Written on April 8th, 2009 at 08:04 pm by Darren Rowse
Promote a Blog Post [Day 3 - 31DBBB]
Yesterday’s task in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge was to write a ‘list post’ on your blog. Hopefully you’ve had a chance to write that up and publish it by now.
Today we’re going to take that post and attempt to drive some readers to it.
Today’s Teaching on Promoting Blog Posts:
Blog Promotion is something that most bloggers have tried to do in many ways – however one mistake that I see a lot of bloggers making in their attempts to find new readers is that they only ever promote their blog as a whole. Their promotion is all about driving traffic to their blogs home page URL.
While there’s nothing wrong with this – I personally have had A LOT more success in promoting individual posts than my blogs front page. That’s what we are going to do today.
Having hit publish on your post yesterday – don’t just leave it to chance that your post will be read by people. Be more proactive than that and spend a little time today giving it some ‘nudges’ to help it on its way.
I know quite a few have already done some of this by leaving a link on our previous post promoting your link (some of your are reporting quite good traffic from doing it) but lets go a step further and find some ways to promote your post in other networks outside of ProBlogger.
11 Ways to Promote a Blog Post
note: please be careful in using these techniques. Don’t use them all with every post you write. Choose your best posts and promote them selectively and in ways that are useful to other people.
1. Pitching Other Bloggers - asking another blogger to consider linking to your post. note: there’s a real art to this – read more on how to do it at 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger.
2. Social Messaging – what social networks like Twitter and Facebook are you a part of? Attempt to leverage these to promote your post. The key is not to incessantly spam your followers and friends with your link – but use your network to ’seed’ the link and let your followers spread word of it for you (this won’t happen every time but as your network grows it can become more and more powerful).
3. Social Bookmarking - promoting selective links on a site like Digg or StumbleUpon can lead to amazing results. Further reading on this topic at How to Get to the Front Page of Digg and Using Social Media Sites to Grow Your Blog’s Traffic.
4. Internal Links – don’t just promote your post on other people’s sites – think about where you can link to it from within your own site. Perhaps you’ve written on the topic before and can add a link for further reading, perhaps adding a section in your sidebar for ‘latest posts’ could work. Internal linking won’t drive heaps of new traffic but it can help with SEO and increase page views.
5. Newsletters - if you have an email newsletter list – shoot out an email to your list about your latest post.
6. Other Blogs Comments Sections and Forums – leaving helpful and insightful comments on forums or other blogs can be great at driving traffic if your comment is genuine, relevant and sensitive to the discussion. Leaving a link is sometimes also appropriate if highly relevant.
7. Email Signatures – Adding links to your blog to your outgoing emails is fairly common place – but whatever including links to recent posts instead of just your blog’s front page URL.
8. Followup Posts – write a new post on your blog that picks up where your last one left off. This builds momentum and if you inter-link the posts drives more page views.
9. Advertise Your Post – for posts that you’re particularly proud of and that are well received by readers you might even consider a mini ad campaign with a small budget using a service like AdWords or StumbleUpon advertising. Further Reading on this at Run a StumbleUpon advertising campaign on your blog.
10. Pitch Mainstream Media – occasionally posts will be relevant to mainstream media. You want to really pick a highly interesting post for this – it’s not something for every day.
11. Article Marketing – I wouldn’t recommend submitting exactly the same article you’ve posted on your blog to article marketing sites (this can get you into trouble with Google penalties for duplicate content) but I know of a few bloggers who rewrite their key articles for article marketing.
Of course there are many other ways to promote posts. Feel free to tell us how you do it in comments below.
Please note: don’t do all of the above things for every single post on your blog. I personally tend to pick 1-2 posts a week to give a push and let others grow organically.
Today’s Task – Promote a Post:
Take a little time to look at yesterdays post and ask yourself where it might be appropriate to promote it. If you look at the post and don’t think that it is really worthy of promotion anywhere – feel free to choose another relevant post to do it with. If you don’t have one – spend some time today writing something that you feel IS link worthy and then try promoting that.
For most of you I’d start with point #1 above – pitching to other bloggers. Choose another blog with highly related content to your post and politely submit it as a suggested link to that blog. Again – check out 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger for tips that will help increase the likelihood of it being successful.
Feeling Timid?
I know that many new bloggers often feel quite timid and wary of promoting themselves. Don’t worry – you’re not alone. I have felt that myself many times and have at times not put my work forward where perhaps I should have. However – the times that I have been willing to push myself out of my comfort zone have often paid off.
While I’ve had a few times in my blogging life where I’ve had lucky breaks that result in traffic – most of the times traffic has arrived at my blogs in numbers have been a direct result of me doing some promotional work. Don’t just leave it to chance – put yourself out there and see what comes as a result.
Once you’ve done it – I’d love to hear how you went about promoting your post and what the result was in comments below. Lets learn together how to get this task right!
Update: There are lots of folks talking about this over at the forum, you should check it out! Day 3 – Promote a Post
Want More?This task is a sample of one of the tasks in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook – a downloadable resource designed to reinvigorate and revitalize blogs. Join over 14,000 other bloggers and Get your Copy Today. |
545 Responses to “Promote a Blog Post [Day 3 - 31DBBB]” - Add Yours
H E L M I A S Y R A F
April 8th, 2009 8:28 pm
Hi Darren,
About the social bookmarking, some people have been and still arguing that it have lost its so called credibillity in being source of traffic on the basis that the top 10 for example has been controlled by few influential people.
Therefore, although our post especially for the starters are extremely good and have the expected quality, we may fail get enough attention.
Plus, for example digg in john chow’s case if im not mistaken, although he got a lot of digg, once few people dugg his article, the article will be taken out aka banned.
What do you think about these issues? Any suggestion to overcome it?
Barry Wright, III
April 8th, 2009 8:30 pm
Darren,
You’re absolutely right that you can’t be afraid to get out there and promote your work. If you’ve done something good, you should want other people to see it! Sometimes it helps to use baby steps.
But be careful. Networking doesn’t just mean sending your link to digg, or blindly emailing a related blogger about your post. I recently wrote a post about how to best go about these promotion methods.
Obviously, now seems to be a good time to publish it (and promote it) here:
http://www.3stylelife.com/?p=791
Are you networking or netfaking?
Things are rolling strong with the challenge!
Barry
Ten
April 8th, 2009 8:32 pm
A good lesson. I’ll try to do this exercise but, as you said, there are timid bloggers XD.
H E L M I A S Y R A F
April 8th, 2009 8:33 pm
Sorry Darren, I have another question for you if you dont mind…
About the stumbleupon, based on my observation and further reading in few blogs, they claimed that stumbleupon will only bring one-off visitor as they accidentaly ’stumble upon’ our blog.
Yah, it is true that it can bring massive visitors to our blog but do you think that will our blog able to retain those visitors long enough before that start to get interested on our blog?
What do you think based on your experience in your blogs particularly?
Btw, this is such a great post. I’ll try my best to implement stuffs that have been suggested by you. TQ
Darren Rowse
April 8th, 2009 8:35 pm
H E L M I A S Y R A F – check out the link in the post to my post on Digg, it covers some of that.
What The Pros Do
April 8th, 2009 8:38 pm
Ok im definitely in the timid new blogger catagory but im up for the challenge! Im publishing my list post tomorrow so Im going to start looking for bloggers to pitch my post to today whilst working up the courage to follow through! :)
Matt
April 8th, 2009 8:39 pm
Good post, Darren!
As you mentioned, a lot of bloggers are shy in the promotion area, including me. Do you think also that having a blog hosted at WP.com limits your chances of becoming popular and/or well-known?
Thanks for the great post, and I look forward to learning more.
Darren Rowse
April 8th, 2009 8:40 pm
H E L M I A S Y R A F – really it depends on the blog. The key with StumbleUpon traffic is to create a ’sticky’ blog – ie a blog that hooks people in beyond their first 5 seconds on your blog. You want them to read your full post (the key to that is interesting content) and then subscribe (so prominent invitations to subscribe tend to work).
Barry Wright, III
April 8th, 2009 8:43 pm
What The Pros Do (or anyone else who wants to):
Feel free to pitch your post to me as a practice run; we’re all in the same boat and here to help each other, so there’s no pressure. Then you can go out at pitch confidently to other bloggers, media, etc.
Contact info is on my site, or you could pitch here in the comments and get a wider swath of feedback.
unoblogger
April 8th, 2009 8:50 pm
Promotion within limits will sure be helpful, when it goes beyond prescribed limits it will push visitors away for the simple fact that our promotion is a little too pushy/
I personally would not like to promote with a push
thom singer
April 8th, 2009 8:53 pm
Darren-
I often do many of the things you suggest (when appropriate), but I appreciate the formality you are bringing to the table.
In this economy, anything that someone can do to make their product, service, blog, or self stand out from the crowd is more important than ever. That is why my post yesterday is titled “5 Reasons To Network In A Tough Economy”. Interestingly, if you look at the reasons it could have been called “5 Reasons To Be Sure To Promote Your Blog In A Tough Economy”… as the tips are universal.
http://thomsinger.blogspot.com/2009/04/five-reasons-to-network-in-tough.html
Enjoying the series, and it is ONLY day three!
thom
Kevin
April 8th, 2009 8:59 pm
I always promote my new blogs through Twiter and LinkedIn and in my signature on forums, etc. I thought self promotion through the likes of Digg etc would be frowned upon. There was one guy I followed briefly on Twitter but he was too pushy on getting people to Digg his stuff so he was consigned to the trash bin!
Anyway, I have just posted on Digg and will sit back and await the rain of abuse emails :-)
http://www.kevincumbria.wordpress.com
Bill Masson
April 8th, 2009 9:04 pm
Your first commenter mentioned social networks and i kind of agree with him.
“About the social bookmarking, some people have been and still arguing that it have lost its so called credibillity in being source of traffic on the basis that the top 10 for example has been controlled by few influential people.”
I know recently Alexa changed their algo to exclude traffic coming in from social network and as a result a lot of blogs lost ranking including mine. BUT i still believe they can bring in good traffic especially if you can get some kudos from them, for me they just seem to be lazy when it comes down to bookmarking your post.
Thanks for the insights Darren, I have been a bit busy with other tasks, but i have been looking at other bloggers in your list. Some interesting stuff. Keep up the great work
Catherine
April 8th, 2009 9:04 pm
‘8. Followup Posts’ works for me as my post, ‘Travelling with Thai Phrase Books’, is the first part of a series on phrase books.
And now that you’ve got me thinking… posting phrase book reviews on amazon.com might just be the ticket.
thanks Darren…
darya
April 8th, 2009 9:04 pm
Again, perfect timing. I happened to be in the midst of unveiling my blog’s first pillar article series that just so happened to start yesterday with a list post.
This is a perfect post for me to promote since it strongly encourages subscribing to my blog.
Do any of you need help getting started eating healthy?
Nicolas Prudhon
April 8th, 2009 9:06 pm
I’m glad to see that I am actually doing most of what you recommend on daily basis, especially Article Marketing for which I see great results when it comes to the traffic they generates.
I will add a video and podcast version of that post too, I noticed that this helps a lot too.
Mr. I
April 8th, 2009 9:09 pm
I will be participating in forums and commenting today. Lets see what effect this will have on my post. I will also use comment luv on blogs to promote the post.
I never completed your 2nd task because I had published a big list( 100 Blogging Articles to Help Bloggers ) a day before that.
Dragos Roua
April 8th, 2009 9:09 pm
From the beginning of this challenge I am amazed about the synchronicities involved. For example, I had a post scheduled for yesteday about the blogging tools I used in my first 6 months as a “serious” blogger, and yesterday task was to write a “list post”. Which is exactly what I did.
This morning I was thinking to give some momentum to some of the posts I wrote a few time ago and I even picked one that would be “timely” enough to do it. Well, I’m starting to promote it right here.
Yes, it’s about synchronicities and the “master plan”.
The Master Plan.
In addition to link it from here I will try to build a little bit of momentum for my post using twitter and StumbleUpon.
It’s been only 3 days from this challenge and I enjoyed a lot. However, I think the best stuff is yet to come.
Joel
April 8th, 2009 9:09 pm
Great points. I find that most of my traffic comes from search engines and that it comes to individual posts rather than the main blog.
While I regularly do internal linking, something that I’ve found that really helps with that is the Similar Posts plugin for WordPress.
Since I was hosting the Carnival of Education today, I told a story and took the opportunity to link the Carnival to some prominent bloggers by including them in the storyline. I also emailed or Twittered them and asked them to link to me, but we’ll see if that happens.
Another thing I did was to include a few links to some of my posts (including the List Post from yesterday – 20 Blogs I Wish Were Around When I Started Teaching).
Great series already!
Hning
April 8th, 2009 9:11 pm
Using application in facebook, is definitelly good. I did it so far for my local blog, and gives me a lot of traffic.
Ps: the most wonderful app which works for me is Mirror Blog. Simply placed it in the leftbar, and people who stay in our network will get notice if there’s an update news.
Other which work, by publishing a half of our post using Note, then set a redirection to our blog. Just tag our friend, and let them choose, where they prefer to comment. Ops, dont forget to let them know, to subscribe!
sjay
April 8th, 2009 9:13 pm
Thanks Darren,
Just like a Magic I notice a increment number of visitors and reducing the bouncing rate.
I used some Internal links from the post and Related links bottom of the page which work really well. Visitors who came to the post went around my blog.
I used couple of social networks. But I am bit scared of asking another blogger to consider linking to your post. May be that is no a good thing.
Thandelike
April 8th, 2009 9:13 pm
My list post on Twitter yesterday was about the 3 benefits President Obama’s visit to my town, Istanbul. Today’s promotion of that link asks if one detriment today (the White House press corps having trouble leaving Istanbul this morning) offsets those benefits.
Detriment of POTUS Turkeytrip offsets benefit(http://tiny.cc/b0xHk)? WhiteHouse press flight 3hr bureaucracy delay today, Pentagon solves
Alan
April 8th, 2009 9:14 pm
It helps if you already have a decent presence on various social media (stumble, reddit, digg etc.), you can then pitch a post to multiple places and your friends will hopefully support it. It is a lot tougher when you have to build a profile from scratch at the same time as building a blog.
Joel Drapper
April 8th, 2009 9:14 pm
I’ve never really used point 1 but plan to in the future. Have you ever written in more depth about that particular point?
Thanks for another great article. I’m really looking forward to the next 28 days!
-Joel Drapper
Michael Godawski
April 8th, 2009 9:14 pm
Day three and it gets interesting.
Promoting posts and blogs is not that easy if you have are rather new blog. You can have great content, but the visitor just looks at your site and thinks: oh, zero comments, not that good.
Should a new blogger promote his/her posts straight away from the beginning or shall he/she wait some time till the content of the blog grows?
PS: Really enjoying the challenge. Keep up the good work Darren.
Bastian Kröhnert
April 8th, 2009 9:14 pm
Are there any Germany around? ;-)
My list post yesterday was about 5 ways to double your memory’s capacity. You can find it here:
http://geld-mit-importen.de/blog_simon/wordpress/2009/04/07/5-wege-seine-gedachtnisleistung-zu-verdoppeln-day-2-31-dbbb/
“5 Wege, seine Gedächtnisleistung zu verdoppeln”
When do you start the forum, Darren? It would be nice (especially for later tasks) to know if there are any other bloggers from Germany in this competition.
Innovate
April 8th, 2009 9:16 pm
Darren,
Thanks for the clear overview. What is funny is that I directly (after publishing my post started to do what you described, without the 3rd day information)…
Thanks
Ralph
Amir Shevat
April 8th, 2009 9:18 pm
I like the idea in your email today, suggesting to use this challenge to help other bloggers drive traffic to their sites.
I will try to blog about a few of the bloggers with interesting posts I encounter here.
If anyone wants to write about a blog post I just release, I would be happy too:
http://spacebug.com/Open_source_community_should_employ_Microsoft_business_strategies
Julien
April 8th, 2009 9:18 pm
Very good point here.
I think you could classify this different promotion methods depending on the goal of your promotion:
- are you trying to gain visibility and have lots of visits ? Aim at twitter, digg likes, facebook
- are you trying to get feedbacks for your community ? use a newsletter
and so on…
Dan Alderson
April 8th, 2009 9:18 pm
I promoted my post after I wrote it on Twitter, I do tend to only promote the posts I feel good enough, but I am my own worst enemy and think that most of the things I write are rubbish (and they very well could be). So have decided to try and get this out there through twitter and stumbleupon… I have thought about submitting it to Sphinn but, even though it’s about search, I feel it’s too basic for that site.
if you want to have a read of the post its here http://juniorseo.com/top-5-sites-to-add-to-your-rss-reader-for-junior-seos/
Rehuel
April 8th, 2009 9:20 pm
Good morning world! Let the fun begin. For those who look for someone to pitch to, just pitch to me.
I will have to write a new article, because My list may not fly as catchy enough to make an impression.
Fred
April 8th, 2009 9:20 pm
Thank Darren you for your very precise and detailed “promote your post article”.
Co-challengers may send me their posts, I will be happy to help promote them if they are related to the universe of my own blog, that is:
- Thoughts to change Humanity’s “rendez-vous” with destiny -
On a journey towards the truth, the little and big things that are raising our awareness, and empower each one of us to leverage the changes in the course of events that a leadership starved Humanity has unwillingly engaged into…
Full steam ahead was the Titanic modus operandi; right now, is a good time to “stop and think”…
If you and your blog or post are thoughts and action provoking Trim Tabs, please drop me a line and I will help.
Matthew
April 8th, 2009 9:20 pm
My list post already included a number of internal links, and I already planned to write some follow up posts to “fill it out” with more information.
I already have my RSS feed seeding on Facebook, and just mentioned my post on Twitter.
My email signature includes a link to my blog’s main page… never thought about changing it to individual posts, though. I will keep that in mind.
I think that I will keep my signature the same in the forums that I frequent, but I will be more aware of places where I can link to my posts in response to a conversation.
As always, great tips and looking forward to the rest of the course!
Michael Nielsen
April 8th, 2009 9:25 pm
I have now Twitted all my contacts and added it to my Facebook stream.
I can see the idea in doing that to drive more reads.
Great 31DBBB.
Michael
http://www.photofolio.dk/blog/
Bill
April 8th, 2009 9:26 pm
My list post from yesterday, Top 10 Reasons for Learning Chinese was automatically posted on Twitter. As a result, I received more comments (6) on Twitter than I did on the blog post itself (5). I also received 2 re-tweets. So even some passive promotion can work wonders.
The only trouble with this is that comments are now diluted between Twitter and my Blog. Any interest is good, but I’m starting to wonder how important it is to consolidate all comments/responses in one place.
Got a couple of ideas for how to further promote my Top 10 Reasons to Learn Chinese and will try and implement them this evening.
Mrs Green
April 8th, 2009 9:27 pm
Thanks for this, Darren. This is the one place where i feel I could truly learn and do more.
I am the timid type when it comes to promoting my blog because I don’t take rejection well. I know I need to just get over myself and start valuing what I write more.
Also, I just don’t understand twitter and facebook – how to use them to promote my blog. I only have a few followers and i don’t spend time on them (I’m spending too much time writing blog posts LOL!)
There is a lot for me to think about with today’s topic – thanks for another great challenge :)
Dorai Thodla
April 8th, 2009 9:28 pm
Hi Darren and friends,
Can you share with me a few tools you use for collecting information for your blogs?
I have listed a few in my blog. The tools are not exhaustive (for example, I left out stumble upon in social bookmarking list). But can you kindly take a look and tell me whether you can think of other categories, I missed?
The link to my post “Seven InfoTools Beyond Search” is here:
http://www.tools2think.org/infotools/?p=5
If you can think of any, please leave a comment on this post.
Melinda
April 8th, 2009 9:28 pm
That’s one of the reasons I LOVE twitter! I have it set up with a plugin to auto tweet and I keep manually re-tweeting over time.
Comment Luv plugin is great too!
Thanks Darren!
johan
April 8th, 2009 9:31 pm
1. I tweet every blogpost with a tiny URL on Twitter.
2. People can sign up for an RSS newsletter.
3. I changed the people in my FaceBook GROUP to my new PAGE and I post the same tiny URL on my Page.
4. I visit travel forums on Africa and sign with my name and site-URL.
Good idea to start changing the site URL in my signature to a post URL! Thanks for the idea.
Johan
http://www.planyoursafari.com
Darren (Green Change)
April 8th, 2009 9:31 pm
Blog carnivals can also be a great way to promote a post you’re particularly proud of.
You’ll get a boost in traffic (sometimes very small, sometimes very large depending upon the carnival), but more importantly your post will get read by most of the other bloggers involved in the carnival. Many of them will Stumble your post or bookmark on other social networking sites.
You’ll usually get comments left on your post from the other bloggers, and you in turn can visit their posts and comment on them. Sometimes you discover great new blogs, and form new working relationships with others in your niche.
Nathalie Hamidi
April 8th, 2009 9:32 pm
This is really hard for me – I tried to tweet my list post yesterday to see if someone would re-tweet it, but I don’t have a lot of followers, and the subject I chose is not very mainstream (autism and pop culture). Also, I wanted to write that post in english, when generally I write in french.
I am going to try harder today, thanks for the halp Darren!
Jon Buscall
April 8th, 2009 9:33 pm
I emailed the members of the Basset Hound breeders Google Group after the director of the controversial documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed commented on a piece I’d blogged.
I invited group members to write comments to the director as a lot of the things we’ve been talking about behind closed doors would be better discussed in the public arena.
Although over 200 people received my invitiation to comment directly on my blog, only a handful responded. Others continued the discussion in the Google Group although the director wouldn’t read them there because she’s not a member.
I got more comments via Twitter than people directly in my network.
What did I learn? That reaching out to your community is valuable but tough. And they don’t always act in a way you would expect.
The blog post referred to here is:
http://www.bassethounds.nu/svt-broadcasts-controversial-uk-documentary/
Harsh Agrawal
April 8th, 2009 9:34 pm
Promoting your post is the first thing any blogger should do..
Depend on article I promote my article on following ways:
#Twitter
#Facebook
#Delicious
# Digg /Su depend on the nature of article…
Sparky
April 8th, 2009 9:35 pm
Thanks for the reminder. I know “content is king”. But it only rules if people know its there.
I must make and effort to step out of my comfort zone and promote my work.
Peter Ellwe
April 8th, 2009 9:36 pm
Well, I didn´t post my list post here yesterday, but today it will help me to solve todays task. Nice ey?
Like so many else, my facebook status changes with the RSS feed from my blog. I use Twitter in the same way and bloggy.se (swedish twitter look a like) as well. I get some sporadic traffic from these auto-marketing activities. Of course I ping a couple of sites so my post shows up on them for a couple of seconds. For my list post I also used Pusha.se, “swedish Digg”.
The post has already been linked to twice since it went public and another blog republished the whole thing on her blog, with link of course.
The topic for the list post?
“7 ways to use blogging in school as an education tool” (in swedish)
http://www.ellwesfisk.se/2009/04/7-satt-att-anvanda-bloggar-i-skolan.html
Baker @ ManVsDebt
April 8th, 2009 9:36 pm
Thanks Darren for this series. I’ve wrote only my second ever list post yesterday and am very proud of the results.
http://manvsdebt.com/33-ways-to-thwart-identity-theft/
I have no problem submitting the article to social sites, as well as linking to the article in future posts. However, I’m a little afraid of sending the link directly to other bloggers.
Patrick @ There's a Blog in my Soup
April 8th, 2009 9:36 pm
One thing that i find helpful is going through my database of posts once every 3-6 months and make a growing list of my pillar articles – my best of the best articles, and spend some time promoting each of these articles.
I use some powerful spinning techniques to make a different version of each article and I submit them to a ton of different directories.
I also send a RT(retweet) via twitter on a top article 2-3 times a month, enough to get some new eyes on the blog post, but not so much to make it an eyesore on the twitter timeline.
Richard
April 8th, 2009 9:36 pm
I am wondering if anyone else in this large group of bloggers is in (or writing to) the training and development field (not personal fitness, but corporate learning/training/HR or related)?
My audience: High tech industry equipment trainers (for example: medical, semiconductor, robotic equipment suppliers).
Yesterday I wrote about “8 Gut Reasons to Provide Hands-On Practice in Equipment Training.” http://semicon-recession.com/2009/04/07/8-gut-reasons-to-provide-hands-on-practice-in-equipment-training/
Any possible partners here?
[Thanks to Barry Wright, III for idea to look right here.]
Juliet Chase
April 8th, 2009 9:37 pm
When it comes to comments are there guidelines for effectiveness in terms of number of comments or their age for a post?
I’ve seen advice that says don’t bother if it’s an older post or you won’t be on the first page of comments. However, I got a surprising handful of pingback referral visitors when I linked to a very old archived post on another blog when it was just easier than redefining a term. Although it was a blog by a popular author with a relative low volume of posts.
I’ll admit my bravery wavers when I see huge volumes like the 629 currently on Day 2. Generally, is there sufficient return on investment to make that 630? I realize there’s really nothing to lose in this forum, but I’m asking more about making optimum choices with other blogs and posts.
kunal
April 8th, 2009 9:38 pm
I use twitter (add me @krjx)frequently to promote blog posts from several blogs. However, finally with 300+ followers, I’m only now seeing any significant amount of traffic from it.
Patrick @ There's a Blog in my Soup
April 8th, 2009 9:39 pm
Nathalie and others wondering about tweeting posts – one great plugin for wordpress is the Pingpressfm plugin. What it does is uses the ping.fm service to automatically send an update status to all your social networks this is a good way to get more eyes on your blog posts.
I generally get 1-200 new hits to my blog just from each post that I post bringing in people from facebook, myspace, twitter, linkedin, etc via ping.fm
Herbsandmore
April 8th, 2009 9:40 pm
Thanks for helping us that are new to blogging and using twitter. Very helpful! Thank You!
http://sicknessanddisease.blogspot.com
Canadian Bald Guy
April 8th, 2009 9:41 pm
I did many of the things mentioned in your list in my last blog post. Good to know I’m doing some of the right things already!
Nathalie Hamidi
April 8th, 2009 9:41 pm
Thanks Patrick for the tip, I’m going to try that! I just hope I won’t spam my followers too much.
Deb
April 8th, 2009 9:45 pm
Wow – for once I’m ahead of the game. My post was the top ten reasons I’m going SOBCon09. http://debworks.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-ten-reasons-im-going-to-sobcon-09.html
I’ve gotten a couple of responses already!
I posted it to twitter and also on facebook.
Today I’ll go through what others have written (there is so much!) and find some posts that interest me – and have a conversation with those people.
Keep ‘em coming, having a great time here!
Nadine
April 8th, 2009 9:45 pm
Another way to promote to a post is to find a collective-type blog/site. For example, I had posted a free newfie mitten pattern that didn’t generate any interest from new readers. Months later, I remembered a free pattern website, and I emailed the owner and gave my consent to post the mitten link. Within days, she had posted my link on her front page as a new pattern, and I experienced thousands of hits on my post. It’s still on her list, so months later, I am still getting an average of 30-50 hits a day just from that site alone. This method might take some more thinking, but was absolutely free and had stunning results.
