1672: How To Promote Your Blog by Chalene Johnson on Growing Your Audience

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily, How to Promote Your Blog by Chalene Johnson of ChaleneJohnson.com. Promoting one's blog is crucial if you want to ensure you're building your brand and establishing more and more lifelong followers. Wherever you're currently at in the process, experienced or novice, I'm guessing you could use some assistance in growing exposure in the blogosphere. So here are nine tips to help give your blog the attention it deserves. Number one, easily accessible.

[00:00:29] Make sure when people go to your website that they can find your blog. I can't tell you how many times I'll visit a website purposely for the blog, and then it takes a while to figure out where it is, ultimately leading to distraction. Be sure you're making it immediately clear to those who are visiting your site how to find your blog. Number two, blog URL lays across Facebook cover art. Do you have a Facebook like or business page? If so, you could have a really cool cover art photo.

[00:00:57] I might recommend designing this photo using a multitude of free software available online, like PicMonkey or Canva. These sites actually have templates for almost anything you need, including Facebook cover art. Now, across the center of this photo, you might say, click here to read my blog. When your fans, friends, and clients click on that, it would take them over to a description that you place in the comment section next to that photo. The very first thing you would want to do is put a link there to your blog. Number three, promote on Twitter.

[00:01:27] Don't be shy about this. We here at Team Johnson send out a minimum of five tweets per day about my blog. And the reason is that people on Twitter don't use it the way they used to. In other words, you're just seeing content coming through in the moment. A live feed, if you will. Most Twitter followers open the app and do a quick scan every hour or so. So, if you tweeted and a loyal follower got on three hours later, they probably wouldn't see it.

[00:01:52] You want to try and catch people while they're on, which is why it's perfectly acceptable to send more than one blog-related tweet per day, depending, of course, on how many followers you have. Oh, and make sure you do variations of the tweet. You can easily shake up the message for the same blog without sounding redundant. Number four, submit your blog to directories. This is huge. One that I suggest you use is the blog directory list from Top Rank.

[00:02:18] There you can pick subcategories, and people who are specifically looking for your type of content will then find you listed in their directory. Number five, post whenever you want to. The general consensus used to be that there was a specific number of days per week you were supposed to blog, and announce ahead of time which days they would fall out on. But I think, generally speaking, most people would agree it just needs to be great content. We're human, so we're going to miss our promised posting days from time to time as life gets in the way.

[00:02:46] This is why I try not to promise anything, whether it's blogs or podcasting or whatever. Trust me, I know there are those out there who will completely disagree with me. They believe you need to set and stick to your schedule, so everyone knows on Mondays that you're doing this, and Wednesdays you're posting that. Look, I'm not going to full-on argue because I agree, that's a great idea. I just don't want your business to ever become more important than your life. Number six, promoting your blog in the comments.

[00:03:14] Try to get your readers to comment and then make sure you reply back. Even blogs that are hugely popular with a massive amount of readers still have a manageable number of commenters to respond to. It's seriously one of the best ways you can expect people to come back. It's also commonly recommended that bloggers try to go to other bloggers' blogs and comment. You want to be and feel part of the blogging community, you know? So just like you would on YouTube, going back and forth and commenting and interacting with other YouTube channels,

[00:03:42] you want to do that same thing on other people's blogs, especially blogs where they share a similar expertise or topic. Number seven, Facebook posts with graphics. Throwing a link onto your status update is going to diminish the reach of your post, so here's what you need to do. Upload a photo you've created where across the bottom you include a font link saying something like, Hey, check out my blog. From time to time, there's no reason why you shouldn't include the URL in the photo too,

[00:04:08] but the trick is to write in the status update something about the blog, and your graphic is going to correlate. Nine times out of ten, somebody's going to jump in and say, Where's your blog? How do we find it? And then one of your followers will respond in the comments with the link, and or you can jump in there as well. In other words, your post is already starting to get engagement without having to diminish the reach by putting the initial promotion in the text update. Got it? Number eight, Instagram.

[00:04:35] Record a quick video, post, or story and mention the blog, and then you can actually announce the name of your website where people can find your blog. Some IG accounts allow you to add the link as an option for the user to simply swipe up and go to the blog via your story. Like the Facebook example, you could do an infographic too, as a permanent post or in your temporary social story. But the big thing is, your Instagram bio, that's the only place at the moment where you can put a clickable link. Hence, that real estate is very important.

[00:05:05] That link should be taking someone someplace where you can control the relationship. I don't often recommend for that clickable link to go to YouTube or Facebook or Twitter, but rather it should go to your own website or someplace where you can continue the relationship, perhaps an opt-in or your blog. Number nine, Facebook advertising. Many people suggest this option in promoting a blog. My recommendation here is that anyone who's considering this to truly evaluate their blog goal.

[00:05:33] For example, do you have a really good opt-in? Have you found your purpose? And who are you writing your blog for? See, if you're just writing a blog because you want to have more readers and you're not quite sure what to do with them, well, there are better ways for you to strategize than Facebook ads. At the end of the day, when people go to your website, you want to continue that relationship. Thus, it's very important you have a place where they can subscribe to your blog, or if nothing else, whatever blog you're writing, you're giving people an opportunity to opt into your list.

[00:06:02] You might also give them a free gift, additional training, or whatever it is that's unique to your brand that will keep your lifers around for the long haul. You just listened to the post titled, How to Promote Your Blog by Shaleen Johnson of shaleenjohnson.com. ServiceNow unterstützt Ihre Business Transformation mit der KI-Plattform. Alle reden über KI, aber die KI ist nur so leistungsfähig wie die Plattform, auf der sie aufbaut.

[00:06:31] Lassen Sie die KI arbeiten, für alle. Beseitigen Sie Reibung und Frustration Ihrer Mitarbeiter und nutzen Sie das volle Potenzial Ihrer Entwickler. Mit intelligenten Tools für Ihren Service, um Kunden zu begeistern. All das auf einer einzigen Plattform. Deshalb funktioniert die Welt mit ServiceNow. Mehr auf ServiceNow.de slash AI for People. And big thanks to Shaleen. She is a world-renowned motivational speaker with more than 30 years as a health expert.

[00:06:58] On top of that, she's a New York Times bestselling author, health and lifestyle expert, and top health podcaster as well with over 20 million downloads of her show, The Shaleen Show. She and her husband have trained tens of thousands of fitness professionals and consulted with the world's largest health club chains. They work together, but she is the face of the company. And she's sold millions of fitness videos. In fact, she holds the world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for having starred in the most fitness videos. And on the business side of things,

[00:07:25] she's created a variety of personal and business development programs that are definitely worth checking out. So come by ShaleenJohnson.com to check all of that out. You can find it linked in this episode's description. And that should do it for today. I thank you so much for being here as always. And I will be back here with you tomorrow for The Wednesday Show, where your optimal life awaits. Thank you.