Online marketing2 comments

One of the great advantages of using WordPress to manage your blogs is that you can add a variety of plugins to help you promote your content to a wider audience.  This is essential if you want to raise your profile and authority, and build a network of contacts that read and follow your content.

You also want to make it easy for your readers to share your blogs with their own contacts as this helps to drive potentially hundreds of people back to your website.

So here are 5 WordPress plugins that you can use to promote your blog posts.

Sexy Bookmarks
This enables your contacts to share your blog post to a wider variety of social bookmarking sites than most social sharing plugins.  Not only is it visually attractive with the buttons appearing in rows which pop up as you hover over them, you can also add call to action text to encourage readers to share your content.

WP Greet Box
Puts a welcome message at the top of each blog post to encourage readers to subscribe to your blog via RSS.  It also automatically adds a personal message depending on where the visitor has come from. So if someone has clicked a link to your blog via Facebook then it will say something like “Hi Facebook friend, welcome to my blog xxxx”.  Check out the top of this blog to see what it looks like.

Link Within
This plugin puts a box at the end of your blog with thumbnails showing details of previous posts on similar topics.  Again, check the bottom of this blog to see what it looks like.  By recommending other blogs for your readers to look at, it encourages them to stay longer on your site.

Tweet Old Post
Let’s you share previous blog posts with your Twitter following.  The blogs are posted out at random on your Twitter profile at intervals set by you.  Helps to increase traffic to your blog and to promote older posts to your online audience.

Facebook Like Button
Lets you add both Facebook follow and like buttons on to your blog posts.  So readers can like your posts and share them with their Facebook friends.  They can also click a button to like your page and connect with you on Facebook.

Finally, if you want to track how well your posts have been shared on social media, then look at the Social Metrics plugin.  This compares posts so you can see which ones have been shared the most and how they perform on each of the different social media networks.  It helps you to track what works and what doesn’t so you can focus on improving content.

If you want to find out more about setting up and managing a blog, then download a copy of our free guide “How to Start a Blog”.  This guide contains everything you need to know from the best platform to use for blogging to where to get content.  It also contains the top 20 essential WordPress plugins.

Download your free guide by clicking the link here >>  How to Start a Blog

5 Ways to Promote Your Blog

How to, Online marketing0 comments

So you’ve started to regularly write a blog, and got some of your contacts to read your articles and write comments.  In my previous blog, I gave some tips on where to get content for your blog.  Now I’m going to show you 5 easy ways to share your content to a wider audience.

On your website.  First of all, promote your blog on your website – have a list of the most recent posts on the home page and a link to the blog if it isn’t integrated into your site.  Also add an RSS button on every page of your site so that people can easily subscribe to your blog feed.  I use Feedburner to set up my RSS feed.

Promote offline.  If your blog provides tips and advice to your target market then put a link to your blog on your business cards and other promotional literature such as flyers and brochures.  Don’t just use the word blog though, say something like “Go here for great tips on how to promote your business online” and then add the link to the blog or even a QR code!

Add to signatures.  You can put a link to your blog on any online forum and email signatures that you have.  I use WiseStamp to create my email signatures as they enable you to add a link to your blog post which updates every time you post a new blog. 

Ask for comments.  You can build engagement with your readers by asking them to comment on your blog.  Ask questions or write something that will provoke a debate.  You don’t have to be rude or confrontational but you can be controversial about a particular subject and ask people for their opinions.  If people comment then they are more likely to share your content with their online followers and friends.

Use social media.  Add social media buttons at the end of each blog for people to share, eg via Twitter or Facebook.   If your blog is on WordPress then you can add plugins that will automatically post your blog out to Twitter and Facebook whenever you publish a post.  And if you’ve written a lot of blogs over a period of time then use plugins such as Tweet Old Post to promote previous content to your online contacts.
 
If you want to find out more about setting up and managing a blog, then download a copy of our free guide “How to Start a Blog”.  This guide contains everything you need to know from the best platform to use for blogging to where to get content.  It also contains the top 20 essential WordPress plugins.

Download your free guide by clicking the link here >>  How to Start a Blog