Nicole Jensen
April 8th, 2009 9:46 pm
Hey Darren,
My list post from yesterday was one which I’d been trying to get out for ages but never got around to completing until I felt nagged to do so by the 31 Day Challenge. Here’s to getting through the month and spitting out all those drafts as gold, huh?
http://nicolejensen.com/2009/04/07/top-event-management-twitter-apps/
Fee
April 8th, 2009 9:49 pm
Done the elevator pitch, done the list post but this one had me thinking more in-depth. My blog is a niche about a massive mountain bike ride I am about to undertake so seems only relevant to a small group of people but there may be a wider audience that might be interested. So linking to others is something to consider more seriously.
Enjoying the hints and tips so far.
(oops posted this on the 11 ways instead of here)
Kathryn
April 8th, 2009 9:55 pm
I post some of my articles on article marketing sites as rewrites and sometimes as they can be found on my own website. I also have started using twitter and have seen results from both techniques. I’m still gun shy about stumbleupon and digg. I have trouble getting over the sense that I’m bragging about how great of a writer I am – if that makes sense.
startuproach.wordpress.com
April 8th, 2009 9:58 pm
Thanks again, Darren!
I run a blog about starting up a business while you’re working for a boss (i.e. actually in the boss’ time!). Everybody is more than welcome to write a guest post on the blog, especially if you want to share your experience with this matter.
Sen me a link to your blog at startuproach@gmail.com and I’ll get in touch!
Berni
April 8th, 2009 10:00 pm
I guess I’m taking baby steps, I already use twitter to promote new posts, tried a new angle this time for my 5 Reasons You Should Eat More Fish post http://tinyurl.com/d96yeu
Thanks Darren, it’s great to have a reason to do these things :)
Lorraine Ball
April 8th, 2009 10:01 pm
I use TwitterFeed, and it pulls my blog post to Twitter at the same time every day. ( I usually pull the feed twice a day). That has really helped boost my traffic to the blog.
Aditya
April 8th, 2009 10:02 pm
I did not get the social messaging tip. However i felt Digg is a social messaging site.Totally baffled. I am a registered reader and really into this project. Please help.
Gamespump-Free PC Games Downloads
Absolute Legend
April 8th, 2009 10:07 pm
Darren great tips – very useful for those wanting to promote their blogs and become absolute legends at blogging.
Lorraine Ball
April 8th, 2009 10:09 pm
Ok, so I missed the part about promoting my blog in other links. Here is a post I wrote about the Day 1 assignment
http://www.roundpeg.biz/2009/04/31-days-to-a-better-blog/
Vince Ong
April 8th, 2009 10:11 pm
Okay great. I used most of the social media to promote my blog and also to meet new friends, especially Twitter and Facebook and I found that quite useful and really gets feedback even though very few were to comment but at least they click it and read it.
Well I’m always a big fan of Manchester United FC, I collect a few of their items like jersey, mags, posters and such. So I just share what I have.
http://vinceong.com/2009/04/red-for-the-red-devils/
Feel free to leave your comment if you’re interested.
Mouseclone
April 8th, 2009 10:15 pm
I didn’t really want to promote my post from yesterday. Considering I also run a site dedicated to Artist on Amie Street I thought that I would post a link here in case anyone would like to see it.
Chris Bottomley and Natalie Brown have both been featured artist on ASMW. So check out the site and let the artist know what you think about their music.
Eve @Arewethere
April 8th, 2009 10:17 pm
Another great post Darren. I have really enjoyed this series, and now feel an extreme amount of encouragement.
It makes me feel great to know that I have made good decisions so far on developing my blog such as the ones you’ve mentioned. I can’t wait to get started on my blog post of the day, and promote it to everyone!
elizof
April 8th, 2009 10:18 pm
This has been fun so far and I decided to try Digg.com for my Day #3 assignment. I placed the link below in the Lifestyle – Educational section and noticed, after the fact, that someone placed yesterday’s #2 assignment there and got no interest!
http://eof737.wordpress.com/2009/03/01/ten-tips-for-the-ardent-job-seeker-in-2009/
I did comment in my description that this was an assignment and that the 31 Day challenge was a great way to blog, share and grow; we shall see.
Meanwhile, I need to go finish my new list post and add it to Day two.
Thanks for the challenge!
Angela
April 8th, 2009 10:19 pm
Great article, again!
I do most of these things already, although I have to admit that I added each strategy one at a time, as it can be overwhelming to try to start doing everything straight away. Now it comes naturally.
I love learning from others’ comments. I am going to look into Carnivals and Twitterfeed more.
I have also dug up a few posts from the list to promote. Anyone in the wedding industry, please get in touch as I have many blogs I can link to you from.
angel (at) theweddingguide.eu
Thanks!
Bryan R
April 8th, 2009 10:26 pm
Great post and a great set of follow-up responses. I’m wondering if when I look back over this set of lessons if this is going to be the BIG one for me. It’s helping me get a very good handle on the “what and how” of social networking! Thanks so much!
StuffCooksWant
April 8th, 2009 10:30 pm
Can’t wait to try these tips! Before long, people will be flocking to my site to see cool things such as these Space Invaders Ice Cube Trays… a must for any child of the 80’s!
Edwin (Wollongong Fitness)
April 8th, 2009 10:30 pm
I just completed Day #2, posted my list on the 5 types of exercises for training for a marathon.
http://wollongongfitness.com/main/5-types-of-exercises-for-training-for-a-marathon/
I emailed it to my friends and normally put a link to it on facebook; so I’ve unknowningly done Day #3’s task by using step 3) Social Networking and 5) Newsletter.
Of course that’s only 2 of the 11 ways mentioned so there’s definitely room for improvement.
Thanks for the tips Darren!
Alison
April 8th, 2009 10:31 pm
Hi Darren, I was already using a couple of tactics mentioned without realizing I was promoting my blog. I will check out some more.
I went ahead and created a follow-up list post to yesterday’s post.
“5 Steps To Help Your Mother Move Past “Wedding Mode.
http://newlifeasnewwife.blogspot.com/2009/04/5-steps-to-help-your-mother-move-past.html
Let’s see how that goes :)
Thanks again Darren for running this fantastic challange, and thanks for those who’ve come to visit off of problogger comments.
Mr. I
April 8th, 2009 10:34 pm
I just became the first person to comment on Daily Blog Tips on latest post. I used the post URL as URL so that name links to that. The comment added extra point to the post, so I hope many visitors will come(it seems like my comment got caught in spam! Daniel, please check Akismet soon!)
stephanerd
April 8th, 2009 10:35 pm
Oy. This one’s a toughie. I always feel weird promoting my stuff to other bloggers and, as for social bookmarking sites, I’m loath to promote my own stuff, preferring to highlight others’ work. Of course, deep down, I know that maintaining a balance of my work vs. other work on such social bookmarking sites will maintain people’s trust in me but, honestly, I haven’t been incredibly active on such sites lately (I used to go wild with SU).
I do always use Twitter to promote my favorite posts (@stephauteri), which then feeds through to my Twitter account…but this time around, I gritted my teeth and also submitted yesterday’s post to StumbleUpon and Digg. It’s amazing how my stomach clenched while I was doing it.
Elizabeth Stanfill
April 8th, 2009 10:35 pm
Hi Darren,
Great post. Although I nudge my blog via social networks and bookmarking, I only get a few visitors that way. My number one traffic getter is google and yahoo but, my participation with other bloggers in my area of specialty brings quite a bit of traffic.
Today, I will do a follow up post and send out to my newsletter list, which is fairly large. I don’t usually do that because I do not like to inundate my followers. Today, will be a test drive in that arena.
Also, I like the idea of email signatures with my latest post. Great idea!
Elizabeth
Kelly
April 8th, 2009 10:37 pm
Great post.
I really need to delve into this area more, but it’s so complex and there is so much to learn (and so little time!).
I saw a big increase in my traffic yesterday (it doubled!), thanks to all the folks from here who came over to visit!
I’m did submit my post to StumbleUpon, and Tip’D, and I’m working this AM on figuring out more about Digg.
I think I’ll send it to the person who inspired the post. :) I did that before with nice results.
Keep all the great ideas coming, I love this series! :)
Kelly
http://www.thecentsiblelife.com/2009/04/07/top-5-financial-mistakes/
venkat
April 8th, 2009 10:37 pm
So far I had not got any traffic from these social netwroking sites ,despite placing social bookmarking sharing buttons.As you said as once a post is shared in Social sites blogs does get huge traffic ,I am hoping for some in future.I will try to promote a post on my blog with relevant content of other blog.
stephanerd
April 8th, 2009 10:41 pm
Oh! I should give a success story, though. Last year, I wrote a post for Nerve.com’s Modern Materialist with my family recipe for pizzarustica:
http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/modernmaterialist/archive/2008/03/21/heart-attack-in-a-pan.aspx
It’s Easter pie. This past weekend, because Easter is coming up again, I tweeted a link to the original post. Later that day (quite coincidentally), my mother called asking for a copy of the recipe, as she had lost hers. I offered to just send her the link, and she became horrified that I had shared our family recipe with the world.
A few days later, I found out that someone on Twitter had Stumbled the post and, in six days, it had received about 55,000 views!
Um…I’m not telling my mom.
Ah, the powers of the Internets.
Alan
April 8th, 2009 10:44 pm
Everyone has probably considered this point, but here it is anyway.
You know that with 10000 people participating we can pretty much get any blog post popular on any social media site, and we don’t have to do anything dodgy either.
If anyone has read Seth Godin’s “Tribes”, well we’re a kind of tribe right now and as such we have power, sort-of :).
And no, I am not advocating any kind of digg trading or stumble exchanging, as that is against the TOS of most social sites.
It should all just happen naturally, I would be surprised if it didn’t happen a time or two before the end of the 31 days, especially once there is a forum and everyone gets to know each other better.
Dian
April 8th, 2009 10:51 pm
Done! i automatically use feed to twitter and facebook, on stumbleupon? well my last post wasnt that interesting, maybe on the next task.
Paul
April 8th, 2009 10:53 pm
Decided to promote my Twitter/WordPress Integration Guide (a freebie) to some Twitter resource sites.
Since yesterday’s post drew some nice comments I also decided to see if I could get some Diggs on http://digg.com/d1kiRy.
Lisis | Quest for Balance
April 8th, 2009 10:53 pm
It seems the best thing to do in today’s comment is blog promotion. So here it is:
Did you know roasting marshmallows can help you live longer? Check it out:
http://www.questforbalance.com/2009/04/08/roast-marshmallows-live-longer/
=-)
Evelyn
April 8th, 2009 10:55 pm
Great post! I’m new to blogging and am learning a lot from you.
I didn’t realize that I could use digg, delicious, and stumble. I have all these accounts and am not using them like I could be. I will start using them more to promote my blog.
I tend to use twitter, facebook, and friendfeed, but will do more.
After doing the assignment for yesterday, I did receive a few more views and comments then I usually receive.
Thanks so much!
Kate Foy
April 8th, 2009 11:04 pm
Out it went tonight via Twitter. It will land in FriendFeed and the original post will get routed to Facebook’s ‘Notes’ apps. Selecting and setting up your social networks carefully can really get your blogposts out to the hive.
Alpay
April 8th, 2009 11:08 pm
hah, was thinking a lot about twitter lately. Wrote another list post on twitter. You can find the link below. Anybody else on the latest on the web?
http://unofficialmac.com/2009/04/08/17-things-to-keep-sane-on-twitter-and-enjoy-it/
Cath Oehlman
April 8th, 2009 11:13 pm
I still consider myself a newbie blogger, but I was pleased to discover I’m on track with this task! After posting my list of “10 Daily Survival Tips for Mums” yesterday I immediately started a little self promotion. Yet to see if the list-style post and promotion lead to increased traffic…
Lisa
April 8th, 2009 11:21 pm
Thanks Darren. I do blog promotion all of the time although there is still alot for me to learn here. Being a new blogger, most of my traffic comes from blog promotion. I have feeds to Twitter and Facebook. I also use Digg, Stumble, and a few others. I only do Facebook and Twitter for every post. The others, I switch it up and submit less. I do posts on other blogs within my niche and usually get some traffic because I use the Commentluv plugin. I’ve had a few bloggers in my niche link to me, so that’s pretty cool. Last month I entered a blog carnival and got a link and some traffic from that, so I plan to do that again with this article. I will be doing that today.
With all of that said, I’m still not getting as much traffic as I would like to see. I believe part of that is due to my niche, Law of Attraction/Spirituality. Also, I only have about 71 Twitter followers. I need to increase that. So if my blog interests anyone here, please follow me on Twitter @lotusessence.
If anyone is interested in my content and would like to give me a link, please feel free to do so. Here’s a link to my “List” post from yesterday. http://lotusessence.com/2009/04/07/10-tips-to-master-the-law-of-attraction/
At Fred up above, I’ve bookmarked your site because I find the content interesting. I may be sending you an email soon. :)
BTW, I have no problem asking other bloggers to link to me. I haven’t done it yet because a few have already done it on their own. My philosphy is, “what do you have to lose?” The worst that could happen is they say no. lol! But you haven’t lost a thing. Go for it!!
Challengers, good luck with your blog promotion efforts and I’m looking forward to day 4.
Dominique
April 8th, 2009 11:22 pm
I generally promote new articles at Midwest Guest by posting the link on Twitter and at the Absolute Write forum (there’s a thread in the Blogging area of the forum specifically for such posts). I’ve used StumbleUpon occasionally, but only for some of my favorite posts.
I do participate on one blog carnival regularly (a weekly travel Photo Friday that seems to draw a cast of fairly regular posters, many who will check out each others’ photos and comment on them) and another on an occasional basis.
I’ve made a more concerted effort in recent months to link my own posts to each other. If I’ve written about a similar topic in the past, I’ll often link to the previous story in a new post. If I participate in a photo post blog carnival, I often link that post to one of my previous articles about the photo subject.
Commenting on others’ posts brings me a bit of traffic. I’ve left a link to a specific article only if, as Darren says, its extremely relevant to the topic.
Each of these things seems to bring me a few hits here and there, but those little bits of traffic begin to sloooooooooowly build up over time.
The best result so far? Establishing contact with a local blogger by commenting on his post at a multi-author site for a local business. He followed the link from my name to my blog and we started regularly reading, and often commenting on, each others’ stuff. A couple of months elapse, and I get an email from his site’s owner offering me an ongoing freelance (paid) job as part of the site’s blogging staff. I’m starting with them this week :)
Annaleen
April 8th, 2009 11:22 pm
Enjoying every post and learned a lot in 3 days, thanks Darren
PS: so easy to apply! :)
Check out my dirty dozen http://bit.ly/ycNv
ITrush
April 8th, 2009 11:22 pm
I guess I have to work more on nos.1, 4, 5, 7, 10 and 11. Oh boy, looks like there’s a lot of work to be done here. Thanks Darren for another great lesson.
Janet Green
April 8th, 2009 11:25 pm
I have a lot going on at my blog this week so my List Post will not publish til Friday, however I regularly single out posts for additional promotion and do think it works well. I try to very tightly target my efforts, though – I don’t find Digg or Stumble to be particularly useful for me, simply because my readers largely don’t use those tools. I do a lot of commenting, forum promoting, and that type of thing.
I wanted to address something “Bill” said earlier in the comments. He noted that his comments were spread out among his blog and Twitter, and wondered if it was important to consolidate them into one place.
I say NO, it’s not important. In fact, it’s beneficial to have a trail back to your post in several different venues because you have more “lines in the water” for reeling in new readers. As with any marketing effort, you let the customers (readers) dictate their own interactions and just welcome all.
I do think you can further manage these interactions, though, for the benefit of your blog. Why not take a quick look back at the responses you got on Twitter, and write a follow-up post about them? If any of them asked a particularly good question, answer it in a new post inter-linked back to the original. If they were all just “nice post”-type comments, think of something you personally can add to the post and lead into it by saying, “My post on (x) received some very positive feedback over on Twitter, so I wanted to follow up with (xx).” Be sure to give your Twitter ID so blog readers can find/follow you.
Robert
April 8th, 2009 11:30 pm
Hi, here is an example of my lates post, it is in a list format as the previouse task and I am trying to promote it on digg as you mention on todays tasks.
http://www.abroadlanguages.com/blog/language-learning-methods-and-tools-which-method-do-you-think-is-best_327/
I had an article that was a success in stumble upon it drove traffic to my blog by 10,000 visitors in one day. For me stumble upon has worked better than digg, but I guess you never know where an article can go viral.
If you want to check it out, it’s still on stumble upon:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.abroadlanguages.com/blog/how-to-learn-languages-like-children_167/
Lydia
April 8th, 2009 11:31 pm
I’ve Twittered it, Dugg it, FBed it, now I’m going to practice my pitch here and then go try it out on the Twitter Moms community. :)
Is it possible to stay relevant in conversations with your real life friends when you’re busy microblogging your life?
My post, “Six Ways to Stay Scintillating in Person When You’ve Already Twittered It All” is an irreverent instruction manual for moms who have overshared online and have nothing left to say at the park.
http://is.gd/rk64
BenSpark
April 8th, 2009 11:33 pm
I’m working two blogs in this challenge and one of them has a great list post. That is 10 Essential Items for IZEAFest 2009 http://www.benspark.com/10-essential-items-for-izeafest-2009.html, which, Darren, you might find useful since you are attending IZEAFest 2009.
The other is my Daddy Blog, Read To Me, Dad and that post is http://readtomedad.com/survival-tools-for-dads.html about 5 items I found essential as a new dad.
But the post that really needs love and attention is http://www.benspark.com/being-responsible.html
Each post I Stumbled Dugg, and posted to Facebook. When each post is done I have them automatically go to Twitter. While I was doing this I struck up a conversation with another blogger who was doing the challenge, we spent time commenting on each other’s posts and promoting them too.
ham1299
April 8th, 2009 11:34 pm
Another good post. I hadn’t considered promoting myself as actively as you suggest. So, I added a recent posts blurb to my main page. I posted a link to my list post on facebook. I don’t necessarily feel the need to bring tons of traffic my way, so most of these ideas aren’t something I’m going to try. But, I will take what works for me and go with it. Thanks! :-)
Marco Raaphorst
April 8th, 2009 11:38 pm
ok Darren & all readers, here’s a free ringtone I have created a few days ago;
http://www.marcoraaphorst.nl/2009/04/06/klankbeeld-raaphorst-ringmorriconetone/
there are a few Dutch words included in the post, but I am sure you’ll find the mp3 enclosed
hope you like it! :-)
Ulrich
April 8th, 2009 11:40 pm
Again another great post. I am interested to see how do you want to keep it up for the days to come. Used twitter, facebook, follow up and internal links. I hope, that I will get some more portals added to my growing list of portals to free and open access video lectures/and talks at
http://info.ulrich-schrader.de/node/634 .
You keep me doing things that have been on my list for a while. Thanks for doing that.
Ulrich
Asian Weddings by Ralph
April 8th, 2009 11:47 pm
This is turning into an great list of tasks. I’m already thinking very differently about my blog and its relevance to my wedding photography and how I sell my skills to Asian and Indian couples.
Mannie
April 8th, 2009 11:51 pm
Hi Darren! I use SocialMarker.com most of the time (: It makes social bookmarking a LOT easier! If I feel my post isn’t appropriate for some sites, I just skip them!
I promoted my day two blog post & you’ve also inspired me to promote some of my older posts (:
THANK YOU for all your help! I can’t wait to get to the end of this project & see how my blog has improved!
♥Mannie
http://MannieMandible.webs.com
Bob
April 8th, 2009 11:54 pm
Darren,
Promotion is very important. We should do something everday to promote a post. The one thing that I would add is to try to use your keyword as anchor text. Might just give you an extra boast!
How to Make Wine at Home
Janet Green
April 8th, 2009 11:54 pm
I took the liberty of writing up a “blogging tips” post for my newest blog based on my comment on Bill’s question, above. In the interest of promoting a blog post, I’ll share the link here. :)
http://www.janetgreen.net/2009/04/08/are-your-blog-post-comments-scattered/
This site is an aggregator of my own original content from two other blogs, plus it’s the place where I intend to blog about social media. If anyone can help me hard-code a line break into that post title, I’d appreciate the help! :)
Also – could I ask one of my fellow “better blog” students to Digg and/or Stumble that post if you feel it’s worthy? Thanks!
Mike CJ
April 8th, 2009 11:56 pm
Phew! That was a lot of comments to wade through, and I thought I was quick off the mark. I’m struggling to find bloggers in a similar niche / level. So if you are also on this journey please take a moment to review my site, or my post Eight Habits of Successful Bloggers – http://www.mikeslife.org/content/eight-habits-successful-blogger
Please comment there and I’ll come and look at your post and maybe we can help each other.
Musings of a Housewife
April 8th, 2009 11:58 pm
Something I often do when I write something I’m particularly proud of is submit it to a friend via Stumbleupon. I usually say something like “I’d love a Stumble if you find it worthy.” I did this yesterday to a post that wasn’t part of this 31 day challenge, and I got a Stumble out of it.
I also find I get a lot of traffic from promoting my posts on Twitter, but I try to make sure to participate in the conversation so I’m not just promoting myself all the time.
Good stuff, Darren! I’m really enjoying this challenge.
Karen Chaffee
April 8th, 2009 11:59 pm
Only three days into it, Darren, and I have learned a lot already from this challenge, so a big thank you : )
Karen
kd
April 9th, 2009 12:00 am
I’m working on promoting this post. They are new pics of Angelina Jolie when she was a toddler and few in the blogging world seem to have picked up on it.
http://www.angelinajoliewatch.com/photos-of-angelina-jolie-at-23-months/
Dee Wilcox
April 9th, 2009 12:01 am
This is the “challenge” part of the challenge. Like many other bloggers, I’m hesitant to promote myself. However, I’ve been meaning to create a monthly newsletter email. Now that my new site is up, I have a theme to model the email after. Time to get moving on that front! I don’t have much of a subscription list, yet, though. Any recommendations for promoting a newsletter email or building a good list? I’ve seen other sites do giveaways. Has anyone found that to be effective as a good promotional tool?
Nicole/Madlab Post
April 9th, 2009 12:03 am
Darren,
I must have been right on the money with this post because I had already planned on sending my list post from yesterday’s 31DBBB assignment to Digg and StumbleUpon. However, I am under the weather this week and it’s become difficult to keep on top of everything.
My list post, 5 Ways Bootleg DVDs Make Your Poor turned out to be much longer than I initially planned. I was then going to make it into two different posts but had difficulty figuring out how to do it and if it would work so I left it as-is.
It’s a much more comprehensive post than many other articles on my blog so maybe it will bring in additional traffic with the promotion efforts for day 3 of the 31DBBB
Off, to Digg I go……..
Susan
April 9th, 2009 12:04 am
More than anything else, I hate the time-to-value ratio that social media takes. If you’re serious about it, it’s probably best to hire a specialist. I much prefer the networking side of things. It’s more enjoyable to build relationships than it is to add “friends” to digg. :)
Sam
April 9th, 2009 12:15 am
Great post, as you said, the days of build it and they will come are long gone. It’s all about getting your post out there. I really like the idea of getting it to spread through sites like Twitter. If anyone out there has a blog related to Mobile Phones (or anything close) hit me up and we can trade links to our posts. We can also try the Twitter thing via the “retweet” functionality.
Yesterday’s Post:
http://trendycellular.com/blog/10-technologies-that-should-be-incorporated-into-cell-phones/
My twitter account:
http://twitter.com/trendycellular
Joe
April 9th, 2009 12:16 am
Thanks for the post and the Challenge, Darren.
Today’s post had some great ideas that I will be working on.
So far, I’ve tended to use socialmarker.com for promoting my posts. It’s convenient and makes it easy to select the sites I want to post on. I select the “Best” sites, deselect a few I don’t like and add a few I do.
I seem to get more hits from Reddit than from other sites. Haven’t been as successful on some of the other sites. Still trying to figure out how to get more Diggs and Stumbles.
Search traffic is on the rise, though, so that’s a good thing.
Beverley
April 9th, 2009 12:18 am
I’m pleased that I’ve been implementing just a few of the points you’ve mentioned already, I will work on the others especially point 6.
Kimberly Veautour
April 9th, 2009 12:18 am
Good Morning,
great tips on blogging so far. I personally chose Google Applications and uses for my blog yesterday. You would be amazing at the applications people did not know were out there. For example… how about Google Sketches. 3D sketching with out the knowledge of CAD! You should give it a quick look. Thee just night be something there you didnt know about! http://www.centralmasswebdesign.com/blog
Karen
April 9th, 2009 12:19 am
Yea!!! Just getting started and I’ve learned that I’ve done something right!!
Every so often I “tweet” about a blog post.
So for today’s task of promoting your blog I stepped that up a bit.
To promote the list post from yesterday I…
made mention of it on my main site http://www.thecornerdesk.com
tweeted about it
made mention of it at FB
and
e-mailed the link to a few creative family members who, I’m sure, will pass it along.
I will not do that much promotion for every post, in fact there may be some that I really don’t promote at all, but I thought this was as good a time as any to kick it up a bit.
Now on with the rest of my day.
Good Luck All!
Fred
April 9th, 2009 12:22 am
@ Lisa / lotusessence, thanks for your kind words and the visit, appreciate.
Here is a bit of feedback on things that did not work:
The twitter name you gave cannot be found & your blog does not list a twitter as well. I saw a lot (like 8 or 9) of twitter references to your post, congratulations on the promotion; not all had a link though.
The lotus14 you use to reply to comments is a broken link.
& I could not find the RSS…
And more feedback on things that worked:
I like the colors & design of your blog; I like what you post and the style & the writing.
What caught my attention was:
Raising Our Consciousness http://lotusessence.com/2009/03/25/raising-our-consciousness/
and your yesterday’s “list homework”
10 Tips to Master the Law of Attraction http://lotusessence.com/2009/04/07/10-tips-to-master-the-law-of-attraction/
The law of attraction is only one of the laws, there are others though.
I’d like to follow you on twitter & subscribe to your postings. Please send me a message via twitter @fredinchina or @TheTrimTab
Thanks.
Shane - Inspiring your Success
April 9th, 2009 12:23 am
I always use Twitter, and Facebook via Friendfeed.. so I have seen a small inpact of social media. I am not very good at promoting posts though. I have an interview on Saturday that will be promoted heavily.
Damien Basile
April 9th, 2009 12:24 am
Generally speaking, the people that follow me in my social networks- Twitter and Facebook- know that I’m a heavy user. I also know that all of the people I am connected to in these social networks are not always on. I ALSO know that a LOT of these people connected to me are also connected to many many others.
In promoting my post when it’s fresh I tend to use Tweetlater to schedule Twitter announcements of the new blog post. With the Professional version there is a feature that allows you to use spinnable text in order to not repeat yourself the same way. I personally like to just rephrase it my own way. I look to promote the article regularly- either every hour or half an hour, depending on how generic the nature of the article is. The more people I feel it can reach the more often i’ll promote it.
I have not received a reprimand from anyone yet. I may have lost some followers but I’m always losing and gaining followers- that’s the amorphous nature of social networking.
In general, regardless of how large your network is or how many messages you write, most people will only be on their social network for about 2 hours at a time before they have to move away from it. In that time you may see the same post promoted differently either 4 times or 2. Considering all the other factors that’s not a lot.
Not everyone leaves comments. That’s one way of measuring your success. I also use Retweets as a guidepost as well. Besides just tracking your @name, I would track the separate shortened URLs you know of as well as any general phrase that shows up often in your promotion, that way you can track it when others don’t attribute the post to you.
On any major post- especially ones I will be referring to again later on- I shorten the URL with a custom URL. For example- for my latest blog post for assignment 2- A Brand Strategy Checklist, the URL is http://thecauseisthehabit.com/guide-a-brand-strategy-checklist/ BUT my shortened URL that I will always use is http://tr.im/brandlist. Why use this instead? 2 reasons. 1, it’s catchy. I am more likely to remember this than some random shortened link… so will your readers. 2, the link shortener has a metric program that shows me how well the link is doing. Obviously numbers are relative so how I use the metrics are AGAINST each other. I gauge how well a blog post is received with popularity by checking how many click throughs it gets versus the other articles. This will give me a general feeling to what people like. That being said, it’s just a guide and not the end all be all.
Last, anyone engaging you about the blog post ENGAGE THEM BACK. I’d even counter to ask the Retweeters WHAT they liked about the blog post, why they retweeted it, what didnt work for them. PROD them. Most will just blindly retweet. When you engage them most people will answer back. There’s a little part of someone that doesn’t want to be rude, so I’m sure you’ll get some sort of response.
Krishna
April 9th, 2009 12:25 am
Thanks for the tips!!
Kyle
April 9th, 2009 12:29 am
I use the social bookmarking site Tip’d quite a bit, also I think one the best ways to promote my post is to plug it right here as well as broadcast it on Twitter, I got quite a bit of traffic yesterday on my list post so check out my post today on Budgeting with GNUCash and if you like then Tip it
Hannah
April 9th, 2009 12:37 am
In focusing on content, I had kind of forgotten that my blog needs focused publicity to get new traffic. Thanks for this reminder!
What is working well for me at the moment: I am active in my blog and on social media (facebook, Twitter, WeFollow).
I reply to every comment/message and have a real interest in other people’s events, tweets & blogs. Publicity for me has been a fortuitous by-product.
H :)
Book Marketing Buzz
April 9th, 2009 12:39 am
Wow, love this! I do some of this with my authors so I’m familiar with some of it, but I had never thought about taking my list and sending it out to ezines (reworded of course)! Thanks, Darren…I’ll let you know how it goes by the end of the day, but I do want to report that my traffic shot up by 40% yesterday. Thank you!
Dorothy
Book Marketing Buzz
TheHenry
April 9th, 2009 12:41 am
I have to say, so far, all this has helped my blog. I am really glad I joined! Thanks Darren!
TheHenry
http://thehenry.net
For Everything Technology
Jeremy
April 9th, 2009 12:46 am
Hit a couple of the basics already, including tweeting it.
Since my blog is business focused, I’m not sure of the value of trying to get on Digg or Facebook or Stumbleupon. Do other B2B bloggers see much value there?
My list post was 10 Ways to quite wasting time in meetings. I think it’s a good post but not sure Diggers would have any interest.
I am going to look for good fits in other blogs and reach out to them. It doesn’t feel natural… but it’s worth a shot.
Hollie
April 9th, 2009 12:48 am
Hi Darren,
Really I am still a very novice blogger, and haven’t taken it seriously and well that is slowly changing but I am thinking how much do you promote until you get it looking exactly how you wanted?
I did post today. http://commoncentsmom.com/2009/04/08/what-works-for-me-saving-money-on-dental-care/
I then shared it in a carnival and on twitter. I also linked to an older post within my blog.
Improvementman
April 9th, 2009 12:49 am
I have been letting my twitter and facebook networks know when I make a new post. That has definitely been the major source of visitors.
Dan
Fred
April 9th, 2009 12:50 am
Bill, I like your post with the top 10 reasons you are learning Chinese… Sobre, concise, to the point & a touch of humour.
http://billglover.co.uk/archives/2009/04/07/1062
Good luck with the studies, the running & … the girl
I like the design & clarity of your blog as well
Fredrik - Självförsvarsbloggen
April 9th, 2009 12:52 am
Thank you for today’s lession.
One thing I reccon should be on that list is that one should ping blog servers with an update.
Like:
Aitellu, Bloggnytt, Blogsearch Google, Feedburner, Nyhetsfilter, Nyligen, Tailsweep, Technorati, Twingly
Regards,
Fredrik
Självförsvarsbloggen
En blogg som hjälper vanliga människor att bli bättre på självförsvar
Bradford Shimp
April 9th, 2009 12:53 am
I do most of my promotion via Twitter. It is also a good place to build relationships with other bloggers.
I have done article submissions, but mostly linked back to the main site. I will have to try linking back to particular articles.
I would love to get some Digg or StumbleUpon traffic, but not sure if my appeal is wide enough. I think the best practice is to build up a following and build relationships with similar bloggers.
Tobias
April 9th, 2009 12:59 am
Done. Mostly points 3 and 6. With a post about an animated gif issue in Delphi 7, with legacy issues.
http://development.tobiasopdenbrouw.nl/post/2009/04/08/Animated-Gif-in-Delphi-7.aspx
Also, someone friended me, I think based on social group pushing my posts, based on an earlier 31-dbbb action. So it’s working, cool enough. Still not getting 100s of readers daily, though, so anyone who wants to come by, you’re all more than welcome! Also, let me know who you are if you’ve also just started blogging, are using ASP.NET, Delphi 7 and/ or BlogEngine.NET.
lulugal11
April 9th, 2009 1:00 am
I promote my posts on Twitter every day.
Palma | Buddha Trance
April 9th, 2009 1:01 am
I agree with Alan, that building profiles from scratch makes it a lot harder, compared to when you already have a social presence.
I do most of the things you recommend, but the only thing I am really resistant to, is asking other bloggers, like a cold call. I’d rather have people link to me because they like my content. I also thought that self-promotion on social sites like Digg is really frowned upon. I’ll look into it now.
What I really enjoy doing, is leaving meaningful comments on other blogs and establish a relationship. Linkbaks in posts happen way more naturally that way.
With that said, since we are a group here, I’ll take up on what Fred from The Trim Tab kindly offered. My blog is about higher consciousness, and I will propose to him one of my posts that I think is along the lines of his blog, and that is http://www.buddhatrance.com/artificial-intelligence-and-consciousness
Thanks for another great tutorial!
The Diva on a Diet
April 9th, 2009 1:01 am
Good morning all! Day 3 and I’ve already learned so much. Thanks again, Darren … and the rest of you too!
Its reassuring to learn that I’m already doing many of the things you suggest. As a foodblogger, my greatest source of promotion to date has been commenting on other, more popular, food blogs. That is an invaluable tip!
Though I’ve only just begun to “tweet” … I must say that I haven’t found it as valuable, in terms of driving traffic, as I assumed it would be. I wonder if I’m doing something wrong? For those who have had success in gaining traffic from “tweets” … do you have any tips to share?
I’ve had more luck with Facebook links than I have with Twitter so far.
Here’s the link for my list post:
http://beacheats.blogspot.com/2009/04/special-report-diva-tells-all.html
… and its not strictly a list. Its written in my voice, my style, which is what my readers have come to expect and enjoy.
Cheers!
Diva ~
http://beacheats.blogspot.com/
Palma | Buddha Trance
April 9th, 2009 1:03 am
I agree with Alan, that building profiles from scratch makes it a lot harder, compared to when you already have a social presence.
I do most of the things you recommend, but the only thing I am really resistant to, is asking other bloggers, like a cold call. I’d rather have people link to me because they like my content. I also thought that self-promotion on social sites like Digg is really frowned upon. I’ll look into it now.
What I really enjoy doing, is leaving meaningful comments on other blogs and establish a relationship. Linkbaks in posts happen way more naturally that way.
With that said, since we are a group here, I’ll take up on what Fred from The Trim Tab kindly offered. My blog is about higher consciousness, and I will propose to him one of my posts that I think is along the lines of his blog, and that is
http://www.buddhatrance.com/artificial-intelligence-and-consciousness
Thanks for another great tutorial!
Debi Linton
April 9th, 2009 1:03 am
I have a few linkfarming blogs on my own blogroll, and am aware of carnivals when they’re around in my section of the blogosphere. I just have to be more on the ball with posting, though I have managed to build up a network of friends who co-promote when it’s relevant, to carnivals.
I do most of these -including the use of twitterfeed (http://twitterfeed.com/) to auto-update twitter with my blog posts – occassionally I get a retweet for it and I’m sure I get readers I don’t get from the blog alone – and facebook. But the extra pointers are helpful. I’ve finally finished my list post and I think it’s worth the extra mile for promotion.
RhondaL
April 9th, 2009 1:09 am
My promo efforts feel very inefficient. I comment on blogs and in forums, but it feels very needle-in-a-haystack. I’ve guest posted on friends’ blogs but didn’t realized that the one with the highest traffic didn’t link. I’m almost to the point that I’m about to ditch the whole commenting tactic and just produce more content.
Mario
April 9th, 2009 1:12 am
Hi everybody,
I added a re-tweet banner on the end of my post, what seems to be very helpful. People who like the post just need to click on the banner (or button, however you want to name it) and their Twitter update is filled in automatically. They just have to hit enter and it’s done.
The post is: http://mario-live.com/blog/2009/02/doer-instance/
If you don’t know how to do it, just right click and look at the properties of the link. You can do it in the same way.
Have a nice day ahead,
Mario
alone
April 9th, 2009 1:15 am
wow. i feel inspired from this post!
i’ll practice it. thanks 4 sharing! =)
LaTosha Johnson
April 9th, 2009 1:16 am
Darren,
Awesome information as always. I am currently promoting “ How to have an effective conference call” http://targetstars.blogspot.com on Twitter. I just posted this today and I find Twitter to be a great way to call attention to any product or service. I want to thank you for sharing Stumble Upon Advertising and BlogAds with me. I never knew about these services and can’t wait to start using them!
LaTosha
Gina
April 9th, 2009 1:18 am
One of the ways I used #1 when I was a brand new blogger was by trying to provide scoops to the larger blogs. If I broke a frugal deal on my blog, I was eager to share it with the larger blogs and would send to 5-6 at a time, who would then link back to me. I wasn’t just asking for a link, I was providing them with enough info to do their own post, and in my niche that works well. I’ve received emails from new bloggers that seem so impersonal: “Hey, look what I posted!” and I tend to ignore those. The same thing applies when advertisers send me PR stuff; if you read my blog and can include some evidence that you know me or my audience, I’m more likely to take your request seriously.
Blog Carnivals are also a big source of traffic and way to build a new blog. I participate in several regularly, and I’ve been looking at blogs outside my niche as a way to draw more readers in.
stephanerd
April 9th, 2009 1:18 am
Great tip Mario! I actually use the Sociable plugin on Freelancedom, so that there are links to a number of social bookmarking sites at the end of each of my post.
http://yoast.com/wordpress/sociable/
Does anyone know if there’s a way to track its use on your blog?
Lee Ka Hoong
April 9th, 2009 1:19 am
Another great tutorial Darren! I’ve just done my list post and just submitted it 10 minutes ago. (http://myblog2day.com/2009/04/12-attitudes-a-successful-blogger-should-have/)
1 more traffic tips but not sure whether is it working, I submitted my URL to ping sites, I just dropped the URL and left some related description of my post. I did get few traffic everytimes after I’d submitted it. :)
Regards,
Lee
Eric Miltsch
April 9th, 2009 1:28 am
If your content is strong enough, people will link to it, comment on it, submit it and re-tweet it for you…
i was fortunate enough to have a couple of re-tweets yesterday for a little extra exposure…
Commenting on the links within the comments here is a fantastic idea; something you should try to do a few times a week if possible.
As for promoting yesterday’s post, I sent the post out via Ping.fm to help drive traffic – that post received the most traffic yet.
Thanks Darren!
Eric
Vin | NaturalBias.com
April 9th, 2009 1:29 am
Although I don’t have a huge following on Facebook and Twitter, I’ve been using them to promote my posts for a while with limited results. Recently, I’ve been having much more success with StumbleUpon. On Monday, I received 1,900 visits from StumbleUpon for this Cholesterol article. While that may not be much traffic for some of you, my blog is still relatively new and this is certainly much more traffic than I’ve been able to get from Facebook and Twitter.
Mario
April 9th, 2009 1:30 am
Stephanerd,
I use this share-this button under each post. Is this comparable to this yoast plugin?
Oh, before I forget. I don’t remember how I did it but every new post is automatically posted to Twitter. I really can’t find what I did to make this happen. Anyway, it works.
C u soon guys. I like this challenge.
Regards,
Mario
Hannah
April 9th, 2009 1:32 am
I comment on alot of blogs so now I try and put my latest post or my one i’d like to promote as the link on that comment – for example my one today should take you to my list from yesterday (which got published this afternoon)
Gayle
April 9th, 2009 1:33 am
I have two blogs that I am working on through this challenge. I usually use twitter whenever I post new material. I also use twitter when I list new items in my art shop.
I used stumbleupon for a while until I read on another site that this is frowned upon because you should be stumbling other’s sites and not your own. So now I’m very cautious about how I promote my blog and my art.
stephanerd
April 9th, 2009 1:34 am
Mario – ShareThis seems comparable to Sociable. It’s always good to nudge your readers i the right direction. :)
Shantanu
April 9th, 2009 1:35 am
Dear Darren,
This was one topic I wanted someone to discuss. I use a lot of promotion for my blog.
It has its own twitter handle with an autopost enabled @threetips
I have a technology blog so can I use SU and Digg to promote my posts without running the risk of being banned?
Again my statistics say that most of my traffic comes from Google search engines. How do I optimize this?
I have been interlinking within and trying a few SEO tips.
I suppose what I have been missing on is commenting on Social networks, forums and other blogs.
*note to self: begin this now*
Anyway, I did learn a few things today.
Take care.
Shantanu.
http://www.threetipsaday.com
@threetips
Becky
April 9th, 2009 1:36 am
I’ve got two list posts for my two blogs. I’m planning on promoting via Facebook and a Blog Catalog message — those seem to be the places where I have been able to start networking.
Please check out the two posts and let me know what you think! I can be contacted via either blog.
http://wintheweddinggame.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/this-never-gets-old/
http://justcallmemsfrizzle.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/fis/
Glen
April 9th, 2009 1:37 am
Thanks for everything that you do for bloggers Darren. I am promoting http://distancetips.com/2009/04/07/10-items-to-include-in-your-online-class-introduction-post/ on Twitter and Facebook.
Christina Ethridge - North Idaho Real Estate
April 9th, 2009 1:39 am
I had actually already promoted the post to both my twitter and facebook sphere yesterday :). Today I will promote it via Active Rain (industry related community in which I have a blog presence).
Kim
April 9th, 2009 1:43 am
I always tweet the url of my latest post and also note that a new post is up on my Facebook page.
I’m in an interesting situation because folks send their posts to me to promote as I run the nursing blog carnival.
I did my usual promotion of yesterday’s post:
The Top Five Reasons for NOT Getting a BSN…BUSTED!
http://www.emergiblog.com/2009/04/the-top-five-reasons-for-not-getting-a-bsnbusted.html
But am now going to read about the other ways to promote!
This is turning into a great project! : )
lm
April 9th, 2009 1:44 am
Hi,
Day 2 task has motivated me to do a proper list post. Here I am, midnight 12.00 am in Malaysis. I have completed list post at http://perform-swot-analysis.blogspot.com.
Bloggers: I am a beginner, please give me input to improve
Darren, thanks again. I have to catch up day#3 task
Kris
April 9th, 2009 1:45 am
Hi there,
So from time to time, I do internally link individually posts on my blog and will occasionally mention in emails that my blog was recently updated.
And I did post of a few comments on other blogs including a link to my list post. Which I also did on this blog yesterday and did see increased traffic.
But I’m thinking my list post from yesterday might be of less interest that my post revealing the Best Resource on the Financial Crisis, which you can check out here http://teamportugal.blogspot.com/2009/03/best-resource-on-financial-crisis.html, which also contains multiple examples internal post linkage. Peace.
callonjudy
April 9th, 2009 1:53 am
I posted my list post to FB. New posts are automatically fed to my Twittter account. Will submit new post to FB & Twitter. Not so comfortable with doing the link to a blogger. Not yet anyway. I should have more courage by the end of the challenge – I hope.
Wayne John
April 9th, 2009 1:56 am
Hi Darren,
Launched my post on schedule last night. 50 Important Web Development Guidelines.
I’m already in the habit of doing some light promotion, nothing too obnoxious so this is a nice post, and perhaps an easier day than what I suspect may be coming down the tubes at us. :)
Off to see what other people have done!
Cheers!
William Lang
April 9th, 2009 1:57 am
This worked wonders for me as well. I’ve never attracted more than 20 or so hits in a single day and after writing a list post – my blog soared over 100 unique views! Awesome. Several comments and ReTweets. The list post definitely worked for me and I’m psyched for Day Four.
Amy
April 9th, 2009 1:57 am
This was a very interesting task! I decided to stay more focused with my promotion and NOT throw the net too wide. With that, I resisted the temptation to tweet about it as I don’t have a concentrated base for that. To review, I’m a singer with a singing website. With a specialized field, I decided a specialized promotion of my post: http://operamouth.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/top-10-tuesdays-your-songbook/ – see what I just did there? ;)
So, I did three things:
1. I actually have a collegue that has a website that posts auditions and, when you subscribe, sends emails to you of updated auditions in the area. I emailed her first because I know her and also, I honestly wanted her feedback on my post and asked her to put that feedback in the comments section. I also wanted to ask her if I could link to her website on my blog, which I actually had been meaning to email her about anyway.
2. Tapped in to my Facebook network which are all friends and singing collegues. I wanted to get their websites on my blog and also invite them to make comments about my post based on their own experience.
3. I commented here at your website and linked to my post.
We’ll see how it goes!
Vaughn
April 9th, 2009 1:57 am
Hi again,
This blog is cool! It’s simulation learning which works best for me.
* My website is http://www.breakthepovertycurse.com
I am very passionate about poverty as I’ve been sort of an advocate for the poor over the years.
** My twitter is vsberkeley. Each day I post one or inspirational thoughts, or some tidbits. [Please follow me.]
On my website, I have a link to the Bulletin Board where my goal is to capture stories about poverty. I want to show how horrible and repugnant. We need to create awareness.
** Please log in and write your own horror stories or awkward moments due to poverty. It can help us gasp, laugh or cry. (think university student living on mac and cheeze or worst)
Lovin this blog.
Cheers,
Vaughn Berkeley, MBA
dcgrrl
April 9th, 2009 2:06 am
This is a perfectly-timed project for me, as I’m concurrently taking a web design course, which will wrap up mid-May. So my list post is:
8 sites to improve your site design
http://dcgrrl.blogspot.com/2009/04/8-sites-to-help-you-with-your-site.html
I’ve gathered many more resources, but I find once a list gets over 10 points, I get lost.
I’m off to Tweet about this, [http://twitter.com/dcgrrl] and hopefully gain some users for this crummy old site that I can convert when I launch my new site next month.
Tamikka
April 9th, 2009 2:06 am
Hi Darren,
I appreciate the email that was sent to share the link for this blog. I have been using this technique and found some blogs that I will add to my RSS feed.
Hopefully, when the forums are up, we can share our areas of interests to find other like-bloggers.
Until this happens, would you mind if the participants put a quick blurb/tags that share the topic(s) of your blog? (e.g. weight loss, fitness, personal) This would be easier than having to check each commenters link to find out their area of blogging.
Thanks!
@Tamikka
weight loss, fitness, personal
Ethan Stanislawski
April 9th, 2009 2:11 am
Posted it on twitter and emailed it to a couple of related parties. Not the type of thing that would make the front page of Digg, and I’m hesitant to submit too much to StumbleUpon; will post on Facebook shortly.
http://www.tynansanger.com/2009/04/top-10-quotes-from-english-language.html
Kayla
April 9th, 2009 2:12 am
I started doing this to my posts a few months ago and saw a dramatic difference in website traffic. It’s more targeted traffic too, which I love. You’ve mentioned a few things I haven’t tried here as well, I’ll start to use other methods you’ve mentioned in future posts.
Michael Grills
April 9th, 2009 2:14 am
I asked for a link on a prestigious blog.
I twittered, facebooked, and Linkedin, I dugg, and stumbled. I have to get to drawing now.
http://arthub.ca/2009/04/07/10-online-tools-for-artists-and-illustrators/
Amber @ Classic Housewife
April 9th, 2009 2:14 am
Done and done! I linked to my homemade biscuits article in an article I wrote a while back about cooking from scratch (which is one of my promoted articles on my homepage.) While doing that, I realized there were a few other recent posts that could be linked to in that article as well. I’ll have to get on that. :)
I also tweeted of course, but I also added a new line at the bottom which now displays right above the Share/Save button: “Like this? Click on that little Share/Save button and do something about it!” Do you find that stuff like that works/helps? We shall see I suppose. :)
Sarah Mae
April 9th, 2009 2:16 am
Writing a guest post for another blog and linking from it to another article on your blog works well. Also having someone guest post for you and including a link to a similiar article on your blog.
For a laugh: 7 Pregnancy and Newborn Myths http://likeawarmcupofcoffee.blogspot.com/2009/04/7-pregnancy-and-newborn-myths.html
Jared Covington
April 9th, 2009 2:20 am
Love the post, Darren–the vast majority of my blog traffic comes from links posted on Facebook and Twitter (14% and 25%, respectively, on my list post from yesterday).
That being said, I will qualify that by stating that, to me, creating high-quality content still seems to be the key, even if it is as simple as a list. I get more than twice the number of site visitors when someone other than me sends out a tweet about one of my posts that they have found useful. Combining the best content that I can with indirect pitches to other bloggers via social media (especially Twitter & Facebook) seems to be the most effective way that I have found to promote specific posts.
Looking forward to the next task!
Jon Reid
April 9th, 2009 2:23 am
Facebook tips:
- If you want to drive traffic to your actual blog, don’t incorporate your RSS feed as Facebook notes.
- Don’t put the URL in an ordinary status update. Instead, add it as a link. If your post has a picture, the thumbnail will make it “pop” out as people scan Facebook.
- When add a link, Facebook will show your post’s “description” tag, so make sure you include that in your posts if you can.
Jorge Olson
April 9th, 2009 2:27 am
I love the 11 tips on blog promotion. The tip on promoting a post is well taken as targeting content is one of the best ways to satisfy readers.
When dealing with self promotion, product promotion or company promotion blogging is the way to go. For me, article marketing got the best response over all.
Thanks,
Jorge Olson
HazardousPaste
April 9th, 2009 2:29 am
A great many of my hits come from linking individual posts in my forum(s) signatures. Especially if your blog is specialized this is a good way to generate traffic.
Annkur
April 9th, 2009 2:31 am
Ok, I did write a list post. Probably my first list post in 2 years. Just realised that this is the kind of post that I like reading myself on other sites … Hope this one gets some traction on SU and Digg
http://onlygizmos.com/the-5-point-check-to-rate-a-gadget/2009/04/
Mario
April 9th, 2009 2:32 am
For the first time I just took the step to nudge some other bloggers, where my post is related and adds some value for their readers.
I mentioned that most of the blogs I tried to contact had a lack of possibilities of doing so, because they don’t have any contact information. If they read this right now, I want to suggest to participate in this challenge (lol).
One blog asked to put the link on deicious and tag it ‘for:their-sitename’
I learn new things every day. It’s exciting.
Beth Bodenstein
April 9th, 2009 2:33 am
This task is one that I know I’ve ignored, so it was a good assignment for me today.
What did I do? I searched for other construction blogs and left specific comments on three of them and linked back to my blog. I know I have to keep doing this, but it takes more time than I have some days.
Anyone here who has any interest in the construction industry is welcome to follow my blog and/or my twitter feed @pcba
Psynister
April 9th, 2009 2:37 am
I was running short on time yesterday, so I went ahead and combined it with today’s.
http://psynister.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/new-paladin-updates/
Susan
April 9th, 2009 2:39 am
I am going to be saying similar things here – hard to promote yourself etc, etc, and Darren hits it on the head about moving out of your comfort zone.I am not a natural Facebook candidate either. However I have found something that bridges two of my areas of writing interest so I am pretty pleased.
http://www.nativespain.com/six-examples-personal-empowerment-being-native-spainer
How To Blog
April 9th, 2009 2:42 am
Hi Darren,
Like you, I have a blog all about blogging. I have a previous list-post (not yesterday’s) that I think is good and relevant to your blog:
http://wordpress2go.com/7-habits-of-extremely-effective-bloggers/
Would you consider linking to it from your blog? If not, please could you say why not? (I won’t be offended!)
If anyone else wants to Digg (or Stumble or…) this post I’d be very grateful. I’ll happily digg other blog posts in return.
Sarah
Kelly
April 9th, 2009 2:43 am
Consider myself promoted..I have pimped my photography list on twitter. Once last night, once today. Yeah!
Heather Allard
April 9th, 2009 2:43 am
Hi Darren,
Yep, once again, you’re right. As bloggers, we DO have to promote more than our homepage URL. By promoting specific posts, we can cater that to a specific audience and thus, broaden our audience as a whole.
My blog is for mom entrepreneurs and as someone who has “been there, done that”, I know how valuable it can be for mom entrepreneurs to get some good media coverage. So, I promote the heck out of http://www.themogulmom.com/2009/02/23/the-mogul-mom-featuresyou/to help them do just that.
Thanks so much for the 3rd great lesson!! :)
Heather
Andrew Bennett
April 9th, 2009 2:51 am
Thanks Darren – I’m loving this project.
My blog is very niche-oriented (fly fishing travel) and by far my best source of quality traffic has been posting specific articles on fly fishing related forum sites. Yesterday I posted a link relevant to an even more targeted site (fly fishing with spey rods – not my list post since it won’t run for another week) and my daily traffic nearly tripled from its average. Even better, the traffic from the niche forum site spent almost 5 minutes more time on my blog than average!
Here’s that post–
http://blog.deneki.com/2009/04/steelhead-rig-roundup.html
Andrew
Kimberly Veautour
April 9th, 2009 2:51 am
How funny is this. I actually wrote my task yesterday ( write a list blog) on a list of ways to promote your blog postings. Try this http://www.kymberstyle.com
Happy Blogging!
Allen of Eating Out Loud
April 9th, 2009 2:53 am
Interestingly enough, I didn’t see much of a swing in traffic from posting in the comments, but maybe it’s because I’m focused narrowly on food and most of the bloggers here seem to be in other industries.
I’ve worked on promoting my post via the ideas above. Here is the post for anyone who missed it yesterday:
10 Unique Uses for Hard Boiled Eggs
Please bookmark if you enjoy it!
Allen
Follow me: @eatingoutloud
Tim Bursch
April 9th, 2009 2:59 am
Darren,
One decent referrer that I have had good luck with is Linkedin. I installed the WP app on LI. When I have a new post my connections see the update and traffic follows.
One other tip that has helped on social networks is asking a question to get people thinking and then clicking.
Cheers.
Smart Boy
April 9th, 2009 3:26 am
Excellent thoughts on blog promotion and marketing. It seems to me that I get the best results from posting to my social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, etc…and using sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. I also receive a majority of my traffic to a new blog post through RSS feed updates, that are sent to reader’s emails or feed readers.
Thank you for the tips!
Daniele
April 9th, 2009 3:31 am
Good post, Darren.
Sometimes I promote my posts in my personal message on MSN Messenger, so my contact names can see the url and read my post. You can also do it with Skype.
smashill
April 9th, 2009 3:36 am
It’s so sickly amazing how many people take part in this, here are 33 strategies to Creative Capital
Jon Reid
April 9th, 2009 3:44 am
Re item 4: I just added “Recent Posts” to my sidebar. Never considered it before because I assumed people generally saw the home page. But most of my traffic is coming from searches which land people on individual posts, so having “Recent Posts” visible everywhere makes sense!
Erin Slusher
April 9th, 2009 3:50 am
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and knowledge Darren. I have been writing my blog about eight types of prayer for almost a year now, but have not done anything to promote it. This is great information. I am enjoying the challenge.
Guillermo
April 9th, 2009 3:51 am
I have to tell you Darren… it was not easy! I was never a salesman so having to do this requires special attention. But I made it… I’ve sent a couple of emails to others bloggers in my niche… Let’s see what they say.
Thanks Darren! You are doing a great job!
cb
April 9th, 2009 3:52 am
I like that these challenges provide just an extra bit of motivation – I’ve occasionally promoted individual posts on related forums when I think they answer questions that are relevant and although I’ve been used to posting my posts to Twitter – I haven’t used the social bookmarking sites much .. yet!
Internet Business With Purpose
April 9th, 2009 3:53 am
I made a list that not only promotes a popular post on my site it promotes your site as well.
http://www.reallifepurpose.com/promoting-a-blog-post/
Thanks fro the great advice,
Greg
Alex Stewart
April 9th, 2009 3:54 am
Thanks for the great post!
I’ve had some great success by just submitting my posts to stumbleupon before, but I’m going to try the targeted ad campaign after reading about it here.
We’ll see how it goes, but keep up the great work!
Mary
April 9th, 2009 4:09 am
Darren, Thanks for doing this. Such a cool idea. So far, I’ve revised my “about” page a bit based on your elevator pitch suggestions. I’ve done list posts before, and since I have a couple regular features I do, I haven’t done a list post yet this week, but I’m going to write one and keep it on hand to post in a couple days. I’ve been promoting posts using Twitter and Facebook, and a while back I sent a link to one post to a blogger I really admire, and she ended up linking to it from her site — total lucky break for me. I got a huge spike in traffic, which gradually tapered off again, but I still think I gained at least a couple long-term readers out of that, and I caught the eye of a notable blogger, which was encouraging.
Rita
April 9th, 2009 4:12 am
Great tips. I’ve increased my traffic by leaving comments on other blogs.
Your other ideas are helpful. I’ll get up my courage and try them.
What about StumbleUpon? I read that if you try to promote your own articles, the site will not like it and not feature your posts anymore. Is that true?
Rita at http://boomersurvive-thriveguide.typepad.com
Jackie
April 9th, 2009 4:19 am
Great list Darren. Started to do your steps and its not that hard in fact. I am taking baby steps in learning all your how to’s.
Thank you
amanda lee
April 9th, 2009 4:27 am
Tweeted about yesterday’s list post. :-)
Also, I’m really glad you’re making all this info available to us, Darren. This week has really forced me to get my bum in gear–in addition to completing all your daily challenges, I’m finding myself writing content ahead, contacting other bloggers, and finally dealing with some theme issues I’d had with Wordpress for a long, long time. I am loving it!
Claudia Meydrech
April 9th, 2009 4:35 am
From my WEEDS AND SEEDS SWAP blog today, I hope to see what I can do about promoting this post a bit later:
10 HARD TO KILL GARDEN HERBS AND PLANTS
http://www.weedsandseedswap.com/10-hard-to-kill-garden-herbs-and-plants/
Thanks for another great lesson!
Claudia
Helene
April 9th, 2009 4:36 am
Yes, I did this last week…found a link on HARO and followed up and this is what I got out of it…
http://www.blogger.com/posts.g?blogID=7841329001620837825
Grateful for other tips today…am going at it now!
picky cook
April 9th, 2009 4:43 am
I keep a list of places I submit my posts to. After publishing I go to these places and submit the link to my new recipe/post.
I am lucky being in the food category we have many awesome submission sites such as Tastespotting, FoodGawker, and Photo Grazing. I also use Facebook and Twitter to promote/share my recipes/posts.
Having a really great time with this series – I look forward to tomorrow.
Here are some links to my list post on the above mentioned sites….
FoodGawker – http://foodgawker.com/post/2009/04/08/21308/
Tastespotting –
http://www.tastespotting.com/detail/39645/What-to-Buy-Organic
Linsey
April 9th, 2009 4:47 am
I tweeted the post (the “10 easy tips for building a cookbook library”) and it was picked up and RT by a couple other folks. One of them also stumbled it. I’m now going to contact another blogger who routinely links to my content….
It has driven a little bit of traffic to the blog – I think I’ve had a 10% increase, maybe more.
Laura Davis
April 9th, 2009 4:48 am
I already always promote my blog posts via Twitter – automatically on my blog’s own Twitter account http://www.twitter.com/pooloflife and the ones I think are most relevant to my followers on my own personal account: http://www.twitter.com/lcdavis.
I also have a Twitter account for a fashion blog I co-write http://www.twitter.com/stylecity and one for the arts content I write for the newspaper I work for: http://www.twitter.com/LDParts. The fashion blog has a Facebook account too which is a good source for stories.
When I set up the Pool of Life blog I contacted some other Liverpool local history bloggers and said I was including them in my rolecall of blogs. They all responded to say they would add my blog to theirs too.In my experience, if you are willing to show interest in someone else’s blog then they are likely to reciprocate.
Raju
April 9th, 2009 4:59 am
Seeing hundreds of comments for every post here is great. But I am afraid it will help any meaningful conversation. I am really sorry guys, i am not adding any value through my comment but anyway I completely agree with darren with the means of promoting the post
Jason R Fisher
April 9th, 2009 5:00 am
If anyone is interested we could make a mini carnival out of our list posts. I am contacting people who commented on yesterdays post and are in the money/PF/frugal area to see if they are interested.
If you are let me know and we can set it up it would be a great way to all help each other
jasonrfisher at gmail dot com
Sharon Hurley Hall
April 9th, 2009 5:05 am
My email newsletter goes out on Friday and I’ll be publicising my post then. I’ve already promoted it on Twitter and will mention it on FB later today.
Kestrel
April 9th, 2009 5:05 am
I Tweeted that my most-viewed post is no longer relevant, and linked to a more recent, and relevant, article (regarding World of Warcraft addons).
I also repeated the tweet in a chatroom populated by World of Warcraft bloggers (if you don’t play, there are a lot more than you might imagine!).
Within minutes, that article was the second most-frequent landing spot on my blog (per Woopra), and the second most-popular article for the day (behind my most recent post, which behavior is to be expected).
GatorWade
April 9th, 2009 5:05 am
Thank You for this post. I confess I often do feel timid when it comes to promoting myself online. I know I need to and have to but a part of me just thinks it may come across as arrogant. I will swallow my pride and tackle a few of the methods recommended and see what happens! Thank You
Larrie Campbell
April 9th, 2009 5:07 am
I still have so much to learn. If anybody has found the best way to go about promoting others blogs and your own in return, do share. Thanks!
Carrie
April 9th, 2009 5:09 am
here’s my list post http://www.itsfrugalbeinggreen.com/2009/04/air-fresheners-air-pollution.html about what you can do to make your house smell better instead of using air fresheners.
PunditMom
April 9th, 2009 5:11 am
I promoted by post, 10 Reasons Mothers are More Political in 2009, by tweeting it )it was re-tweeted by a few people) and cross-posting it on the group political blog I write for, MOMocrats. I linked to the 10 Reasons post in today’s post — Oprah and the Mommyblogggers Should Go One Step Further.
http://punditmom1.blogspot.com/2009/04/oprah-and-mommybloggers-should-go-one.html
Douglas T
April 9th, 2009 5:15 am
Writing about something is one thing. Self promotion is a whole different thing. I’m far from a new blogger, but I still find this difficult. That being said, if anyone is interested in knowing 9 Reasons Why Accessibility Matters, go take a look.
Kacie
April 9th, 2009 5:15 am
My list post was
10 Things I’ve Learned to Love about Dallas
You are right, people do like lists, and tonight I will follow it up with 10 Things I Still Hate about Dallas
I promoted this via facebook, twitter, and yelp.com’s Dallas talk section.
http://papuagirlindallas.blogspot.com/2009/04/10-things-ive-learned-to-love-about.html
Sam
April 9th, 2009 5:20 am
I really like the Twitter idea, with so many of us we could potentially reach 1,000 of people that may not know our blogs are around. We should start a twitter listing here. We can then retweet each others posts. I’m totally open to retweeting posts to my followers. My Twitter account is:
http://twitter.com/sambuzin
Fiona Phillips
April 9th, 2009 5:21 am
Well, I’ve posted the links to the articles on Twitter and FB but am still thinking about how I could follow the other suggestions. Hm. Have a look:
http://murderingthetext.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-top-5-amateur-dramatics-resources.html
and
http://fionajphillips.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-list-of-creativity.html
Kevin Cline
April 9th, 2009 5:21 am
I posted yesterdays post on my Facebook page. Does that count?
Marc
April 9th, 2009 5:22 am
Thank for this. I have always bumbled my way through promotion. The post I promoted was a short and humorous one: 7 Places it’d be Funny to Pee On/Off Of
http://www.octavarius.com/2009/04/07/7-places-itd-be-funny-to-pee-onoff-of/
I went with Social Media, since the subject matter is a little juvanile (the website is about improv comedy), and I got a good response. I also use Facebook Connect, which helped a lot, because user comments travelled back to Facebook and notified their friends of the post. It didn’t get huge traction, but hopefully the same techniques will for a more serious post.
Justin
April 9th, 2009 5:22 am
I’d just had a unique thing happen to my iPod – it being run over by a pickup and left in the snow – and it still works! As a photographer, I took pictures and chronicled the story. I submitted the story to Digg and Stumbleupon, as well as linked to it on Twitter.
We’ll see how it goes!
http://themosaicphoto.com/blog/04/ipod-snow/
Nikhil
April 9th, 2009 5:24 am
Thanks for the article,
I generally promote my articles or posts via Twitter or Facebook. They are very powerful tools as you said. I also try digg & stumble submissions. Out of which I get more traffic by stumble.
Here are my two posts
10 Exceptional Web Designs on the Net-
http://tinyurl.com/dcayar
31 Best Logos of the March-
http://tinyurl.com/dd7stn
Vince Ong
April 9th, 2009 5:28 am
Blog updated with new post: Unite For Hunger And Hope
http://vinceong.com/2009/04/unite-for-hunger-and-hope/
Stephen Berkeley
April 9th, 2009 5:28 am
stephen
April o8, 2009 3.27pm
Salutations,
I am new to blogging so please forgive my greenness at this. Although under normal circumstances I am not easily impressed, but on my son’s urging, I have found this blog to be quite refreshing.
My web site is http://www.caniofferyouacigarette.com
After smoking 4-5 packs daily for 16 years, I quit cold turkey twenty-two years ago. There is actually a way that an addicted smoker can quit, and I have written my book to provide hope for those wishing to quit. Its easy, all you have to do is to want to quit. I am an advocate for healthier lungs, cleaner air and prevention of smoking related diseases in children.
My twitter is father_author
There is a link to link to the bulletin board, where you can unload some of you timely or ghastly orjust simply bizarre smoking stories. I’m sure it would provide some form of entertainment or edification, depending on your sense of humor.
I look forward to hearing from many of you smokers.
salud,
stephen Father-Author-Teacher
Bob
April 9th, 2009 5:35 am
Created a digg account and added a post on ABCs of Self Defence.
http://digg.com/educational/ABCs_of_Self_Defense
Robert Bravery
April 9th, 2009 5:40 am
Hey Darren,
THanks once again. Is this commetn counted as a promotion. Perhaps I can say, “Please Darren, promote my blog post”
Any way, I took the list we created for yesterdays homework. Posted it, and tweeted it. I ma also, I suppose in a way, promoting it here.
So people please take a look at the top 10 web design mistakes and add any points of your own. It can be found at http://www.integralwebsolutions.co.za/Blog/EntryId/193/Top-10-web-design-mistakes.aspx
I also use a new service called pimpthisblog.com. Try it out. I have gotten 5% more traffic this week. Not a lot, but everything counts right.
Kikolani
April 9th, 2009 5:40 am
This is the perfect followup to creating a great list post – making sure we promote it properly. I am submitting 8 Ways to Use Delicious and Social Bookmarking on StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter and other sites. Please join me on those sites to share in article promotion!
Deanna
April 9th, 2009 5:42 am
Well, didn’t know I’d be ahead of the game. Yesterday after I wrote my list post I automatically tweeted about it. So as in high school, I’m ahead of the curve!
Taylor Dobbs
April 9th, 2009 5:46 am
I posted a link to my post on Facebook and got about a hit every minute for a half hour. Great ideas, and these will definitely expand my promo. Thanks!
Baker @ Man Vs. Debt
April 9th, 2009 5:49 am
I’ve had a lot of luck promoting by blog using these mthods today. I’ve also came in contact with at least 3 new bloggers as a direct result of this challenge. I can’t wait until the forums get up!
http://manvsdebt.com
http://twitter.com/manvsdebt
Jennifer
April 9th, 2009 5:49 am
Self promotion? You bring the thing that’s most uncomfortable for me to do to the table on the third day? BAAAGGGH!
I’m still pretty new to blogging, still gaining my bearings, so this made me almost pee my pants. I could only bring myself to do #s 2, 4, and 8. Actually, I didn’t promote the ‘list’ post, but the the piggyback post.
I’m sensing this thirty day challenge will actually be challenging…
“Your Nose Is Not A Garden. Stop Digging.”
http://itsabeautyfilledlife.blogspot.com/2009/04/your-nose-is-not-garden-stop-digging.html
John Bradford
April 9th, 2009 5:50 am
It may be worth reflecting back on the first task, the elevator pitch. This is important because the way in which you promote your blog, and who you try and promote your blog to, should be consistent with your ‘mission’.
Much as I’d love to hit the top of Digg or get referenced by an “A list” blogger, it’s more important to me to be read and recognised by local (well UK at least) companies. I’m also using the blog to promote my business development consultancy, so Facebook is less relevant than LinkedIn.
So I tweeted yesterday’s list post http://www.jbsh.co.uk/2009/04/07/5-critical-lists-for-business-development/ and shared it with a BizDev group I manage on LinkedIn.
Looking forward to the rest of the Challenge!
:)
CrystalsQuest
April 9th, 2009 5:58 am
I like to let my posts ’stew’ overnight for a final edit before I publish, so my list post only went live this morning.
http://crystalsquest.com/7-ways-your-self-esteem-is-holding-you-back/
So far: twitter, facebook, and linkback from my comment here. But I’d like to go for the treasure chest: number 1.
Darren, how about you do a list post of your own, including some of the posts you find in your comments, on the range of topics being covered by your 31 days participants?
I’d love it if you’d include my post in it! ;)
Regards,
Crystal
Jem Woods
April 9th, 2009 6:00 am
My traffic is way up, in fact I set a new record today for this site. THANKS! I’ve read several articles about what percent of people will leave a comment and does it matter. . . are the comments as important as the number of subscribers?
I’d love for everybody to take a look, and I hope you enjoy my piece of the world!
http://marblefalls.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/6-reasons-to-choose-the-texas-hill-county-reacquaint-yourself/
Jem
Arohan
April 9th, 2009 6:04 am
Great challenge so far! My list post, 5 Hurdles to Getting What you Want – How to get Over Them by the wonderful inspirational writer Steven Aitchison is now being promoted on StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, Delicious and Twitter. You are more than welcome to visit the article and leave a comment and subscribe. If you love the article (like I do) you can help to promote the article using the Share/Save button at the bottom of the article.
zataod
April 9th, 2009 6:06 am
I like these ideas a lot and have used them in the past. But I wonder if my blogging topic is too obscure for any kind of mainstream audience. I’m wondering if I am really only blogging for myself.
Bonnie Landau
April 9th, 2009 6:12 am
Thanks for the excellent info, Darren. I put my blog into my LinkedIn profile using BlogLink, and I’ve done some grass roots promotion using my social networking outlet. I’ll check back later today and see if there’s an increase in traffic.
I’m wondering how people put in those “digg this” or “stumbleupon” links into their blog so that the post is dug or stumbled right there in the same screen.
CGabriel
April 9th, 2009 6:15 am
I’m happy to say I’ve been all over this one for quite a while. My blog is routinely syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times, the Sun-Times News Group and for quite some time, Reuters.
I promote in my sidebar with “Latest Headlines” and “Most Popular.” Also, I have a tab that lists Best of Blog Harbor. I’ve placed selected posts in StumbleUpon and Twitter as well as commenting frequently on other blogs. My email signature has a link to my blog…I also am more than happy to take the URL of a post to message boards that are topic-specific to my post.
My traffic has gone way up since adding all of these methods.
The one thing I’ve yet to do: A newsletter…
….and that’s next. :-)
Sara Smile
April 9th, 2009 6:18 am
Okay, I have finally caught up on all the lessons for this 31 day challenge. I thank you Darren for giving your all so we may be as great as you are. 10 bows to you!
If anyone so pleases to visit my site and comment here on what they think about it that would be great. I am in the herbal remedies niche, but I also have other niches if you would like me to link to your niche. I would be glad to…
http://www.naturalherbalremediesblog.com
I wrote my first “list post”…boy, was that strange…but interesting, so we’ll see how it goes. I also updated my “About Me” page to focus more on prevention than remedies and I rewrote my tag line to emphasize this. So if you have the time I would appreciate some feed back. http://www.naturalherbalremediesblog.com/about-me/
I normally do the social thing as well as write an article for any posts I do. I also do Technorita but I was banned from Digg (I didn’t get any traffic from them anyway) because someone wanted my user name so it’s not a big deal.
Some of the other ways to get links I didn’t think about so now I have something to think about :)…thanks for today’s lesson.
Sara Smile
Jacob Duchaine
April 9th, 2009 6:18 am
Hey, I just so happened to already have a list post for yesterday’s challenge almost finished when the challenge stated to write one, so I simply finished and posted it. It’s a list of five ways to boost your everyday happiness by being kind to your body.
5 Body Based Paths to Happiness:
http://www.bloggingguy.com/2009/04/5-body-based-paths-to-happiness.html
Laura
April 9th, 2009 6:20 am
Awesome advice, these are great tips to add to what I already do for my posts. I always tweet my latest post but that’s in addition to tweeting valuable and sometimes personal information—I don’t follow those on Twitter who *only* tweet about their blog/product and I wouldn’t expect the same. I sometimes Digg a post if I think it’s especially helpful, and that really increases my visibility on Google.
I digress…thanks for the tips. (If you like reading about baby names, check out my blog here: http://www.nameisms.blogspot.com)
Baz - BlogAsReligion
April 9th, 2009 6:22 am
One down, one to go:
I placed a post on a Forum I frequent about my mini-blog site that deals with eCovers for bloggers, etc. http://eCovers.Solo-Dad.com
I’m also going to link to it in the sidebar of BlogAsReligion.com.
Sean Patrick Simpson
April 9th, 2009 6:27 am
IMPORTANT note on step 11 regarding article marketing:
First, a great place to be putting your blog posts is at EzineArticles dot com. It will take time to build some traffic, but I hear when you get to the point of having 25-100 articles, it’s a great resource. Plus, it’s targeted people for your Niche and gets TONS and TONS of traffic.
Now, Darren mentioned that it’s not a good idea to write duplicate posts on Article Marketing sites, however, there is a way around it. What Google doesn’t like is you writing the same exact post on an article site, and then linking to your blog, with the SAME exact article. There are two ways around this:
1. Instead of linking back to your blog page, link to an opt-in page. For example, my main site is at http://www.TheMindsetApprentice.com ; When I link to it from EzineArticles however, I link to http://www.TheMindsetApprenticeNow.com, which is my opt-in page.
2. Rewrite the article by about 20%. You can do this by changing a few paragraphs…you could reorder your lists, etc.
Hope this helps guys! Whatever you do, DEFINITELY start submitting your articles at EzineArticles!
–Sean Patrick Simpson
**The Mindset Apprentice**
Twitter @vpsean
Mario
April 9th, 2009 6:27 am
@Marc,
Your post was funny, but why have I to register or login to facebook to comment? I think this withholds many people from commenting, what’s a shame.
Kind regards,
Mario
Mr. I
April 9th, 2009 6:29 am
Darren, the promtion worked fine for me! My list ( 100 Articles to Help You With Blogging ) is now most reviewd post ever(from my blog) on Stumble Upon and is getting good traffic.
Mohammad Afaq
April 9th, 2009 6:34 am
A great post Darren and I am now starting to enjoy it and I think that this post is most important of the three because it is what concerns many bloggers. I really think that this contest is worth my time and it will help me improve my blog.
Mohammad Afaq
Free Website Traffic
Mohammad Afaq
April 9th, 2009 6:35 am
A great post Darren and I am now starting to enjoy it and I think that this post is most important of the three because it is what concerns many bloggers. I really think that this contest is worth my time and it will help me improve my blog.
Mohammad Afaq
http://afaqtrafficblog.blogspot.com
Mary
April 9th, 2009 6:38 am
Hi Darren,
I am definitely working on promoting my blog- I guess I will just have to get out there and ask other bloggers. I also put the link in the bottom of my e-mail signature and updated a link on facebook. Thanks for your help!
Cindy
April 9th, 2009 6:50 am
I’ve generally gotten good coverage from Twitter, none from Digg, and occasionally a bump from StumbleUpon.
If you belong to a discussion group that’s topically aligned, that’s a great place to promote where you’re likely to see a very high click-through. Be a good citizen – don’t make it “all about you” – a great way is to post your blog link along with an open question so readers have their chance to join in.
10 Books to Make You a Better Product Manager: http://www.cindyalvarez.com/roundups/10-books-product-manager
What’s the most useful business/technology business book YOU’VE read lately?
lunaKM
April 9th, 2009 7:01 am
I have an alternative lifestyle blog, and most mainstream methods won’t work for me. I never include the blog I’m developing here because the comments never make it to be published when I do.
I love love love Blogger’s new style of Bloglist because it lists according to new posts, so if I can get on someone’s blog roll it will automatically promote my new content. This also tends to target my niche market because they use the free blogging platforms more than self hosting with domains.
Twitter is great too, if you get people who believe in RT’ing. I use Twitter for my site with decent success in these first 3 months.
I find that if I cross post the first paragraph on social networks I’m in I can bring traffic over occasionally.
Make Money Online
April 9th, 2009 7:03 am
Some super tips for promotion. I would say get the article re-tweeted a few times and you will be able to promote pretty well.
Scott
April 9th, 2009 7:26 am
Another great article, and I have to agree as a new blogger I’m timid in promoting my blog but realize I need to do this! Our blog is a travel blog, and we’re in preperations for leaving on a year long trip and need to get everything working smoothly before we go.
We’ve installed Wordbook for our wordpress installation, that puts a message in our Facebook feed whenever we make a post. We’ve also created a Facebook Group and we had the idea to post the last couple of blog topics out to the group.
Our next step is to start using Twitter more and see how it goes!
cheers,
Scott
Mr Puffy
April 9th, 2009 7:30 am
Darren, I’m enjoying and learning a lot from your discussions. I’m also glad that you pointed out that to leave a comment on a blog which is basically a self promotion gambit is inapporpriate.
Katrina Hall
April 9th, 2009 7:31 am
Oops! Too late for today, since I posted a new blog recipe yesterday – but the next one I know just who I’m linking to. And I’m happy to say there are many food bloggers that will link to you – often without letting you know. So if you do link to someone’s blog or recipe, send them a little message so they know. Still working on Day #1 :)
Jim Harris
April 9th, 2009 7:35 am
Darren,
Thanks for running 31DBBB. I am also a big fan of the ProBlogger book.
I launched my own niche blog one month ago and my very first post was a promotion of other blogs in my niche that have been tremendously helpful to me.
Here is the post:
http://www.ocdqblog.com/home/do-you-have-obsessive-compulsive-data-quality-ocdq.html
Looking forward to the rest of 31DBBB.
Best Regards…
Jim
Raising a Revolutionary
April 9th, 2009 7:40 am
I have had some success with this list post i wrote last week. Often the things you list about can be over-arching themes that could be good for “most popular post” link lists too.
Betsy Talbot
April 9th, 2009 7:43 am
I’ve been using Facebook and Twitter to promote posts, but I have not been good about adding related links to the bottom of every post. Since I’m doing a theme each month, I decided to make the intro post to the theme the “go-to” post and then update it with the link to each new article as I write it. Then the new articles only have to be linked back to the first one.
If someone is interested in a theme, this gives them a way to view all the posts and read any or all of them without a lot of work on my part linking. I have to keep in mind that the series lives on long after this month and people need a way to find out more info. Great idea – thanks!
This is how I did it: http://budurl.com/8wbj
And a sample followup post: http://budurl.com/jp2t
Now off to find a blogger or two for my pitch on this month’s theme of decluttering!
Karen
April 9th, 2009 7:54 am
Darren,
Thank you for the first class education I am getting. You walk your talk. You produce results.
Suzanna B. Stinnett
April 9th, 2009 8:06 am
Okay, flexing those promotion muscles. I’ve got my list post running, it’s http://tinyurl.com/9mistakes (9 Mistakes to Avoid in Creating the Perfect Domain Name), and I had two fresh comments on it straight from this group. Nice!
I created a post on my Examiner column to support this post, linking over to it.
Then I went to Facebook. I wrote on my home page and then posted about it with a link on two groups I belong to. These things all felt marginally effective, but maybe that’s because I haven’t been doing it and don’t know the results.
I also posted about it on Twitter.
I’d love to start some reciprocity between appropriate blogs here. If any of you write for the Boomer demographic, or are involved in helping non-techy people get up to speed online, or do career coaching, I could appropriately share links with you and possibly share newsletter juice in some cases. Just send me an email and let’s roll on it.
Thank you Darren! I’ve been singing your praises on Twitter too. I don’t know how you manage these big group things. Wanna tell us?
Cheers
Suzanna
suzanna@greatadaptations.org
Alison Kerr, Earthonaut
April 9th, 2009 8:07 am
Great suggestions for promoting Darren.
I took the plunge and, for the first time, sent an email to a blogger I admire to ask for a mention of my 5 Great Things for Mother Earth list post. Every week I put great energy into gathering up good news about the environment. It’s my most draining post of the week, but I’m proud of it and I’d love to see it get a mention!
Today I posted an easy recipe for doing with kids that includes chocolate and Easter eggs. I put it up on Facebook and also Stumbled my own post. I also referred to other related posts within this one, which I often do. Usually people who come in take the time to look around when I have these links to related posts.
I’ve got to tell you though, I can’t wait to reach something in the challenge that will give me a key to getting more traffic. It’s really hard to keep up even with writing daily posts when you blog part-time, never mind to be worrying about how to get a bit of attention. After a while you begin to get burn-out.
Well, if anyone reading this is interested in the environment and/or has kids, I’d love a visit. A link would really make me feel loved!
Heathen Mom
April 9th, 2009 8:07 am
I tweeted my post. I had a quick increase in comments for that post. Woohoo!
Aaron
April 9th, 2009 8:11 am
Sweet, the challenge keeps on coinciding with my blog!
My interview about the 6d6 Adventure Writing Competition (interview here: http://allgeektout.com/2009/04/07/interview-write-your-own-adventure-with-6d6-fireball/) got me linked on 6d6 Fireball itself (http://6d6fireball.com/rpg/competition-thank-yous/). So my duties are done for the day!
Aaron
allgeektout.com
Mattb4rd
April 9th, 2009 8:19 am
Don’t rule out reddit.com for bookmarking. I’ve received decent traffic from them but they are sensitive, as most bookmarking communities are, to over-posting from your own blog.
Oddly, when I think I’ve got a “winner”, it typically doesn’t do as well as a post that I think is mediocre. I’ve definitely noticed that the less cerebral posts get more traffic from reddit.
Mattb4rd
April 9th, 2009 8:22 am
Also, Stumbleupon lets you purchase campaigns with which you can set spending budgets.
I spent ~ $20.00 recently testing different types of content. The results were “ok”, but I will definitely return to them when I think I’ve got one with viral potential.
Simone
April 9th, 2009 8:33 am
The list post I wrote yesterday (and went live today) was probably one of my most successful posts ever.
I promoted it on DotNetKicks (a social network specific to my niche) and it got quite a lot of “kick” in less than 12hrs.
It also got twitted by a few influential blogger/twitter of my niche and even got on the “popular” page of deliciuos for today (getting 43 “saves” in 10hrs or so).
So for the post got 1100 views.
I also wrote a blogger in the niche to ask for a link (actually, not that brutal): I got an answer back where he says that the content is great and that kind of content must be spread, but didn’t say anything about him actually linking to the post or not. We’ll see in the next days.
Probably the merit of that traffic and interest goes to the List post, not that much to the promotion itself as I never got such response before. This prove that the key to having “success” is writing quality content.
Here is the link to the post
http://codeclimber.net.nz/archive/2009/04/08/13-asp.net-mvc-extensibility-points-you-have-to-know.aspx
Zannniee
April 9th, 2009 8:36 am
I wrote a post for today, but it’s probably one of the worst I’ve ever written. It was a tough day at work and while I LOVE this assignment, I want to redo the work and figure out a better approach for me.
Mandy
April 9th, 2009 8:39 am
I’ve been doing some of the promotional tasks – like linking to other related posts of mine. Since I interview other women and write their stories, I will link to their blogs, if they have one. I just noticed that my interviewee from last week hadn’t mentioned my blog on hers so I did contact her. I also contacted two bloggers from this list asking that they consider linking to a specific post on mine.
I have to confess that I’ve been avoiding twitter etc. but reading all the comments makes me think, it really is time to jump in the deep end. My big concern though is finding the time to do all this! Not sure what else will have to give.
Ben
April 9th, 2009 8:41 am
Wow, I wonder if this comment will even be read…DANG lot of comments!!
Well, I promoted my post about “4 Fantastic Music Websites You Should Check Out.” You can see it here:
http://www.onlinemusicresource.net/2009/04/4-fantastic-music-websites-you-should-check-out/
I Tweeted the post using HootSuite, which works very well because you can use the “Hootlet” toolbar tool.
The other main reason for doing this is tracking. Using the ow.ly url shortener, you can see how many clicks you get. I haven’t checked my stats yet, but I’ve already gotten 2 ReTweets and 1 reply! (Just posted about 10 min. ago.) Very cool!
Twitter rocks.
Jamie
April 9th, 2009 8:45 am
Well, since an article here a few weeks ago I have been doing a list post of flickr photos.
I did 5 cat photos the other day and used this to promote tonight as your lesson.
Well its been 15 mins since I did the lesson and have had 4 hits i would not have otherwise had!!! Time will tell….
I also asked a few CAT bloggers to see if thier reader would look at the post and see if they were the kind of photo’s cat lovers liked… i wonder what they will say.
Here is the post
http://www.digital-scene.com/photograph-round-up/photographs-of-cats/
Michelle Steiner
April 9th, 2009 8:48 am
I have a couple of different ways that I promote some of my posts. I use my YIM message feature, that links right to any page. I use ning groups that I have rss feeds into, and I also publize my feeds on my blogs (at least, that is what I’m working on doing).
My message on YIM reads:
Why choose Conklin for your Home Business, see the answers here: http://homebusinessdm.com/questions-to-ask/
lizriz
April 9th, 2009 8:58 am
Hm… I liked my list post: But When Do You Do It? 7 Ways to Find Time to Blog and Social Network.
It automatically hits Twitter and Facebook, and I get some hits from that. One retweet, which was nice. We’ve also been talking 31-day Challenge over at BlogHer, so I linked it there as well.
I’ve been hitting other people’s posts and commenting and Stumbling. I’ve gotten a few comments on the post, which is nice.
No massive surge in traffic.
I’ve not tried emailing a request for a link to anyone. I’m still mulling that. Maybe waiting for the *right* post. Maybe should have done more of that with my post Flash Your Fempire. I confess to feeling shy/unsure about it.
lm
April 9th, 2009 9:15 am
This program is really worked well me. Not only I get to view so many bloggers blogs, it also give me great motivation to learnt blogging in a systematic way.
1) I have completed elevated pitch “How to Perform SWOT Analysis.” and my list post
http://perform-swot-analysis.blogspot.com
2) I did my promotion with article directory with elevated pitch as “Should Leaders Share Gains in Productivity Improvement?” It was published at
http://EzineArticles.com/?id=2178521
I have yet to do other promotion tasks
I appreciate your inputs.
thanks Darren
mark taylor
April 9th, 2009 9:15 am
Thanks Darren,
Linking to other sites like mine has been a steady source of hits. For those that are shy about approaching others to link to, you are well received when you suggest adding their site to your blog. Another thing I’m trying recently is placing ads for my blog on an on-line publisher (in this case ‘Project Wunderful’) bidding on the sites that sell space for $0. I will get the results of this idea in a few days. I also participate in several discussion forums that relate to my blog. Thanks again, and I hope these ideas help others.
mark
http://www.backyardbrewer.blogspot.com
Ani Long
April 9th, 2009 9:41 am
I have had success with posts when I post my entries in sites. I do anime/video game convention reports and if an anime convention wants to hear stories, videos, or a photo gallery, I would send my blog entry to the site. Soon I have been getting a good amount of viewers. Well, maybe not a lot, but more than my normal amount (which is usually zero).
Forums relating to your blog’s topic also works. Personally, I don’t like social networking sites like MySpace (had an annoying experience) and I have had trouble using social bookmark sites.
Ian Taylor
April 9th, 2009 9:42 am
Hi Darren,
I was a bit anxious about promoting my posts but you have helped me gain some of the confidence i really need, I am new to blogging you see but it’s something im keen on doing and as an affiliate marketer i know that traffic comes first in every case, Thank You,
Ian
http://www.technopreviews.blogspot.com
Paul Jaques
April 9th, 2009 9:47 am
Just hit the post up on Twitter – hopefully see an increase in traffic =).
http://www.pauljaques.net/blog/semi-permanent-2009-brisbane-wrap-up/
Abbie Park
April 9th, 2009 9:53 am
It has been about 8 hours since I posted this AM, and what a difference a little promotion has made. My blog is so new (about 2mos old) I haven’t even been picked up by the search engines yet. But, today I got more visitors than I have during the life of my blog. Amazing what a little focused effort will do. I also started a Stumble-upon campaign like you outlined in other posts. So I’ll see how this turns out. I realize that this is an on-going process, that relationship building is a must, and that it can be really rewarding. Thanks! If you want to check out my post and slideshow about what to bring on a trip to the park with kids:
http://www.organizing-life.com/planning-a-trip-to-the-park-with-kids/event-planning/
Brian
April 9th, 2009 9:57 am
I use the twitter service that reads the rss feed and tweets, then it goes to friendfeed, facebook and all the other networks, I have never actually promoted my blog other than those services, but I think I might actually try to do that this time around.
Josh Morison
April 9th, 2009 10:04 am
Hell Yeah! I tweeted mine straight after posting it and have had a record number of hits in the last two days by the way.
check out my latest post:
http://www.tinyurl.com/mlwgblog
Callisto
April 9th, 2009 10:07 am
This is actually really funny. I planned last night to write a follow-up post today of yesterday’s post and link them to each other.
Yesterday’s post: 6 reasons why casual gaming is stupid.
Today’s post: 6 reasons casual gaming is good.
I have a Twitter account just for my blog, but I really hate Twitter so I just “tweet” my new post titles and a tinyurl link to them.
http://twitter.com/MsGameSnark
I’ve only ever gotten one hit from that, ever. I wonder if it’s because I’m not building relationships there?
Also, I’m having trouble finding amateur blogs in my niche. There are plenty of gaming blogs, but they’re professional, and they aren’t written by girls. The only girl gamer blogs I can find seem to have been abandoned. So who do I connect with?
Sorry for the long comment, just thinking out loud.
Tony
April 9th, 2009 10:08 am
Hi Darren,
Hope this doesn’t sound dumb, but I am not good with a blog. A friend of mine online told me about pro blogger. I do read what I can (so much to learn…lol ). Anyway I would like to know is should I keep using google’s blogger or should I switch to godaddy? I have tried both blogger and WP, but neither one I get any comments on. I know there are millions of folks that do blog, however it must be me or since I’m trying to do a blog on houseplants and gardening, again I know there are thousands of this kind of blogs out there. I only work 3 days a week and just wanted something else to do. lol. sorry this is so long and now others can see this. I didn’t want to bother Darren by emailing him, he has enough to do with a REAL blog…lol.
Tony
Wayne
April 9th, 2009 10:11 am
Darren,
Thank you for pointing out all the ways to promote-market a blog. I have tried some of these and had moderate success. Replying to other bloggers, commenting in travel forums, and in twitter and facebook, promoting my blog when possible, however, the other areas I have not tried.
One of my articles has drawn some interest and I would like for those interested in visiting the Grand Canyon read my article on your first visit: http://www.traveltothewest.com/?page_id=35
Comments you all have are appreciated!
Thank you.
Wayne
Susan Keeping
April 9th, 2009 10:19 am
I twitted my blog post yesterday right after I wrote it. I also posted it on my Facebook.
For my literary blog I tweet each and every post, I send them all to my Facebook and I list them on the Facebook group I created for my blog. I also send to Reddit. I Digg maybe every 3rd post. And I ping it at Technocrati daily. I hadn’t thought of using LinkedIn but maybe I’ll start using it more for publicizing my articles and blog posts.
Matt Cheuvront
April 9th, 2009 10:22 am
There has been absolutely amazing discussion (over 40 comments) on my latest blog post – It’s the kind of discussion that really makes me take a step back and realize the power and impact one can have with words. I encourage you all to check it out and share your thoughts.
Work vs. Life: What Is Your White Whale?
http://www.lifewithoutpants.com/philosophy/work-vs-life-what-is-your-white-whale/
Kevin Sievers
April 9th, 2009 10:24 am
Thanx for all the excellent tips above me, everybody.
By nature I’m kind of a pessimistic smart aleck, but online I’m just a newbie. I ran with the first idea that came to mind, so my list was about “The Top 10 Reasons People Won’t Like My Blog”. If you think you can stand another TopTen, check it out at http://reallidycheck.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/15/
Let me know if I’m anywhere near right, ok?
Claudia Meydrech
April 9th, 2009 10:27 am
Hope it’s okay to post once more, I keep forgetting to mention that my TWITTER ID:
@happynutrition
(because happynutritionist wouldn’t fit :-)
Have had a nice increase in visits to my blog/post today thanks to todays lesson, thanks!
Claudia
http://www.weedsandseedswap.com/10-hard-to-kill-garden-herbs-and-plants/
Kenny Forder
April 9th, 2009 10:29 am
I did a “list post” on my top 10 favorite homes. I had 12 comments all together between this post and the post about my readers’ favorite homes. People sent me emails containing their list and I posted them on my website. All in all, it went pretty good and it was a great way to interact with my readers.
See the post here:
http://www.homesoftherich.net/2009/03/what-are-your-top-10-favorite-homes.html
Gina
April 9th, 2009 10:35 am
Aloha Everyone!
Mahalo Darren for another great day of blogging!!
Here is my followup post to yesterdays list post:
http://lunchwithouted.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/1-eating-when-you-feel-hunger/
I would love feedback and suggestions…it’s all good :)
And now I am off to look at what everyone else is doing and hoping to find some new fellow bloggers to connect with.
Aloha, G
Sharon Simms
April 9th, 2009 10:43 am
After posting
http://florida.ssimms.com/2009/04/08/characteristics-of-a-historic-st-petersburg-bungalow/
I blogged about the same topic on Active Rain, with a link to the original post. That caused a news item to appear on my Twitter account, and the post will also appear on RealEstateStPeteFL.com and on Localism.com
Steve
April 9th, 2009 10:44 am
Darren,
Awesome information as always. I’m enjoying and learning a lot from your discussions. I’ve been doing some of the promotional tasks – like linking to other related blogs posts like mine.
Charles Bohannan
April 9th, 2009 10:47 am
This exercise couldn’t have worked out better for me, as I was writing a post (that contained a list) which promoted a tweetchat event helpful to content publishers.
After I posted it, I tweeted the post to the event moderators, which they appreciated and then retweeted.
Plus, my tweet (which links to the post) will show in Twitter search since I used the tweetchat ID, which is #editorchat.
Light Stalking
April 9th, 2009 10:48 am
Wow – looks to be quite a few other photography bloggers here to check out too! I have some work to do!
Charlie Davis
April 9th, 2009 10:54 am
These comments are like a gold vein, I have spent a lot of time here and was well rewarded. Especially at the end, finding Mark Taylor’s home brew site. I am leaving to drop him a line. CHEERS! folks, I had a good time.
Chris Prakoso
April 9th, 2009 10:57 am
Ok, here is what I wrote for the List Post:
11 Different Things People Use Twitter For:
http://mediasosial.com/socialnetworking/11-different-things-people-use-twitter-for
Andy Fossett
April 9th, 2009 11:02 am
I’ve had really good luck promoting on facebook. Since my blog is in a very specific niche (an extremely minor martial art), I know a lot of the people who practice it in various parts of the world. By sharing “feature” posts on my facebook, they get picked up and spread pretty quickly through the community. This typically results in double or triple my usual traffic over a few days.
delicate flower
April 9th, 2009 11:04 am
I’m writing an anonymous blog so there are added challenges for me in promotion. Add to that the newness of my blog and it’s a project for the future. I’m enjoying the exercies and think it’s going to be incredibly helpful. thank you!
BambiLashes
April 9th, 2009 11:04 am
Great post Darren, I do alot of dofollow blog comments and top digg sites get my comments, It works because one of my sites is only 3 months old and came out a PR4 some of my best links come from blog comments of posts I am proud of. http://bambilashes.com/help-my-eyelashes-are-falling-out.php
desiree fawn
April 9th, 2009 11:04 am
I had some great luck today promoting my post from yesterday to a few of my twitter followers — even nabbed some comments on this post: http://desireefawn.blogspot.com/2009/04/five-things-i-have-learned-in-my-first.html
delicate flower
April 9th, 2009 11:04 am
I’m writing an anonymous blog so there are added challenges for me in promotion. Add to that the newness of my blog and it’s a project for the future. I’m enjoying the exercises and think it’s going to be incredibly helpful. thank you!
Kicklight Original
April 9th, 2009 11:14 am
I went the Twitter route. Sent off a tweet and will see what happens. Problem is that my blog topic is so new and unknown that my title might not catch people’s attention.
Here is my Twitter account:
@andrewmsmyth
I wonder how many people will complete all tasks over the 31 days?
- Andrew
Christy
April 9th, 2009 11:16 am
My blog is new in a world of frugal, earthy crunchy blogs. I started it because my first blog was all over the place, and very personal. My list post had to do with honey – http://frugalcrunchychristy.blogspot.com/2009/04/honey-in-morning.html I am not sure it is the best I have ever written but it was certainly a great stretching activity. Just like posting the link here!
Thanks.
Kikolani
April 9th, 2009 11:19 am
I’m also trying another promotion technique with Facebook. I have went through and joined photography groups, and added my recent photo posts to the group links section, or uploaded a photo to their album with a link to the post. Since the groups are about sharing photography, I feel it’s relevant to promote my photo posts there.
I also joined some groups about social bookmarking, and added my 8 Reasons to Use Delicious for Social Bookmarking to the links. Hopefully, these group promotions will bring some new traffic.
Rachel
April 9th, 2009 11:19 am
For me, challenge is an understatement for this one. I do tweet my new posts but I pretty much ignore every other aspect of promotion as a general rule. I’m terrified!
Being a food blogger that isn’t a food photographer I am a bit out of the loop – most foodie sites focus on amazing photos and I’m just not in the game there. Yes I know I should head over to Digital Photography School and get my ass into gear but my focus is really cooking and trying to lose weight at the same time – not necessarily awesome looking food.
I have however got benefit from this already, in that I discovered some great food blogs from this challenge and have linked to them from my site at http://beyondbeeton.com/weight/recipes-that-have-me-drooling-this-week . I hope I’ve helped them out and I will work on my own confidence!
Scott Pilson
April 9th, 2009 11:22 am
Thanks for the encouragement that the lesson reminders bring.
Ok, I just posted to yesterday’s and realized I should put it here. Excellent advice on this lesson, sooo, I’m going to drop my list in for you and will make my goal to promote the first 10 great lists I find on here.
My list from yesterday was: 17 Totally Inappropriate Poker Pick up Lines. (It’s tongue in cheek and supposed to be funny).
http://sexandpoker.com/sex-and-poker-ed/17-totally-innapropriate-poker-chat-up-lines/
For the record, the use of the first name in the email subject was very effective. I thought for a minute that it was *really* a personal email – then realized obviously – but it’s a great and simple marketing trick.
Philip Nowak
April 9th, 2009 11:23 am
Darren,
I definitely have to work on approaching other bloggers about posting a link to my blog. In the meantime, I will try some of your other suggestions. Here’s a “relevant” link to my most recent blog post in the comment section of this tutorial. LOL.
http://potholeschicago.com/2009/04/07/akira-is-chicagos-most-popular-fashion-hotspot/
-Philip Nowak
Jodi Brooks
April 9th, 2009 11:25 am
Darren,
Three days in and I’ve managed to find some new readers. I finished this post http://menopausemafia.com/9-authors-we-love/ last night and posted it on Facebook and tweeted about it on Twitter.
Next I am going to check out Stumbleupon. Thanks for all the help, I’m looking forward to tomorrow.
Jodi
Elora Ramirez
April 9th, 2009 11:26 am
This is all new to me as well – even though I’ve been blogging since 2003, I have never had much of a following. Today I have been making a conscience effort in commenting & joining conversations on other blogs – in the process – linking to my site. I’ve already had an increase in traffic so I see it’s working.
It seems the most important factor in all of this is consistency. I can gain readers & have a wider subscription base, but if I am not updating regularly it will do nothing but impair my influence.
Thanks for this series – it’s been wonderful.
lindy
April 9th, 2009 11:27 am
I have a few news items to report.
Regarding the Development of http://lindylou-abbott.blogspot.com
1) I use blogstatter on my site and today I was amazed to see how high my traffic has been this week!
2) Twitter – Some traffic, I am sure, has been do to a little promoting on twitter.
3) I am also in a community of writers that e-publish a weekly e-magazine that is simply beautiful. http://takerootandwrite.com) Within this community (and the site is seeking new authors/writers) we have recently begun to have a group sign up to commit to following each others’ blogs and listing them on our own site.
4) I wrote an incredibly timely and controversial blog two days ago that has had the highest traffic of any blog I have posted in 6 months. (http://lindylou-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/04/we-are-nation-of-citizens.html) titled “We are a Nation of Citizen” quoted by Obama at the economic conference after he stated that USA is not a Christian nation!
5) I join in on “blog-parties” and other bloggers/websiters promotional campaigns…but this is getting to be less successful as the following is just way too many after it gets popular. I tried to visit as many sites as possible in one week but didn’t get to 1% of those listed.
Glenn Roberts
April 9th, 2009 11:34 am
I (guess) I tweeted my blogsite to promote my post. Years ago we would call this growing up absurd, but perhaps, something I learn will end up productive. Thanks, Darren.
My list: http://www.glennaroberts.com/ravenna-park-north/businesses/
Andi
April 9th, 2009 11:36 am
This was a good mixture of suggestions which can be partially used for personal blogs and definitely used for biz blogs. Great 3 days so far, can’t wait for more. http://budurl.com/eb2h
Allen Dresser
April 9th, 2009 11:38 am
Hey Darren and fellow bloggers! This challenge is really inspiring me! Thanks to all. I actually interrupted the lesson to Tweet about my “list post” at http://tinyurl.com/cap78b. I then posted a comment on my Linkedin profile via the Bluegrass Music Group I am a member of. Next I will post a comment on our AussieJam.wordpress.com site for my “jam-mates” at the Australian Bakery (Marietta GA)
Post title ” 7 Reasons To Play the 5-string Banjo”.
I will leave you with some banjo humor… “someone broke into my car and left a banjo…”
AD
Handmade
April 9th, 2009 11:46 am
Hey Darren,
I cannot believe the results I have been getting already. I have jumped 6 fold in the numbers to my website and blog. Nice work! My Stall holders are also receiving more traffic than ever also.
Cheers
http://www.handmademarket.com.au
Philip Nowak
April 9th, 2009 11:48 am
Hi Darren and Everyone,
I just attempted to install a “Digg This” button on my blog post. I was fairly confused with the different options so I just went with the generic badge that sends visitors to the Digg homepage.
Is that all that I have to do or is there some code that I have to install to send it to a specific part of the Digg website? I appreciate all of your help on this as I am not that technologically savvy.
http://potholeschicago.com/2009/04/07/akira-is-chicagos-most-popular-fashion-hotspot/
Thanks,
Philip Nowak
You can also Twitter me if you think that would be faster. @philipnowak
Dana Hanson
April 9th, 2009 11:52 am
I posted the specific list blog on Facebook and with my e-mail daily group. I received about ten times more traffic to my blog, than usual. I went to sites I like to read, but didn’t find a blog post that fit in with my link. I am now going to connect with a few folks on this list. Thanks.
darya
April 9th, 2009 11:56 am
Darren,
I like the way you practice what you preach in each post. Your list post assignment was a list post that demonstrated almost every technique you discussed. Today I saw your Twitter “nudge” re: 1300 comments on 2 posts, which was bound to bring you a ton of Twitter curiosity hits and probably more 31DBBB subscribers. Brilliant :)
The examples really do help. My traffic is up 35% today and my bounce rate down 20% compared to yesterday. Thanks!
Daria
April 9th, 2009 12:02 pm
The only place I really ‘promote’ my blog is on Twitter. I don’t get all that much traffic from it, but I’m not really surprised. My blog is more personal than most. Hopefully, when the time comes when my other website comes in to play, I’ll be able to use these hints to get the traffic I want!
In the meantime, for those who want to check it out -
http://dariasblog.wordpress.com
I will welcome all constructive criticism!
I am loving all of the different blogs I have seen so far!
Hello Veggie
April 9th, 2009 12:15 pm
Hey Darren and fellow bloggers,
I use twitter to keep my tweeps updated on new posts, other articles I find in the web that are relevant to my site, and to tweet informative and interesting facts about veggies (#veggietweet). Also, for my facebook fans I send occasional update on articles and post I feel would be of interest.
I’m on linken in but have yet to tap into it’s potential. I sometimes feel stuck, thinking I’m not keeping myself to a high enough social media standard… Any suggestions bloggers? Thanks for the help and thanks for the updates!
michelle
April 9th, 2009 12:23 pm
slightly off topic, Anyone have a really good link to a Twitter 101 post. I hate being behind the times but I just don’t understand what Twitter is and how I could use it.
http://www.mylifeonthexyzlist.blogspot.com
Jennie Maria
April 9th, 2009 12:24 pm
Hi everyone!
Yesterday my list post was a recap of events that happened, President Obama in Baghdad, Ted Stevenson’s case, and Vermont legalizing same-sex marriages so I did not think it would’ve worked well for today’s assignment. Whenever I update I post on my Facebook page as well as my Twitter page. This was my sixth post today, so I’d like to work on my content first before I start other methods. However, when I did post on Twitter and Facebook my hits drastically increased. I’m going to watch tonight to see if I have similar results.
To complete today’s assignment, I wrote a how-to about my personal method of lowering the APRs for my credit cards (if you’re interested check it out here: http://www.jenniemaria.com/?p=70 )
Darren, when do you think the forum will be ready? I know you mentioned you were having trouble getting it started. Only because I’d like to meet others in the group who potentially write about similar things as I do. My blog is mainly my political commentary, so it would be nice to find other blogs who have the same goal and maybe trade traffic methods since we’re not blogging about how to do something, rather our opinions on things.
Hopefully with 10,000 there’s at least another!
lindy
April 9th, 2009 12:26 pm
I am so excited! I just finished my post that is numbered!
7 Things You Need to Know to Save Your Life
http://lindylou-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/04/7-things-you-need-know-to-save-your.html
Now that is so exciting! I can’t wait to report back and let you know how my blog is going tomorrow.
Thank you so much, Darren, for stretching me!
Daisy Wright
April 9th, 2009 12:34 pm
Michelle,
You requested info on what Twitter is all about. This woman from DSM Publishing who is following me on Twitter wrote an ebook which I was able to download for free. Check her out at http://twitter.com/dsmpublishing.
Hope that helps.
Daisy
Cheri
April 9th, 2009 12:35 pm
OK, I decided to try to do the Digg thing and promoted the same post on Facebook – “Being Hit On At 40″ http://naplesgirl.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/being-hit-on-at-40/
It’s not the list posting I did, but it is a post that has had the most traffic in the past.
Daisy Wright
April 9th, 2009 12:39 pm
Darren,
I followed your advice and promoted someone else’s blog post via Twitter. She is a fellow resume writer who wrote 7 Ways to Spice Up Your Resume. Great article with useful tips for jobseekers.
Daisy
http://twitter.com/daisywright
Erica
April 9th, 2009 12:40 pm
This has been one of my weaknesses. I am not by any means a sales person at heart. I can’t sell ice people with heat stroke. However I have been using twitter and find that to be a good tool for pimping out new posts or getting discussions going.
I am still just a young bloggling and will try harder.
Louellen Coker
April 9th, 2009 12:46 pm
I am happy to say that I’ve been using a good many of your suggestions. I haven’t ventured into the worlds of Digg and StumbleUpon, but will look into whether it fits into what I want for my company’s blogs or my clients’ blogs.
My list post about basic wordpress plugins you should install will go live at http://www.stc-marcom.com bright and early tomorrow morning.
If someone gets this far down in the comments and wants something that is immediately accessible, you can always check out a different I did a few days ago: http://www.stc-marcom.org/wordpress/2009/03/how-marketers-are-using-social-media-to-grow-their-business/
Thanks for all your work on this Darren.
John
April 9th, 2009 12:46 pm
I usually promote my post on Twitter. I want to try Stumbleupon, but like one of the commenters said, it takes a long time to build enough followers to make a difference.
Writing to other bloggers is nerve wracking, but I have become friendly with several in my niche, so it may become easier.
La Mccoy
April 9th, 2009 12:51 pm
Thanks Darren for the lessons.
I am enjoying the daily learning.
I am working on a “fun” blog to exercise the lessons.
Thanks. Lmc.
La Mccoy
April 9th, 2009 12:51 pm
Thanks Darren for the lessons.
I am enjoying the daily learning.
I am working on a “fun” blog to exercise the lessons.
Thanks. Lmc.
Movie Hunger
April 9th, 2009 12:51 pm
Darren,
When I saw your post, I had to laugh. Linking high traffic posts with new posts was one of my April Blogging goals.
Do you think that linking in text or at the end of the post is better.
Stephanie Sandifer
April 9th, 2009 12:56 pm
This was the perfect opportunity for me to make an exciting announcement about some upcoming eWorkshops that I will be launching this summer:
Wikified Schools eWorkshops – http://www.ed421.com/?p=847
Darren — I am really enjoying this challenge! I’ve been blogging for over 3 years (and reading your blog almost as long), and I feel that this challenge is giving me renewed motivation to continue building my blog and my “digital footprints”
Thanks!
FYI — so far I have promote this blog post via Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and this blog comment :-)
adrianliem
April 9th, 2009 12:58 pm
3-for-3 so far Darren!
I’ve started some selective promotion through Twitter – for example, just tweeted this through my personal Twitter account (@adrianliem) linking to a blog I co-write:
–
Blogging about iPhone App development: http://ow.ly/2pj6 – Any web dev folks dabbling in that space? Would be interested to hear experiences
–
We’ve had success in the past submitting posts to various sites that are specific to a particular topic, and we’ve also seen some success with StumbleUpon more generally.
For me, I think I want to make sure that the promotion is an “offer” – that is, that I’m not only pushing out my own interests, but also legitimately trying to create a conversation piece that will encourage some participation an engagement that interests people.
@michelle – Common Craft has a good intro to Twitter which you can view through YouTube: Twitter in plain English
Katy from Non-Toxic Kids
April 9th, 2009 1:00 pm
So far I have been a bit gun shy about starting with with Twitter. I did and then stupidly shut down my account. Now my nice username that had name recognition for my blog is not availible (and it is me who used it!) Argh.
I know it is an age old question, but is Twitter worth it, or a time suck? I do like the idea of posting links to all the blogs I write for—
And I view facebook as mostly a friend thing. Maybe I am old school. Any thoughts on this, participants?
And what about cross-posting?
Katy
http://www.non-toxickids.net
Jon Reid
April 9th, 2009 1:02 pm
The combination of yesterday (14 Reasons to Stop Evangelizing Your Friends) and today (did 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6) made my stats ROCKET up! Wow!!
BuzzNova
April 9th, 2009 1:06 pm
I decided to to do a StumbleUpon ad campaign, but keep the budget very small ($5).
I tweaked one of my posts to make it more sticky by making sure most of the article was visible above the fold and having lots of different kinds of links to other parts of my blog: http://buzznova.com/breaking-news-twitter-unveils-suggested-users-paid-service/
I’m also using Ping.fm to send my posts to my Twitter account.
Juscelino M. Acevedo
April 9th, 2009 1:24 pm
I have to be honest. I was very shocked that as soon as I wrote my first list post, then posted it here and on Digg, someone actually read it and commented. The reason I was shocked is because the only ones that have commented on any of my posts so far are family members :-).
Having a “stranger” read and comment on my post made me feel real good and for this I thank you Darren. Keep up the good work.
justeatfood
April 9th, 2009 1:26 pm
I’ve found the best way to get traffic is by building a concrete relationship base. Start with a few people in your related field. Follow them, actually read the posts, comment, and then connect with them on twitter, stumbleupon etc. Let the relationships happen over time, instead of throwing darts out everywhere.
Emily
http://www.justeatfood.com
Tommy
April 9th, 2009 1:29 pm
Another great post, I am glad I decided to do this. I finally posted the list post today at 15 Great XNA Tutorial Sites and I have promoted it in a few of the ways you suggested and I am still working on promoting it. You can read more about that on my blog at 31DBBB Day 3 : Promote a Blog Post if you are interested.
Emilio
April 9th, 2009 1:30 pm
I actually have heard of promoting a post instead of the site, and it did not resonate until now. I like it. I wouldn’t mind linking some of your posts if some of you have something related to transforming yourself, working remotely, goals and being goal oriented, or something of the like. Since I shifted my site’s focus a little, I will be promoting a post I did after participating on Problogger’s 31 day adventure. My intro to the new direction my blog is going will be what I promote right now. A Virtual Shift. My blog is about my journey to living a life that is “Virtual” in which I can live wherever and run my businesses online and over the phone. I already promoted it on my Facebook page. I will have to come up with some other ideas to promote it tonight and tomorrow.
Cheryl Hecht
April 9th, 2009 1:33 pm
Twitter and Facebook are two places I posted my list blog about math anxiety, which you can read more about at http://www.clhechtconsulting.com/wordpress/ if interested.
I am going to check out StumbleUpon. Thanks for the great information!
Jeff Licciardi
April 9th, 2009 1:36 pm
I created my first list post today covering the <a href=”http://www.theviewfromthedugout.com/2009/most-expensive-baseball-tickets/Most Expensive Tickets in Baseball. I would love to connect with other baseball/sports bloggers. Connect with me via the comments on my site if you are interested in winning together.
Jeff
Lisa Oden
April 9th, 2009 1:46 pm
Hi Darren, I’m really enjoying the posts and tasks!
Posted my list post today http://tinyurl.com/csgb33.
I’ve added a link to my e-mail signature and am working on updating facebook, twitter and linked-in. I’m new to twitter and could probably be making it work a little better for me. I think that I should be able to make my tweets appear on fb and linked-in.
Looking forward to #4. Thanks!
Amy
April 9th, 2009 1:46 pm
Great (challenging) post. Visited my regular lurk-y blogs today and posted a couple comments. Also feel lucky to have connected with a few health and fitness minded bloggers from this 31 day challenge.
I have my TypePad blog set-up to tweet each post, but like the suggestions above to tweet just the good ones.
Haven’t yet decided if I want my Facebook persona and blogging persona to link-up.
Elizabeth Bolton
April 9th, 2009 1:47 pm
Whew! So much to learn here – I’ve been reading these comments for hours it seems.
I’m new to blogging and hadn’t written a list post yet. I found it easier to write than some other posts – which more time to read here and check out a lot of the commenters’ blogs.
I’m blogging about real estate in Cambridge Mass and my post was:
http://centersandsquares.com/2009/04/08/ten-quick-and-easy-projects-to-get-your-house-ready-to-sell/
I’m still mulling over the ideas for promotion since my intention is to reach local readers. I’m looking forward to days 4+.
Aunt Linda
April 9th, 2009 2:10 pm
I actually added a couple of new products to my toy store site so I could make some internal links. I’m pleased with how my post turned out, but still have to go beyond my Twitter and Facebook comfort zone. I’d appreciate a few visitors and comments at http://auntlindasblog.com!
Pam
April 9th, 2009 2:19 pm
Yesterday, I did promote my blog post on twitter it was one of the reasons why I actually focused the post on my experience of twittering. I actually use windows live writer with the additional benefit of it giving me the option to automatically notify twitter of my blog posts. I`m not really sure I noticed any extra traffic yesterday but I only have 600 followers and so it depends on who is tuning in on the stream when it comes through and like you say I feel like a drone if I constantly twitter please go look at my blog!
Today Ì’ve signed up for Digg as I`ve already dipped my toes in the water of MIXX but I need to spen some time in both spaces to really get to grips with it (a task I will set to after easter.)
Fingers crossed as it always feel good and feels worthwhile if you know people are reading what you’re saying!
Meredith
April 9th, 2009 2:32 pm
I apparently did this yesterday, by copping out of my List Post challenge by writing a quick little post and linking a previous entry with a list that I had done: http://meredithelaine.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/list-post/
And tonight I am writing a post containing that link, thereby doing it again, I suppose? And I’ll probably tweet about how my continual lame-ass cop outs are helping me be a better blogger! (kidding – I know this tactic isn’t going to work forever!)
:)
Julie M
April 9th, 2009 2:33 pm
Another good post! I do try and promote my blog on Twitter (juliebmack), occasionally, etc. I am not good at self-promotion, as it feels like bragging. I have never been good at that which is why I always failed at sales…’selling the product’ . Maybe the lack of self-promotion is why I do not have a large following… I think my writing is decent.. ??
Strangely, I am actually more comfortable and better at promoting others more than myself. You can probably look at my blog’s last mini-series: The Five People you Meet in Cyberspace and tell from that. (You are one on there BTW).
Michelle
April 9th, 2009 3:15 pm
I posted links to my blog article: http://whatscookingblog.com/2009/04/07/4-great-reasons-to-cook-with-your-kids/ to Twitter and Facebook today. I also Stumbled it.
I was surprised to see that Stumble was the source for quite a lot of traffic for the past two days, relative to the past month. Since starting this challenge, I have had an increase in traffic to my blog by over 50 visitors per day. My traffic is pretty low, so this is a fairly large jump. I hope to be able to make it grow and to start getting more comments too. Sort of feels like I am writing into the air when nobody says anything ;-) I should probably read more blogs and comment there, too…but time is so short that it is difficult.
Thanks!
Michelle
niceguyted
April 9th, 2009 3:28 pm
Blog post promoted:
http://www.quixoticjedi.com/2009/04/08/star-wars-characters-you-can-follow-on-twitter/
Today’s exercise:
http://www.quixoticjedi.com/2009/04/08/day-3-31dbbb/
Yesterday was my best day ever. I have a steady following of about 40 readers – I usually see between 30 and 60 hits per day. By 1PM EST, I had over 100 hits (my previous best day was 125 hits); this was just after the CL ads were posted. By 5:30PM I had 175 hits, and half an hour later I was at 341 hits. This was due to Twitter RTs from @admiraldaala, @theMaraJade, @dayofthejedi and @GeneralVeers and the tweet by @GeekTyrant. When my WordPress Stats plugin cut off (around 7PM), I had 589 hits and have had 201 additional hits since then.
Vulcan Stev
April 9th, 2009 3:31 pm
May I add an item to your list. Check to see if there is an existing network that caters to the main focus of your blog. Apply to join.
May I add that the article I wrote yesterday
http://vulcanstev.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/31dtabbc-day-2-10-theories-about-wotcs-boneheaded-decision/ had a few folks click on the link from here and one of them commented. I clicked over to her site to see what was going on.
spencer
April 9th, 2009 3:33 pm
Social networks are key. I saw a boost in traffic within a couple hours of my post. Thanks for the tips.
Derek Heck
April 9th, 2009 3:39 pm
Hi guys,
Looks like everyone is doing great. I was on Stephen Pierce’s blog the other day and he mentioned using http://www.socialmarker.com to get your posts submitted to social bookmarking sites. I tried it out and it seems to be working pretty well.
I also posted my newest article “How’d you hear about us” “http://www.bootstrappingblog.com/how%E2%80%99d-you-hear-about-us on twitter.
carolla
April 9th, 2009 3:51 pm
Well, a lot to learn considering this is all new to me. Running a bit behind, but will catch up as I get into the swing of it. Wish there were more hours in the day though. All in all, I think this is fantastic.
Noobpreneur
April 9th, 2009 4:04 pm
Hi Darren,
I also felt that I was narcissistic when I promote my own blog post, but hey – If you don’t love what you wrote, what can you expect from others? :)
I started social bookmark/message/whatever I came across my own blog posts about 9 months ago, and to say the least, this is the best traffic generating method so far.
Getting the words out there, and let others who feel your post very useful visiting your sites eventually is the key…
Cheers!
Renny
April 9th, 2009 4:28 pm
I just published to a bunch of websites…if any of you guys out there have blogs that relate to humor, comedy, or any other funny posts let me know if you’re interested in exchanging links.
Here’s the list post I promoted:
http://clowntowns.com/?p=1080
Jade Robbins
April 9th, 2009 4:29 pm
http://jaderobbins.com/2009/04/09/31dbbb-assignment-3-promotion/
Promotion is HARD!
Mystic Madness
April 9th, 2009 4:44 pm
HI Darren,
Thanks for the post. As suggested I promoted my individual post and the readership increased by almosy 20 times. Not only that post got hit maximum but also people also went ahead and browsed through other posts too. As of now the bounce rate is less than 9% and average page view is 3 pages/visitor. The post i used was
Your Boss Would Love This- How to Drive his Decision
http://www.mysticmadness.com/your-boss-would-love-this-how-to-drive-his-decision.html
The various methos I used was
1) Mailed to My freinds.
2) Visited various forums on jobs and personal development. Talked in relevant threads about it
3) Forwarded it to my alumni groups as interesting read
4) Used message boards.
To my luck people liked it and forwarded it to their friends further and readership was increased to a larger extent. within a week this post has got more than 600 impressions at time when my blog is just one month old.
It worked.
thanks
Claus D Jensen
April 9th, 2009 5:01 pm
I have written a blog post on two techie things:
Gravatar and Favicon,
http://www.clausdjensen.com/archives/25
It’s ment for those who are a little techie-newbie-like, but who love to learn new stuff that they can apply immediately.
If you are one of those, check it out and please leave a comment.. :-)
Greetings,
Claus D Jensen
fazreen
April 9th, 2009 5:11 pm
Great task Darren.. I have promote my yesterday post in other blog. It seems like my blog receive new readers. Thanks again
Wendy
April 9th, 2009 5:15 pm
Hi Darren
Great stuff. I’m fairly new to this and had been getting about 20 hits a day. I followed your advice yesterday and went up to 190. Brilliant
Thanks
TinyURL.com/c8zszl
Eli
April 9th, 2009 5:15 pm
I would like to try 1. Pitching Other Bloggers because seems the most challenging. I’m already using SU, Twitter and Reddit to promote my posts. This time i would also try article marketing but first i will rewrite the post.
Christine Steinmann
April 9th, 2009 5:21 pm
Great ideas for promotion. I think the most important message is that it needs to be REAL. Linking to posts that really do relate to yours – doing it because it fits. Everyone sees through a blatant plug – but a link that really FITS helps everyone, readers most importantly.
As a mom writing about twins – there are LOTS of possible links. I find my blog is CONNECTING me a great online community.
My problem is still the PHYSICAL aspect of how to link – I have spent some time on it but admit I then give up and go straight back to writing. I am a writer first, and a blogger second but…..with this proper motivation I will make it a point to just DO IT.
Thanks for the push.
http://www.twintensity.blogspot.com
(Once I get those links up, I found some FANTASTIC posts – written by OTHERS that I’d love to share!)
harson
April 9th, 2009 6:43 pm
Hi Darren,
thanks. i just can’t miss your lessons. though today i was busy preparing something at our church, i said i have to go back to the internet to learn what your tips would be today.
i did something in the past 2 days, busy making over my ‘elevator pitch’ and other tips you have given us.
today i am getting this new one. excellent. i have been following and been followed on twitter, though just recently. but it gives lots of traffic to my site. people don’t understand what i wrote but i like being seen and to see people’s sites.
Coop
April 9th, 2009 6:55 pm
Got my list post ready, finally…
10 TOUGHEST MOVIE HEROES OF ALL TIME (and I didn’t pick the ones you expected!)~~~>http://linkbee.com/NX3M.
Any of you guys with movie-related links, I’ll link you immediately. Get in touch! Smalltowncritic1@aol.com
Honza
April 9th, 2009 7:03 pm
Hi Darren,
Thanks to the this post, I have found some glitches in my promotion strategy. On the other hand, it’s funny that you suggested Twitter as a promotion platform – I originally signed up for Twitter to have another place to promote my blog. The traffic is soaring steadily.
http://www.cyberfootprint.eu/top-5-must-read-books-for-a-pr-pro/
Coop
April 9th, 2009 7:03 pm
Damn, try this link instead… http://www.smalltowncritic.com/2009/04/08/10-toughest-movie-heroes-of-all-time-by-coop/
AbangAbu
April 9th, 2009 7:18 pm
Hi , I have started the elevator speech. Than i do a link post on my weekly challenge of $50 cash weekly.
And i had promote my posting thru facebook.
So do check it out on how to earn $50 cash for free weekly
Lisa Rosendahl
April 9th, 2009 7:23 pm
Just finishing up my homework . . .a link to my list on 5 ways to share the love (link love that is!)
http://www.lisarosendahl.com/journal/2009/4/8/5-ways-to-share-the-love.html
MC
April 9th, 2009 7:51 pm
Hey Darren,
Serious question I’d love for you to weigh in on – would make a great post for the site as well.
What are your thoughts on whether a blogger should have a separate blog/business twitter or use their personal twitter for their blog?
I know that Twitter accounts aren’t appreciate when they’re solely used to promote their own agenda/site/business, but should there still be a separation between the business persona and the real person?
I have a fairly new music blog and I’ve just started using Twitter in the last month. Right now I’m listing my personal twitter account feed on my site and I’m torn about whether that’s the best idea.
Love to hear your and anyone else’s feedback!
Thanks-
Annemieke
April 9th, 2009 7:52 pm
I usually post my latest blogpost also on a music forum which has an area for bloggers, and get most of my traffic from there.
But this listpost did not seem so very suitable for that forum, so I did not post it there. But I did Twitter it and am looking now for other blogs to read and comment on, although commenting is mostly a step to far.
CrazzyCool
April 9th, 2009 8:06 pm
Finally I can see Google AdSense Ad in ProBlogger. Wating for the 4th Day tip.
Sjay
Paula Eder
April 9th, 2009 8:17 pm
Hi Darren and everyone – I do promotion via Twitter and Facebook regularly. Today I wrote a comment on another blogger’s blog and linked to her post in my blog … hoping for reciprocity. Still working on asking the outright question!! I appreciate the great teaching and encouragement here … and here’s my piece for this lesson: http://thetimefinder.com/find-time-for-managing-your-energy-and-your-spring-projects/
Phil
April 9th, 2009 8:20 pm
Ver y nice ideas. Although I think I have some problems, because my topic (Photoshop for beginners) is maybe too popular.
But, anyway, here is a link to my Day 2 post about the Photoshop Basic concepts
http://is.gd/rzdv
This day (2 out of 7) it is the topic “layers”.
Hope you like it.
Rachella
April 9th, 2009 8:21 pm
Hmm – I don’t know. The people who read my blog aren’t nessessarily Twitter types. I automatically do some of the things you mention, such as linking to other sites, but I think my subject may be a little too narrow? Anyway — I haven’t done yesterday’s assignment yet, so I’d better get writing!
Rachella
Mystic Madness
April 9th, 2009 8:27 pm
sorry for the typos in the comment above. I was in the meeting and typed really fast. I was excited after seeing the visitor data and hence thought to inform you first. Apologies again. Please allow me to correct it or remove the bad portion as you may deem fit.
Keith Jenkins
April 9th, 2009 8:37 pm
Hi there,
Currently, when I publish a post, it also goes straight to my Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn pages. I’ve also written posts with a link to other articles in the media or by other bloggers. These articles can be the inspiration behind my post or it can be extra information by others that’re relevant to my post. I also use internal links in some of my posts (see my post yesterday on ‘lists’: http://velvetescape.com/blog/?p=760 ) and I often write follow-up posts. I find that all these methods work well to build traffic and interest for a particular post – great advice indeed!
I sometimes ask my fellow Twitterers for an RT or a Stumble – my advice is not to do it too often, only when you feel a certain post is worth the attention. That works too. For instance, I asked for an RT on my ‘list’ post yesterday and received it. Very cool!
My next steps are to look more into StumbleUpon and Digg, consider a newsletter and pitching to other bloggers to link to a specific post on my blog http://velvetescape.com/blog and hope for my big break!
Another great lesson Darren! I’m really enjoying this challenge and I’m learning a lot! Thank you so much!
Laura
April 9th, 2009 9:40 pm
Over at Autism From the Outside, I wrote a great list on 5 ways to elicit language everyday. Check it out here:
http://blog.autismfromtheoutside.com/2009/04/5-ways-to-elicit-language-everyday.html
Thanks for the lessons! I’ve put completing this on my 101 goals in 1001 days list!
Cecelia
April 9th, 2009 9:58 pm
If it’s a really important post, using a “RT plz” at the end of a Tweet will usually get you a few re-tweets. I save asking for only those posts which are extra special. :)
titan
April 9th, 2009 10:03 pm
i agree and always do that. Hope i can maintain my method.
Syed Balkhi
April 9th, 2009 10:38 pm
I have been promoting my blog using all the techniques you have mentioned above and I can say from experience, interlinking is one of the main ones that everyone should do because that will increase your page views significantly.
Gareth Gwynne
April 9th, 2009 10:46 pm
Hi Darren,
Good post, this. I ended up putting the link on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter. And saw a little spike!
Abbie
April 9th, 2009 10:50 pm
Update:
Logged on to the metrics counter this AM, and WOW.
My blog is less than 2 months old so I would get just 13 visits a day.
After doing this promotion excercise: A facebook msg, a twitter tweet (just one), posted link on MomDot, left meaningful comments on two blogs in my niche, and doing a $5/day StumbleUpon promotional campaign–for one day, my visits yesterday=130…even with a couple of comments!
WOW, didn’t know I’d get real results that fast. Thanks so much Darren.
lunaKM
April 9th, 2009 11:23 pm
Darren,
Please email me and tell me why you never approve my comments. If you are going to be prejudiced I’d like to know why. Thank you.
Adrian
April 9th, 2009 11:23 pm
The promotion does not work very well for me. I have tried most of methods described above with limitted success. Still most of my traffic (90%) comes from Google.
Maybe this is due to my niche: anonymity and privacy.
OneCowgirl
April 9th, 2009 11:28 pm
Thanks for the tips. This is fun!
My list: Ten Things you Need to Know When Moving Cattle!
Amy
April 9th, 2009 11:41 pm
So, I’m just getting back to you to let you know how the Post Promotion went for me. I promoted my list post through Facebook, (by inviting my collegues to comment on that post with their suggestions), asking one particular collegue who has a great notification website to let me link her on my blog roll while also mentioning my post, AND by linking here in the comments. So far, I’ve had several people go in to that post and post their comments from the folks I invited from Facebook. The best result from that so far is that one person, who has a daughter at an Art’s School will be forwarding my post link to a large group of students! Bingo! i also got a handful of hits from this website too! It really works!
Alison Kerr, Earthonaut
April 10th, 2009 12:12 am
Darren, I’m back again to comment.
The result of the promote a blog post challenge for me was 30 visits to my blog. Not exactly spectacular – you can tell I’m in the ‘little league’ here! I received 28 visits through Stumbleupon, 1 through Facebook, and 1 through Problogger.
Now, I’m not normally one to complain, but I’m really wondering what is up with people. I know there are a lot of comments to read here and tons of blogs to choose from out on the big, wide, internet, but why is everyone so selfish? I mean, my blog is about good down-to-earth stuff for parents – just making the world a better place one day at a time. No glitz, no sensationalism, no earth-consuming paraphernalia, and I don’t charge for a visit. Why would people prefer to read about celebrities, the latest technology, or how to make a quick buck?
Darren, do you care about what kind of Earth you are leaving for your kid/kids? How will our kids care for the Earth if we’re all rushing around looking for the latest sensational Tweet? I don’t grudge folks their blog income, but just get a little perspective people.
Come on over and take a look at what I’m doing. E-mail me a comment and tell me if there’s something glaringly wrong with my blog. Or if you already frequent other green blogs, let me know which one/s so I can learn from that.
gabybali
April 10th, 2009 12:15 am
I have posted a link from my Day 2 Task of List Post on my:
- Facebook (I usually always do this every time I make a post) but still no comment from my friends (they usually do!) except for the photos
- Twitter http://twitter.com/gabybali (How do I know if people click the link to my post from Twitter? hmm..)
- Digg (so far no one dugg it :( ) http://digg.com/travel_places/5_TIPS_TO_ENJOY_BALI_NOT_AS_A_TOURIST
- Delicious http://delicious.com/gabysuroto
And 10min after I left comment on your post here, I got a nice comment from other blogger,Charmaine : http://randalswife.blogspot.com/, that is soo great!!
I do use Internal Links on some posts. And because my blog is also about Bali,I sometimes left comment at Bali Blog and put their links on mine too, but I’m not sure they ever click my post back…I never received a response from Bali Blog, although I mentionned them a lot on mine..
Hey,I think I’m doing good on this Day 3 task,right,Darren? Thanks!!
Shannon Ehlers
April 10th, 2009 12:21 am
I published my list post and then worked on the promotion of it in various ways.
I built promotion into the post by asking for additions to the list. I put my post in front of quite a few people who have an online presence and familiarity with me and my “cause”.
So far, I have gotten responses from a Twitter follower and from a fellow college alum who is in my LinkedIn group. I anticipate a trickling response to the post over time, as more people add to the list content.
Donna Hull
April 10th, 2009 12:32 am
I have a marketing plan for every blog post that I write. It’s part of the routine once the post is published. It involves, Facebook, Linkedin (those are automatic feeds but I check up on them), Twitter, posting a broadcast at Blog Catalog then choosing one of the social networking groups that I belong to and requesting a stumble or other social love.
I keep comprehensive Google alerts set to my blog topics. I search for blogs where I can add value to the discussion through comments.
Trevor @ Financial Nut
April 10th, 2009 12:41 am
I love the concept! I am one of these types that gets completely caught up in promoting my blog as a whole.
I did a little work on Twitter to promote it. We’ll see what comes of it.
Susan Petracco
April 10th, 2009 12:45 am
This actually worked GREAT yesterday. I got a few readers from Digg and StumbleUpon, but word really spread via Twitter. I got a lot of retweets, and analytics shows a huge spike. This inspires me to read more. Oh, and I also reached out to a top blogger in my niche, who wrote me back. Day 3 was a huge success!
Sean
April 10th, 2009 12:49 am
Wow, what a great series. I have learned a lot like everyone else so far and am looking froward to the next few weeks of this series. I just started my blog a few weeks back and this series is great. I did a list entry this morning. It is on starting the process of controlling debt to become debt free. This will be the first in a series.
http://seansbuildingahappylifestyle.blogspot.com/2009/04/debt-freeis-it-possible.html
I would think of myself as a timid blogger–so today’s task is very helpful
Thanks a lot.
Sean
Patti
April 10th, 2009 12:52 am
I did write a post on one blog with a list included in the text. And then I also wrote a list page for the blog I’ve created for this project.
http://patriciahysell.wordpress.com/april-topics/
I’m getting a little nervous because I’m not really quite sure what I’m hoping to achieve with the blog. My dreams seem to big, too unwieldy. Too much to ask for from an uncaring global community.
LaTonya
April 10th, 2009 1:06 am
I am soooo glad I signed up for this. I haven’t had the opportunity to make any post yet. I’m printing the assignments off and doing the work during my down time. In just these few days I have gotten a lot out of the challenge. I am looking forward to more.
skykid
April 10th, 2009 1:39 am
Lately I have been paying attention to post promotion. The most frequent method I use is inside links to post with similar content. For example recently I posted an introduction for the new song of Troye Sivan – For them :
http://www.theskykid.com/2009/04/07/troye-sivan-for-them
As the song was devoted to homeless children across the world I included a link to a movie review of the film ” Children Underground : which deals with the same issue.
http://www.theskykid.com/2008/01/04/children-underground
In addition I promote the future posts and the one that have been published before via twitter and friendfeed ( having a friendfeed on my sidebar helps get them noticed ).
Also when I review a book or movie I usually get in touch with a director , an actor of the performer and them know – or their fan base that a new article is published .
Another way I use to promote certain post is making a relevant entry about in a forum I am member of.
Speaking of bookmarks – I would be more thankful if my readers are using that instead of me doing it myself. That`s why few days ago I published a topic titled ” Support theSkyKid.com” in which I described varies ways in which people can show support for the blog.
Here is the entry in question :
http://www.theskykid.com/2009/03/30/support-theskykidcom
Ryan Bickett
April 10th, 2009 1:50 am
So far, in addition to promoting my post on your blog, I also posted it to Twitter. I need to try some of your other suggested techniques as well, but haven’t gotten to that yet.
Robin
April 10th, 2009 1:53 am
I finally got around to posting my list style post.
http://howtomakemoneyontheinternet.info/free-ways-to-promote-a-blog-website/
Condo Blues
April 10th, 2009 1:58 am
Once I started submitting/promoting my blogs posts to social media sites I noticed a significant increase in readers and RSS subscribers. However, since there are so many sites out there like Digg, Kirsty, Reddit, etc. that speak to different demographics I’m not sure which sites to submit posts to that will allow me to reach the demographic mostly likely to be interested in reading my posts, which focus on green living and DIY. Time will not allow me to submit posts to EVERY social site out there and even if I did I’m sure that I’d be labeled a spammer, which I do not want. How do you decide/know which social sites are best for your blog’s niche?
Condo Blues
April 10th, 2009 2:01 am
Once i started submitting/promoting posts to social media sites I noticed a very steady increase in reaers and subscribers.
What I want to know is how do you decide WHICH sites to use to promote your posts to reach the demographic most likely to read your blog? Which in my case is frugal green living and DIY.
Razlan
April 10th, 2009 2:07 am
Without reading this post, I realised I am already doing some of the things listed here – like promoting the post on some relevant blogs via comments, putting it on social media sites (Twitter, Plurk, Facebook) etc. I’ve also just installed Google Analytics, so let’s see how much traffic this will bring. As always, thanks for the great tips!
Ben Mapp
April 10th, 2009 2:20 am
As promised, here are the two pages I created as part of this challenge.
The Context
http://www.roadmappmarketing.com/lead-generation/what-you-need-to-know-about-generating-leads
The List (to be published 9-April-2002 @ 10 am PDT)
http://www.roadmappmarketing.com/lead-generation/6-ways-to-generate-leads-for-free
Thanks,
Ben
Lokendra Rathore
April 10th, 2009 2:26 am
I am still in the process of writing my list-post.There are some lists on my blog here is one of them.
http://karansguesthouse.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/jaipur-a-fun-place-even-by-night/
It is a list of choice of things to do in the evening in Jaipur if you are here on a holiday.
Submitting your blog post to a Blog Carnival is also a nice way of promoting it.
Christine
April 10th, 2009 2:29 am
My blog is scattered loosely in the crafting/SAHM niche, but is mostly knitting. I spent some time today setting up almost 100 post links through Ravelry.com–a huge knitting community/database.
Two plus years of knitting posts is a lot! But I can link my individual blog posts to my projects, the patterns and even the yarn I use. Once I get photos uploaded, it could generate quite a bit of activity I had never considered before.
Cassandra
April 10th, 2009 2:40 am
This is beautifully put. Blogs are often so personal and can feel like our babies. I think that is why we can be so reluctant to market them.
Stepping outside the comfort zone in today’s assignment.
http://clutterbunny.com/2009/04/09/10-ways-to-inspire-yourself-to-start-spring-cleaning/
panks
April 10th, 2009 2:47 am
Hey Darren,
Nice articles as always. I follow you so much that I have you everywhere on FBK, Twitter and what not?
Well I have a website on Health and to study abroad. I have not seen any inflow from such social marketing sites.
I believe there are not many health related websites who try to promote and even if they do people are not interested. Education doesnt seem to be on radar on such websites.
They talk about FUN, and websites development stuff.
How many people might want to read an article of education and study abroad on such websites?
I believe my niche is a lot different then the usual and kind of limited with info and not many developments happening in the arena.
Do you see any place for me to promote education , study abroad links and I am really proud of my articles.
Anybody with any suggestions?
Panks
Michael @ TheFatLossAuthority
April 10th, 2009 2:58 am
OK… I have some catching up to do. I’m already doing the first two tasks but I definitely have a lot to learn from Darren and others here. Time to re-dedicate myself to this challenge!
SparkD
April 10th, 2009 3:23 am
I hope you all are “above water” in this recession.
If you’re thinking about pursuing Temporary Work, her’s my introduction posts. I write this from my personal experience of doing Temp Work.
Temp Introductory Profile
http://sparklytempdiaries.blogspot.com/2009/04/temp-introduction-checklist.html
Recession and Temp Fear
http://sparklytempdiaries.blogspot.com/search/label/recession
Moving To A New City
http://sparklytempdiaries.blogspot.com/2009/04/moving-to-another-city.html
Eileen Batson - Batson Group Marketing and PR
April 10th, 2009 3:59 am
Great stuff Darren – Posted my list and promoted it on Twitter, FB, MySpace, LI and my blog has been on the signature of my emails. I do get visitors but I need to get folks commenting! Duh. I’ll ask a question for them to answer. Oh knew that V8 was good for something!
Stephanie
April 10th, 2009 4:18 am
Promotion is the hardest part for me. I twitted the post, added it to my facebook and submitted through social marker. I also commented on a couple of other peoples lists. So far one person retweeted and added it to her favorites.
http://www.bizziemommy.com/7-websites-mom-entrepreneurs-should-visit.html
This is a great start. Thanks Darren.
Jeff
April 10th, 2009 4:28 am
I have some followers on twitter, so I posted my list post there (yes I’m, a day late..but I’m trying to keep up.)
Dawn
April 10th, 2009 4:59 am
Thank you Darren, I am really enjoying the challenges, they happened to tie in well with a class I just taught so I started working on a series of posts.
Yesterday I created my list post:
What is your Top Ten?
http://stamptildawn.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-is-your-top-ten.html
Today I posted a follow up on how to use the top ten lists.
Take your Top Ten to the next level.
http://stamptildawn.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-is-your-top-ten.html
Then I sent out my newsletter with links to both posts. I also issued a challenge in the second post that should get some comments and links.
Ben Mapp
April 10th, 2009 5:03 am
First, apologies for the double-post. I mis-posted my links for the Day 2 challenge here.
The promote challenge uncovered a weak spot for me.
I did:
- promote my post on Twitter and Facebook.
- add some internal links in my blog
Fun. Useful.
But, clearly a limited approach that will get limited results (and has thus far).
I’m going to continue to improve promoting posts to develop it into a strength.
Thanks,
Ben
Tawny Labrum
April 10th, 2009 5:40 am
Hi Darren – I had a great response pushing out my list post on 20 Facebook Applications for Your Job Search http://blog.bincsearch.com/?p=1108. I have had 5 people link to me and two more are scheduled to next week! I have tried pushing out posts before but I guess that the content was never right.
SpikeTheLobster
April 10th, 2009 5:40 am
Been catching up here (missed the first couple of days!). Mine isn’t a list post, but is of use to a lot of people, I hope. I always tweet any new blog post to my huge audience of a dozen or so people, but also keep an eye open for discussions on forums where I’ve written something appropriate that it’s easier to link to than reproduce in forum format. That sends a few folks over.
Never had any luck with Digg, to be honest – mostly because the big publishers seem to group-Digg their own work and get higher up. Ho hum. I Digged this one anyway: http://www.wordophilia.com/writing-and-plagiarism/
Max Trescott
April 10th, 2009 5:50 am
After reading another of your articles, I started a series of articles last week on General Aviation heroes. Today I posted a new article in that series on the founders of Cirrus Design. In promoting the article, I send an email with a link to a couple of my friends who worked for the company. One of them forwarded it to a VP and within an hour, I noticed that they had put a link to my article on their “News & Press” page. I never expected that. But it’s certainly fun to see how a little promotion can lead to pleasant surprises like this.
infmom
April 10th, 2009 6:01 am
I use a Twitter plugin called TweetBurner to promote all my blog posts. I’ve gotten several positive responses from people on my Twitter list that way.
I also put a link to my blog at the bottom of forum posts, when I feel it would be appropriate.
Now I need to do more. :)
Keith Jenkins
April 10th, 2009 6:15 am
Hi Darren,
Just a short note to say a big THANK YOU for this challenge! On Step 1 (elevator pitch), I finally put my thoughts down on paper. On Step 2 (list), I wrote this article http://tinyurl.com/cyeadn and published it. On Step 3, I promoted this article and the response was enormous! It was RT’d and StumbledUpon many times today and it’s become my biggest post ever! Unbelievable. Can’t wait for the other steps. :-)
Best regards,
Keith
Helen Janow Miqueo
April 10th, 2009 6:48 am
Thank you very much for this great information! Will have to work on my promoting, but now more focused than before. Seems like I need to do a lot more work :)
Stephanie - Green SAHM
April 10th, 2009 8:05 am
I’m promoting http://www.greensahm.com/4-places-to-connect-online-with-other-green-moms/
I regularly put my posts in my Twitter feed, and have gotten some good response on that sometimes. This one I also Stumbled, which I rarely do.
Will be looking at the others here too.
Jay Philips
April 10th, 2009 8:40 am
I really like this challenge. I hope everyone likes my blog on “28 sites to help you search Twitter and more”. If you have some sites you’d like to add please let me know.
Check it out at: http://www.jayphilips.com/2009/04/09/28-sites-to-help-you-search-twitter-and-more/
Thanks,
Jay
Alease Michelle
April 10th, 2009 8:58 am
Ok, I took your advice. I added another list post to my blog and realized that my traffic does increase when I use list post. I also posted about another blogger’s list and that send lots of viewers to my site.
It almost seem illegal to link to other people’s blog.
Thanks for the advice.
Soulpowr
April 10th, 2009 9:08 am
Posted a link to the list post on twitter: http://twitter.com/soulpowr/status/1484457051
Also have a link to this blog on all of my Ning groups.
Also use #6 from time to time.
Will definitely work on some of the other suggested methods of blog promotion
Laura Simmons
April 10th, 2009 9:20 am
Crap, I am already a day behind. Lots of good advice here. I am a beginner and haven’t managed to attract any visitors yet so I thought this would be a good way to learn.
I’ll let you know tomorrow how the promotion went. Should you use only one or two of the above methods per post promotion or should you use them all?
Jeff
April 10th, 2009 9:58 am
After just 20 hours my post is ranking 2nd on Google for the title tag phrase and I’m going to probably have my highest unique visitor day of all time.
Thanks!
Meikah Delid
April 10th, 2009 10:28 am
Hi, Darren and everyone! This is gettin g exciting by the day. :) I apologize for not being able to do the tasks on time because we are celebrating the Holy Days (Week) here.
In any case, every time I have a new post in my blog, I always put it on Twitter, which also lands on my Facebook. Sometimes, I also Plurk about it. Yeah these social networks do help generate traffic.
I’m looking into the possibility of linking to a blogger, and is choosing a blogger that writes about what I write, too. Perhaps you can help me? ;)
Meanwhile, I will put my link post on Digg and StumbleUpon.
Frank - Our Hiking Blog
April 10th, 2009 10:30 am
Hiking with Bathmophobia – 7 hiking trips that won’t scare you to death (too much) !
Enjoyed creating this list post here: http://frankinoz.blogspot.com/2009/04/hiking-with-bathmophobia-7-hiking-trips.html
ALRADY40
April 10th, 2009 10:41 am
I am loving this challenge.. I am a promoter already using Twitter, Twitwall, Digg and Stumble… although I am not stumbling as much. I also use other social media and am wanting to move into using Facebook. In fact my DIL is setting up a Facebook for me.. HOW good can it get? Love this challenge! THANKS
Chris Somers
April 10th, 2009 11:27 am
We enjoyed doing this task as it reminded us the different ways to promote a blog post and loved the suggestions that we are not doing. Liked the exercise so much I wrote a blog about it:
http://activerain.com/blogsview/1025589/Promoting-Your-Blog-Day-3-of-Build-a-Better-Blog-Challenge
Dawnaurora
April 10th, 2009 11:47 am
Hi Darren,
Love your post.
I guess it is time to get out of my comfort zone. I know that it would boost my blog and expertise in the field.
Many Blessings
Liz
April 10th, 2009 11:47 am
Well, things are still going good. To promote my blog I; used #2 Social Networking on Myspace, Facebook & Twitter. AND also #8 Followup Post. I am new to blogging so I have to keep it as simple as possible right now. I will use Problogger in the future to help me build more later.
Eric
April 10th, 2009 12:30 pm
Thanks for the kick in the pants for 31 days Darren.
7 Lighting Tutorials to Make Your Photos Stand Out
http://www.photographybay.com/2009/04/09/7-lighting-tutorials-to-make-your-photos-stand-out/
I did the Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook thing. Good response from friends and contacts thus far.
Trish @ Another Piece of the Puzzle
April 10th, 2009 1:20 pm
I published a list post today that was one of those “blog awards” that go around and of course linked to a bunch of people and then went and notified them of the award so they could pass it on and link to me in the process. They’re silly but fun.
I am getting better at using Twitter. Also, although I am not crazy about the new look of Facebook, I am getting more traffic from there, even from non-bloggers, because of how much easier it is for them to see my notes (really my blog feeding in) and even stuff I share on Google Reader!
bettina
April 10th, 2009 1:24 pm
I have made some changes today on my blog, added links and chenged the look.
http://bettinasettlesrealty.com/Blogspot.htm
Linda Hughes
April 10th, 2009 1:50 pm
Not having a clue…but trying. Too timid to promote so please see Five Ways To Boost Your Creativity
Maria Keckler
April 10th, 2009 1:59 pm
Darren,
Thank for all the ideas. I have been promoting posts on Facebook, twitter, and my personal circle. I like the suggestions about asking for links.
I have a marketing success story — I’ve started to line up interviews by successful published authors (to create a community of experts and up-and-coming writers), my first interview with Kathi Macias, author of 30 books, has been very well received. I just started a campaign for a chance to win one of her books for those who comment during the month of April.
What I love is that I am able to promote a great writer who is willling to share her expertise with others, and in the process, readers get an inside look at the writing life of one who is doing what they want to do. It is a win-win all around.
Here’s the post: http://writingtoserve.net/?p=223
Looking forward to experimenting with new ways of promoting not just the posts, but truly the content which can benefit all involved.
Maria
manikandan
April 10th, 2009 4:58 pm
hi,
your training project was excellent. your guidance will help me to boost my blog.keep rocks.all d best.
my blog – http://www.readycashforu.blogspot.com
Hope
April 10th, 2009 5:53 pm
I’ve used the internal link recommendation in this post
http://selfreliance.choseit.com/2009/03/17/self-reliance-is-interdependent/ and have a recent posts widget installed. Also, article marketing has been part of my plan for the blog but I seem to have difficulty with creating blog posts of much less than 1,000 words…which, when sufficiently reworked and fleshed out begin to look like short stories rather than articles. :-( I’ll get some articles out there yet, but may have to start them from scratch rather than expanding upon a blog post as had been my original plan.
Darran
April 10th, 2009 7:20 pm
Here’s what I did to promote the task in Day 2.
http://limetouch.com/archives/promote-a-blog-post/
iCan't Internet
April 10th, 2009 7:45 pm
Well, how about this? I will feature every blogger’s blog, that writes an article about one of these three articles of mine:
Google Scams -> http://www.icantinternet.org/2009/02/google-scams/
Getting Started With Adsense -> http://www.icantinternet.org/2009/03/starting-with-adsense/
Top 5 ways to increase adsense earnings -> http://www.icantinternet.org/2009/04/top-5-ways-to-increase-your-adsense-earnings/
iCan't Internet
April 10th, 2009 7:50 pm
I submitted my article to Digg, and Tweeted about it.
Whereas these two ways work a little, I’ve found out that using a reference to your article in a Yahoo answer (where the link is VERY relevant to the answer and the question of course) yields much more results, in the long run (sometimes even more then 6 months later).
Furthermore, I would like to co-operate with some other Internet-Marketing Bloggers, to exchange articles/links/experiences!
My list article:
http://www.icantinternet.org/2009/04/top-5-ways-to-increase-your-adsense-earnings/
Ed Coffin
April 10th, 2009 7:57 pm
I promoted my list post http://eatingconsciously.blogspot.com/2009/04/ten-stupid-questions-vegans-get-asked.html on Twitter, as I have well over 1,300 followers which also posts directly to my Facebook. I have had many responses and RTs in a short period of time. I also turned the list into an article for the Examiner.com, which seems to also be driving more traffic to my blog. It looks like traffic doubled yesterday!
ExcitedByLife
April 10th, 2009 9:18 pm
We purchased some PPC from stumbleupon for our list post ( http://www.excitedbylife.com/happiness/8-famous-quotes-on-loving-life/ ). stumbeupon ended up delivering so much traffic at the same time that it crashed our server!! None of it stuck unfortunately, probably because the server was down for most of it. We might try a more “news worthy” list article next time, like http://www.excitedbylife.com/happiness/7-ways-to-get-high-naturally-and-legally and limit the number of clicks per day.
The Bushman
April 10th, 2009 10:55 pm
Hey Darren,
Thanks for all the help.
http://www.thebushman.ca/journal/from-the-yellowknifer/
Maureen McCabe
April 10th, 2009 11:06 pm
I mentioned my post on Twitter, or the topic of the post with a link to the post that I was promoting. I also did a blog about the blog on ActiveRain a real estate network… or the post is kind of about the blog on my WordPress.org The post on ActiveRain was about the Flickr photo I found to use in my list post.
MJ
April 10th, 2009 11:55 pm
I’m going to comment in some blogs and forums today that are relavent. I fall into the group of timid bloggers so I do need that push to reach out to others. I’ll keep #1 in mind as I write the next post.
Ami
April 11th, 2009 12:33 am
I’m pretty nervous about promoting my blog, but I’m giving it a try. I’ve tweeted about it, and will check out Digg and StumbleUpon as well. I’m thinking about doing some promoting with other bloggers as well. I know a couple of writing blogs that might take well to sharing my link.
In case anyone else is interested, here’s the link to the post – 7 Places to Find New Story Ideas:
http://amispencer.com/blog/2009/04/09/7-places-to-find-new-story-ideas/
Kaye
April 11th, 2009 12:44 am
Great ideas! Your article gave me the courage I needed to Stumble one of my posts :) I already was tweeting most of them, but I need to do it consistently each time. Two other ideas I have fun with:
Enter contests for things I am interested in. Just adding the link to the contest entry is good (often more than one entry). This can often result in one or more new visitors as they notice your site name. If you win, you will also get links back and forth regarding the prizes. And since many of the contests I enter are small, I have been excited to be a winner a few times. Fun prizes, new friends, and great links :)
I also watch for blogs in my niche who are offering mutual linking opportunities for fun posts. For example, I entered my site in a couple of holiday joint projects at Christmas. The hosting sites asked for people to enter posts about holiday projects your site was posting about. I entered my site, and enjoyed quite a few new visitors as a result. They were a lot of fun, right down my site’s alley, and resulted in extra visitors to both sites. Win-win for us all :)
Karen MEG
April 11th, 2009 1:34 am
Great lesson, it’s good to know that I was already doing some of this stuff, but I suppose since I’ve been blogging the better part of 2 years now, I should have figured something out on my own.
Now I’ve added Twitter to my armamentarium, and am looking into Share This and Add This, and other social networking groups…my readership has dropped somewhat compared to last year, and I think that correlates directly to my activity on the social networking front (bloghopping “clubs” and other n’ing type of links).
Kristin
April 11th, 2009 1:44 am
I tend to utilize social networking often in promoting my posts, and will soon be using the follow up posts to help as well.
My list post is a first in a series of tips on using Twitter, broken down into bite-sized steps so anyone can use it confidently:
http://mymeanbean.com/Blog/?p=1877
I’ve been enjoying the series already, thanks Darren!
Ching Ya
April 11th, 2009 3:56 am
To me, this could be by far, the toughest lesson of the 4 we had so far, especially Darren’s 1st suggestion. Not that the previous ones are any easier, at least we would try to research something out to accomplish them, as for this one, we may need to deal with our inner timidity, and get a little thick-faced when needed. But it’s true, sometimes we all need a little confidence to knock on a door, a higher ground even.
Will try to cover as much notes as mentioned above… hopefully.
Quite many links shown here, so I twitted a few about blogging-related subjects for some. Good luck. ^^
@wchingya
Social Media/Blogging
Rupert
April 11th, 2009 4:26 am
I promoted my list Bristol Green Bloggers on Stumbleupon, twitter and facebook. I got a couple of clicks from twitter, 60+ clicks from stumbleupon and wordpress states 12 more visits but does not account where the come from.
Though having checked these stats the disappointing bit was finding only 1 person had clicked a link, so conclusin is that stumbleupon can deliver numbers it is of a very low quality.
Seth W
April 11th, 2009 4:29 am
Promotion is by far the hardest of the blogging skills.
It requires people to go from providing good content to showing it off. It can be a difficult balancing act and one that many people struggle with.
Sean R Nicholson
April 11th, 2009 5:15 am
I’m curious as to how folks feel about plugging your own blog posts. Is it considered shameless? Is it better to just hope that others find your post and tweet about it?
Thoughts?
Sean
@seanrnicholson
http://www.intranetexperience.com
Sen
April 11th, 2009 5:25 am
Hi Darren,
Thanks for the tips
I have changed my blog appearance
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http://www.cadumps.blogspot.com
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SpikeTheLobster
April 11th, 2009 6:02 am
@Sean R Nicholson: Promoting is all part of the game, these days. Personally, I wouldn’t go as far as putting a link in every reply to every post on every forum (for example), but promoting where appropriate and having the URL in your signature is acceptable and not too “in your face”, IMHO.
Anton Chuvakin
April 11th, 2009 6:29 am
Twitter worked really well for the post (in this case the list post from yesterday); it was even RT’ed by a few people.
Ilaria/Swimturtle
April 11th, 2009 8:21 am
Hi Darren, I have two blogs, so I’m going to put two links in this comment:
From turtle^haus, I’m promoting my interview of author Amanda Ackroyd, http://turtlehaus.com/2009/01/26/author-interview-amanda-ackroyd-part-i/
and from Life+Web this post on managing your work schedule as a freelancer, in particular limiting it to 40 hours a week (not to be confused with 4, hee hee)
http://www.lifeplusweb.com/2009/03/the-successful-freelancer-knows-how-to-compartmentalize/
mpcallihan
April 11th, 2009 9:11 am
Hi Darren!
I am definitely in the “shy about posting my site” group. I actually linked my blog to my website, then mentioned on Twitter that I had done it. Within five minutes I had a positive posting back! WOW! This is fun!
http://literacycenters.googlepages.com/
I am amazed and thrilled!
mpcallihan
Patricia C
April 11th, 2009 9:43 am
I definitely feel shy about pitching to other bloggers. Don’t they have their own stuff to say? I can see having a guest writer, but I don’t see how pitching to another blogger dies anything. Am I supposed to think they will tell their audience to go read my missive?
Patricia C
April 11th, 2009 10:10 am
Well, I did it. I posted something to my blog that I think is well written and asks a question that most people will not have thought about before. It’s here:
http://vener-art.com/beadblog/
So now I will tweet it. And maybe mention it in some guild forums. I’m not sure where else is appropos.
kathi
April 11th, 2009 2:35 pm
I used promotional techniques 2 (Twitter and Facebook), 3 (StumbleUpon), and 4 (added a “Recent Posts” widget to my sidebar) on my list post 5 great imaginary bands
Anne Maybus
April 11th, 2009 4:39 pm
I have made some comments on blogs, tweeted some and promoted some in my own blog (posts coming out during the week)
I am always happy to have guests on my blog as long as the content is relevant so just yell if you are interested!
Laura
April 11th, 2009 6:55 pm
I feel like a knob promoting myself, but I think I just have to get used to it! :o))
BizMind
April 11th, 2009 10:32 pm
I’m grateful that I’m included in this course. I’m now encourage to be vocal and sideline my timidity. With the lessons I learnt and applied it in my blog, I’m now slowly increasing my blog traffic. One example of this is the post two days ago about 10 Well-Known Manny Pacquaio’s Business Interest Today. Here’s the url of the post: http://entrebankph.com/10-well-known-manny-pacquiao’s-business-interest-today/. It was the most viewed post yesterday.
Jason
April 11th, 2009 10:36 pm
I have Twitter show my blog updates. Never tried it with facebook, that may be something I have to try.
Thanks
Jaye L
April 12th, 2009 1:10 am
My blog is about creativity and design in the the medium of quiltmaking and fabric.
http://artquiltmaker.com/blog/2009/04/creative-prompt-8-dream/
Sometimes it is great (and more portable!) to get out of the fabric medium. This post is the 8th in a series of creative prompts to help people do just that. Creative prompts are ways to get your creative juices flowing.
While this isn’t the list post we did the other day, I feel it is a better post and one I would be more comfortable promoting. I put it up on my Facebook status update and also on Twitter. I have FriendFeed set to feed anything I post on various social media to Facebook, so people will see the promotion in a different way. As well, Facebook posts back to FriendFeed, so my FriendFeed only friends will see it there, too.
Make a little doodle and join in1 We would love to see what your artwork is!
lindy
April 12th, 2009 2:08 am
OK, I have been told by http://www.mymarketer.net that created a wonderful LIST called Mother of all lists, compiling all the lists we created for this days task that my comment giving my list was not here. I have not yet scrolled through all the comments but I want to make sure, by announcing it a second time that I have a list on my blog – here it is: http://lindylou-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/04/7-things-you-need-know-to-save-your.html
The list is Titled: 7 Things You Need To Know To Save Your Life
Yesterday we had a pretty severe tornado hit in TN and this is my most current post regarding it. I hope to have more pictures but it doesn’t feel right to be walking about taking pictures in front of people who have lost so much.
http://lindylou-abbott.blogspot.com/2009/04/murfreesboro-tn-tornado-rutherford.html
Ms. Latina Renee
April 12th, 2009 2:24 am
I know its day six, but here what I’ve done for this day three promote a blog post topic. Check it out, How to Promote a Blog Post – Best Contact Management Systems
Heidi
April 12th, 2009 2:35 am
Darren, you are BRILLIANT!!! I am so glad I did this. I wrote the list post and I decided to write on 97 ways to save money. Then to promote it I emailed 14 different sites in my niche and asked if they wanted to elaborate on a specific way to save money and I would link to them within the post. I have gotten a few responses and many of them are linking back to me.
Then, I decided to try the stumble thing – I stumbled it and I ordered “stumble backs” from entrecard (there was only 5 available, but I figured it was a start). I also posted a stumble link on the article. I have gotten over 500 hits in the last hour! My site averages just under 500 a day!!
I don’t know how this will translate to subscribers, but I am super happy with the hits! Thank you so much :-)
If anybody wants to check it out the article is here:
http://www.littlepeoplewealth.com/2009/04/97-ways-to-save-money.html
Jennifer
April 12th, 2009 2:47 am
Hi Darren,
Before reading this post I had been very shy about promoting my blog particularly on Facebook but I tried it and didn’t die but still didn’t feel comfortable.
So I kept thinking about it and found something that worked for me. I wrote a complimentary entry about a financial blog, http://www.footnoted.org, framed the entry in terms that were relevant to my Facebook community (when your 401k becomes a 201k), posted the link there and on the financial blog with many compliments to the owner. She commented back on my page. This page now has my 2nd highest visit count.
Through this process, I’ve discovered that the key to feeling good about promotion that works is to find out how to benefit all the parties involved. Sounds super simple but working this out is definitely multi-faceted.
Thanks! Jennifer
http://curiosityquotient.blogspot.com/2009/04/for-love-of-footnotes.html
Tracey de Morsella
April 12th, 2009 3:50 am
This approach has worked well for me so far. I set up a blog on green careers about 3 weeks ago and instead of promoting it, I sent out a link to a post to related discussion groups on Linkedin, yahoogroups and facebook. I got 200 hits mostly from linked in. So, I studied what people were responding to on the groups and did a more in depth post on a related topic called Best Green Jobs Meta-list: 56 Top Green Careers Recommended By 11 Authoritative Sources
http://greeneconomypost.com/green-jobs-metalist-green-careers-1174.htm and promoted it to linkedin, since that is where I got the most hits and I got 900 hits. My husband wrote “Smart Meters Open Up New Soft” http://greeneconomypost.com/smart-meters-new-software-sector-1182.htm and promoted them on some tech groups that I got him to join and he got about 500 hits.
Using this approach of sending individual posts to targeted groups is helped us to grow traffic, subscriptions and climb up in rank fairly quickly. Our rank has climbed 500,000+ in less than a month.
This week I started to try to send out posts five times a day on twitter and that seems to also be helping us increase traffic. I hope to fine tune this strategy by identifying which posts people are responding to and which sources people are most responsive to. I have not yet figured out how to make stumbled upon, facebook, digg, nings etc work for us yet. I think if I can do this we could do this, we could experience another bid jump in traffic,
Patricia C
April 12th, 2009 5:22 am
Ok, so as far as I can tell no one has been to my blog. Certainly no one has left any comments. This is depressing.
:(
Kittencaboodle
April 12th, 2009 5:32 am
I liked this one and retweeted it!
http://mysquiggles.com/mums/10-daily-survival-tips-for-mums/
RobertaK
April 12th, 2009 6:17 am
Trying to see who I can promote to. Problem is, there’s very little on my blog as yet …
Heidi
April 12th, 2009 7:37 am
I love your stuff Patricia! I tried to leave a comment, but I can’t b/c you have to log in to wordpress to leave a comment on your site (I do not have an account). If you change that I bet you would get more comments!
I was going to email you to tell you that, but I can’t find a contact link. I hope you see this :)
Anne Wayman
April 12th, 2009 7:42 am
Okay Darren, I often link and exchange links with other writing bloggers… but I’m going to stretch… I’m going to add two or three big blogs to my google rss reader and then approach them… I’ll post when I actually get those emails sent…
Anne Wayman, now blogging at http://www.aboutfreelancewriting.com
Patricia C
April 12th, 2009 7:54 am
Heidi,
Ha! Apparently the newer versions of WordPress have the switch for users must be logged in and when I upgraded it changed the setting. Now people should be able to leave comments.
Yay. But I see I’m again behind on the WP upgrade. *sigh* At least I now know to check the settings!
And again, thank you for the compliment. You have made my day! :)
Patricia
SpikeTheLobster
April 12th, 2009 8:11 am
@Patricia C: I visited, honest. Unfortunately I know nothing (absolutely nothing) about your particular craft and I can’t think in colour. Yeah, sad techie geek. This meant I couldn’t really respond to your question – though I would have if I had an artistic side. At all.
Lisa @ Stop and Smell the Chocolates
April 12th, 2009 9:04 am
More great info!! I have been using twitter a lot lately to promote posts and it does bring a little traffic. I did do a tweet about my post and went back and linked it up to my Blogaversary post, which is the page everybody is coming to see at the moment. I will think about other ways to promote it.
http://stopnsmellthechocolates.blogspot.com/2009/04/9-benefits-of-blogging-for-year.html
Thanks for all of your help!
Garreth Wilcock
April 12th, 2009 9:33 am
To Laura’s point, I think it’s a great think to transcend the idea that you’re promoting *yourself*. Presumably there’s some valuable information that your blog shares, and that’s what you’re promoting.
Perry
April 12th, 2009 10:02 am
Welll, since my site and blog are dedicated to helping the Teen population succeed, I emailed the link to a posting on “Self Reliance”: some teachers at my daughter’s school and ask for their thoughts…and if they liked what they saw would they be agreeable to approaching the school to have my site listed as a resource for parents and students!!
The posting I used was:
http://teentriumph.com/wordpress/?p=122
Thanks!!!
Pam Dent
April 12th, 2009 1:13 pm
I have promoted yesterday’s list post on Linkedin, Facebook and have added internal links. I also often put a link to my posts on Topix is they are localism or real estate oriented.
P Shankar
April 12th, 2009 6:05 pm
I’ll try to promote my blogs, but I think we should keep doing it every day. Otherwise you will see a spike in traffic for a week then go down.
Natalie Green
April 12th, 2009 8:19 pm
I am absolutely stoked. My traffic has gone up over 75% in past few weeks. Checking the stats, this is attributable to (in order of highest to lowest) traffic via ProBlogger, direct traffic, twitter, one particular blog that I contribute to comments/forum and google search.
I’m hoping with the feedback I’m also getting from new readers to improve content even further and attract more.
Bud Hennekes
April 12th, 2009 9:31 pm
Promoting your content is essential..
One of my personal favorite blog posts is
The Abc’s of Personal Growth :)
http://www.aboundlessworld.com/the-abcs-of-personal-growth/
Kern
April 12th, 2009 10:35 pm
Day 2 and still learning so much. Thanks, asking for links from other bloggers sometimes is my #1 traffic resource!
Patricia C
April 12th, 2009 11:23 pm
SpikeTheLobster, thank you for visiting. I don’t expect everyone to have the same or even similar experiences and inclinations. But you can’t really use being a techie as a reason because even technologivally oriented and scientifically oriented people can and often do have artistic leanings – and vice versa. For example, I have an advanced degree in Astrophysics and cut my computing teeth on BSD UNIX.
On the other hand, I am less skilled at sales and marketing stuff. :).
Pro-vamsi
April 13th, 2009 12:44 am
Great Idea darren!!
I missed your third post and I finished reading it now!!
Suzanne
April 13th, 2009 4:08 am
Great list of promotion ideas, and here’s my submission for something worthy of extra promotion: Stuck Sucks!
Word Seeker
April 13th, 2009 6:21 am
Great tips as always. God Bless!!!
Yohay
April 13th, 2009 7:35 am
I promote my posts on sites that are in my field. I’ll try getting into that Digg thing.
Asking a blogger to link to me? That’s hard for me to do…
Amelia Burton
April 13th, 2009 8:21 am
Hi Darren,
I did it! I asked 4 people to link to my article on last minute preparation for a fun run – marathon http://www.ameliaburton.com.au/2008/09/last-minute-preparation-for-a-marathon-half-marathon-or-fun-run.html
2 people were regular readers, and 2 I picked from top blogs from the Forbes website. It’ll be interesting if they get back to me…
I also offered to return them the favor suggesting articles I liked. Plus I stumbled, dugg and twittered it…
My question is, should you always target blogs bigger than yours with more traffic, or start small?
Amelia
Esther Poyer
April 13th, 2009 9:29 am
Hi Darren
What a great project!
This month I am also on a challenge to write “thirtypoemsin30days” with the blogsite to match…
I have just posted a list of best books…
http://estherpoyer.wordpress.com/resources/ (healthy writing habits for the cool creative)
Thanks for being fabulous.
Julie
April 13th, 2009 9:37 am
Darren:
You mention a con of article marketing being duplicate content ‘penalties.’ Republishing and syndicating content, so long as you do it with quality publishers and each offers value, is unlikely to create penalty:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/09/demystifying-duplicate-content-penalty.html
Scraping content or being a thin affiliate can cause issues. Having many copies of a piece of content can cause attribution and linking issues. But it’s not really about ‘penalty’ so much as it’s about working against oneself.
Jaime Lyerly
April 13th, 2009 10:06 am
Okay so I am a little behind on the days, but I did promote two of my blog posts on Digg, which is something new for me, one of them my list post from day 2.
I usually just post a link to it via Twitter and Facebook, so Digg is a new one. I normally get a fair amount of action from Twitter, but I am still new to it all so I think it maybe another site is a waste of time when no one is really looking for me yet? Not sure.
So here is my blog posts http://jaimelyerly.blogspot.com
and the link on Digg links – http://digg.com/arts_culture/Encaustic_Painting_Monoprint_Art_Technique_Tutorial
http://digg.com/arts_culture/5_books_to_help_Artists_to_Live_their_Creative_Dreams
Would love to see some more action to my blog!
Let me know what you think.
Hopeful – Jaime
Jamie
April 13th, 2009 11:35 am
I usually update my twitter with new posts, I plan on doing the same on all the web 2.0 sites I’m a member of. My site is dedicated to a hockey player, and I love hockey, I’m already a member of a few hockey forums and sites, but plan on joining many more as that’s where my target audience is. That should increase traffic a lot, but before I get there I really want to get my blog spruced up, specially with the new 2009-10 season starting in October, I plan on hosting a “launch” party that will match the beginning of the hockey season.
Remya
April 13th, 2009 4:44 pm
Hi,
It was nice to see your tips to promoting blog posts…
This is very helpful…
Thanks…
alwaysLovely
April 14th, 2009 12:28 am
Darren: I promoted my blog post to my Facebook group which I created. It is a group of students who are sitting for their GCE O Level Examinations this year.
This is exactly how I did this: I send a message to everyone in the group. I previously had just left it on the discussion board which might not have the members looking at it so now by sending a message, I hope to get to them directly.
We shall see how it goes about.
On top of this, I have DIGG the post. (http://www.singaporeolevelmaths.com/2009/03/27/video-e-math-popular-exam-question-finding-ratio-of-areas-in-vectors-includes-3-strategies-revision-of-similar-triangles/)
Cheers!
Blog promotion is something I ain’t really doing. But I will start to be more conscious on this aspect.
Thank you!
LBrown
April 14th, 2009 4:19 am
Hi Darren
I attached this to an email:
P.S. want to make your home greener this spring? check out my latest post at grengds.blogspot.com
Sam sall
April 14th, 2009 6:18 am
hi
i prompted my article
http://www.speechstarter.com/you-only-need-these-5-easy-tips-to-survive-recession/
using twitter,social marketing, Internal Links , linking in to previous post ,commenting on other blogs.andi have few mil subscribers.
i will use also inviting other people and write a marketing article about
thanks
Meghan Newton
April 14th, 2009 7:32 am
I’m one of those who falls into the ‘wary of promoting my blog’ category. Aside from a tweet, I don’t really promote my blog posts. I’ve tried to inject some of today’s suggestions into my list post, which was fairly painless. It’s: Five Things to Look for When Buying Clothing if anyone want’s to have a look.
Matt Brown
April 14th, 2009 9:18 am
Just promoted this blog post via Twitter, Facebook, and through an RSS Aggregator.
Would love to know what you guys think of my List Post from yesterdays task:
http://themattbrown.com/write-a-list-post-day-2-of-31dbbb/
It is a list of 10 of my favorite recent Identity redesigns.
Michelle Alvarez
April 14th, 2009 11:56 pm
Ah – this post is so good for me! I’m a new blogger and very timid on “pushing” my blog on others. I’ve been reading on how to drive traffic, but still can’t seem to get myself out there to do it yet. This post has given me more ideas on how to do that. Still taking baby steps! ;-)
Danielle Kubus
April 15th, 2009 1:27 am
Hi!
I promoted by blog via Twitter and Facebook. My list post is 10 Places to Market your Virtual Assistant Business.
chris
April 15th, 2009 1:49 am
Hi i’ll swap a link on anybodies blog for a link on mine.
http://www.bitsnbobsshowntell.blogspot.com
Melani
April 15th, 2009 8:40 am
I have loved this series so far. The daily tasks have been really helpful. So, here goes. I am:
http://www.marzipanmama.com
Check out my post about losing baby weight!
Gina
April 15th, 2009 4:17 pm
Before this 31-day blogger project, I was already promoting my posts on facebook and twitter which have led to some traffic – not a lot, but some. I’d expect more from “friends”. Subscribers have generated the most traffic. I do thank people and reach out to them when they subscribe or comment. Depending on the post topic, I’ve asked people to retweet or pass the message along.
I’ve recently started making a big effort to seek out similar blogs and comment, comment, comment. I find it enjoyable, and I’m getting some traffic from this activity too.
Thanks again…great stuff!
ArdeasNest
April 16th, 2009 2:23 am
Not quite ready to go overboard, yet, but I am definately looking into Digg, etc. I am also going to work on a list to other postings of other bloggers (with their permission) which wll hopefully bring more traffic.
Reeta Luthra
April 16th, 2009 2:28 am
I’ve spent a good while promoting yesterdays list post http://paradoxofreality.com/blog/2009/04/15/7-ways-role-models-influence-your-success/ on various social networks.
It’s been a slog and I really appreciate all the tips people are leaving in these comments that’ll help make the process more efficient.
Glen Feechan
April 16th, 2009 2:54 am
As an extension to point #5, I find Aweber’s blog broadcast facility is a great way of doing this automatically. You can set it to email links to the latest posts on your blog at whatever intervals you choose. Mine is set to go out on a Wednesday and a Friday, and I regularly get around a third of my ezine database clicking to read the posts.
Joel Brown
April 16th, 2009 12:32 pm
Hi Darren,
Thanks for actually putting this out there and reminding us that it is something that we need to do. Even though i have written posts covering some of these things myself before, the actual process of getting in and doing these things is something that it is quite easy to forget.
I put it to the test with my post i created for yesterdays task and already within only a matter for 5 or 6 hours it is in the top 20 most viewed pages for my site. This really will help to build site visitors i think.
Thank you for the post.
Blogging Basics And Money Making Tips
April 16th, 2009 6:36 pm
Points 2, 3 and 4 works well for me. I use twitter and stumbleupon mainly to promote by post and again having a latest post section in my side bar has also helped me drive traffic.
Thanks Darren for putting up this post. Looking forward for Day 4 :)
I am trying to take each post of yours here seriously and follow them even though I am doing this very slow.
Cheers
Krish
http://www.bloggertalkz.com
Dane
April 17th, 2009 2:17 am
Irony: it can take far longer to promote a post than it did to create it in the first place!
Meanwhile, I did today’s challenge — feel free to digg it!
http://digg.com/business_finance/3_Sources_of_Inspiration_for_the_Highly_Productive_Person
Paula G
April 17th, 2009 3:38 am
I like your idea of noticing other people’s comments and giving them a Stumble, a Digg, or a Tweet if you like what you read. I try to do this daily.
Another way I have found to build link relationships is to link to other bloggers in the first place. And, my podcast has been great for that. For instance I recently interviewed Lauren & Emira, authors of The Boss of You http://tinyurl.com/cfmoue and have asked them to let their readers know about it as well. Everyone likes to let their audience know about good content on the net that is about them.
Also just changed my email sig to promote a blog post. I haven’t done that before but will experiment. Now that I have my free report at the tippy top of my blog I feel better about it b/c people who go there will see that call to action & potentially join my community that way.
Conrad
April 18th, 2009 1:36 am
Hi Darren,
I’ve got the habit of promoting every post right after posting it, and I actually finished doing that a few minutes before receiving today’s 31DBBB email.
You made me realise that I might be spamming Twitter a little bit as I had automatic tweets set up to advertise my blog a couple times a day. But I removed it while reading this post of yours!
I’m going to look into more ways of promoting tonight and read the posts that you’re linked to in this post.
Thanks again for this course!
Conrad
anna
April 18th, 2009 12:00 pm
Self promotion. Right. Here.
Diana from Guerrero Ink
April 18th, 2009 12:56 pm
This goes live on the 20th:
http://www.arkanimals.com/2009/04/20/ten-stupid-mistakes-pet-owners-make/
Ten Stupid Mistakes Pet Owners Make:
I promote every post on Twitter and Facebook. My best posts get bookmarked at several social media sites and submitted to a blog carnival.
mannequin
April 19th, 2009 1:17 am
ggrr. I did it. I promoted the post on Twitter and FaceBook.
I have issues with this one, I feel like such a ho , selling myself. Oh my. We’ll see what happens if anything.
Nic
April 20th, 2009 1:00 am
I’m loving this program so far.
I usually use social networking sites like Twitter to inform my followers of new posts on my blog.
Debbie_L
April 20th, 2009 10:58 pm
Hi Guys,
I promoted my blog post on Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious and Technorati. I use Onlywire.com. You can set up all you social bookmarking sites, and when you want to promote a blog post, it will post to all your sites.
I promoted http://www.invisibleheartstrings.com/7-answers-on-using-art-to-manifest-anything/
Veronica
April 21st, 2009 12:17 am
Thanks! I did facebook, digg, and delicious with my post. I know I’m going to have to study this a little more but wanted to get at least some portion of this done today.
Janet Ann Collins
April 21st, 2009 5:38 am
At a recent conference some people asked me to blog about something I’d mentioned. I posted it about an hour ago and mentioned the link on my Facebook Wall. It’s information not appropriate for the blog linked to Facebook. I just got a response in my inbox and will go read it now. That was fast!
Tara Seale
April 21st, 2009 2:43 pm
I promoted my list on Twitter and the English Companion Ning at http://englishcompanion.ning.com/. I also posted my top ten list at this website: http://www.toptentopten.com/
and it provided me a way to link my blog.
I think I accomplished Day 3.
RunningWolf
April 21st, 2009 3:46 pm
I did a post about World of Warcraft:
http://rwrant.co.za/2009/04/07/3-most-annoying-mobs-in-world-of-warcraft/
I promote all my posts on Digg, Twitter, Delicious, Google Bookmarks, Facebook, Myspace. (This is standard procedure) If I use a video clip from Youtube, I usually submit the clip to Digg as well and share it with all my friends.
I live in a country where Internet users are still clueless on what Web 2.0 and Social Bookmarking is. Most people watch a clip on Youtube over and over and never Stumble / Digg / Twitter / Facebook link the clip (which is sad)
Shevonne
April 23rd, 2009 12:19 am
I’m very into FriendFeed and Twitter and are constantly promoting the wonderful blogs that I read. They usually get RT from my followers and friends, so I am already doing this. =D
I also comment on other blogs. Not for promotion, but cause I find them interesting. However, when I check my stats, many of my readers come from those sites.
Tara Seale
April 23rd, 2009 11:24 am
I promoted my blog, and I even listed it with the Top Ten Top Ten: http://www.toptentopten.com/
Biz
April 23rd, 2009 11:32 pm
Well now, that was kinda fun! I promoted my list post on Twitter, and also in our forums by visiting different people I had developed relationships with over the last year. I spent about a half hour connecting with people and I more than doubled my unique hits for the day.
Geesh, how simple was that???
Pat
April 24th, 2009 6:41 am
As my website is still in the early stages of development I did not want to promote it too much.
However in the spirit of the challenge I joined digg (something I’ve been meaning to do but never quite got around to it) and posted the article there :-)
http://www.patbweddingphotography.com/68/8-hot-tips-for-your-summer-wedding/
Molly
April 25th, 2009 10:45 pm
Darren,
First, thank you so much for this challenge. Since I haven’t yet got my website set up and I’m converting my current blog to a music gigs links only site, I’ve had difficulty staying focused on the challenges so far. So, because I want not only to succeed, but to help others, I’m going to set up my website and new blog that reflect my real passion of online research then go back to day 1 of the challenge and start over.
My situation started me thinking and I have a suggestion for you. Why not have an ‘annual challenge’? Same process, every year. In addition, those who’ve completed the first challenge could continue their education through ‘advanced challenges’ or something of that nature. I can see ‘meetups’, collaborations, forums, etc.. in the future of 31BBB.
Mickey Bricks
April 28th, 2009 1:29 am
Yea I’m also one of those “scared” bloggers. Well not so much scared as a bit overwhelmed. I’m really new to this whole social media internet thing and I’m learning slowly but surely. This is a great site. Thank you for all the info.
Thedialecticeclectic.blogspot.com
PhoenixTheBloggingMama
April 28th, 2009 8:39 am
Thank you so much for the ideas on how to promote your blog! I am one of those that only ever promoted the “whole” blog so this has definitely been a learning experience for me! Now I know of at least one way to use Twitter! lol
http://phoenixthebloggingmama.blogspot.com/2009/04/breast-cancer-3-day.html
Jan Foselli
April 30th, 2009 1:48 am
Great post and challenge. I just posted yesterday’s challenge on my Facebook page. I also put the same blog in our local newspapers on-line paper as well.
I’m very focused on my local market, so I’m not quite sure how to reach them with my blog. However, there are alot of posts on here to read, so maybe I’ll find some helpful hints!
Thanks!
Omotoke Olagbaju
May 1st, 2009 11:32 pm
Thanks for this lesson as a result I have begun a series of notes on facebook called ‘A Poem a day in the month of May’ seeing as my blog is mainly about the poetry I write.
Check out the link here:
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=101418515861&ref=nf
♥
James
May 3rd, 2009 1:46 pm
Darren,
Thanks again for the great tips! One question that came up in my mind when doing this part of the course was what you thought of the ethics of using Social bookmarking tools versus manual submission? Is it a grey area, a necessary evil for new blogs?, or a non-issue? Thanks again for the course!
Albert
May 4th, 2009 9:10 am
Darren,
Thanks for the course.
I have used facebook to promote my ‘Samurai Today’ and saw a bit of traffic, but my “friends” on Facebook are not really my target. I’m looking into twitter but again it is a case of getting known first.. Chicken or the egg scenario.
I used the post Ronin and Business today (http://samuraitoday.blogspot.com/2009/04/ronin-and-business-today.html) and have seen an increase in traffic with a reasonable bounce rate.
I look forward to the rest of the course :)
Jeannette
May 6th, 2009 8:41 pm
I see that I’m not the only one who is shy about getting herself out there! whew, what a relief. I feel a bit shameless, but I emailed a group I belong to about a relevant topic I’d just posted on, and included a link to my post. I eased the pain a little by saying my post had links they might like to check out.
Thanks for the challenge!
Chloe Alice Wilson
May 7th, 2009 9:13 pm
After reading a few of the other comments it’s nice to know others are nervous about approaching bloggers to link to their posts as well. I also took heart from the comments on the problems of social media promotion if your profile is quite new and if your blog is new with few posts and comments as mine is.
I guess you have to start somewhere though so I promoted my post – http://bestben10toys.co.uk/blog/toy-tips/unwanted-toys-16-ideas-for-what-to-do-with-them/ – to Twitter, Stumble, Delicious, Digg and Reddit where I’ve been trying to develop a profile by submitting other people’s posts for a month or so now.
I then did an internal link from my main site featuring a link and excerpt for the blog post on the home page. I then tried a bit of article marketing with it and plucked up the courage to e-mail a forum that has related articles asking if they would be intererested in it. On this e-mail I included a link to my latest blog post so hopefully I’ve made a good stab at some of the promotion suggestions.
I’m going onto the Day 4 challenge tomorrow so will try to link to my article in a comment section there if I find a suitable post from a blog in my niche.
I found a post from my niche of “toys” in the comments above (http://auntlindasblog.com) and have Stumbled it to help it on it’s way. If anyone else is from my niche please let me know and I’ll try to help promote your post too.
Tom
May 12th, 2009 12:21 pm
Over the last months I found that some people who follow my blog link to it from their own. Usually to those pieces which I value the most myself.
Aaron
May 15th, 2009 7:38 am
Fantastic Darren. This and the last post. EXCELLENT – really useful. Here’s my list – http://funnynotts.blogspot.com/2009/05/top-10-fun-things-to-do-in-nottingham.html
Heather R
May 16th, 2009 1:24 pm
I’ve already been using the Networked Blogs app in Facebook for getting traffic from friends / family to my personal blog.
I’m using Twitter and LinkedIn for driving traffic to my public blog (Unleashed Abundance). I use one of the 3 website spots on my LinkedIn profile to point to my blog, as well as use the Wordpress app in LinkedIn to let people scan through the first few lines of each post before going to the blog itself. Once on the blog, I use the Twitter widget to let people see what I’m tweeting and Follow Me on Twitter. In Twitter, I post tinyurl’s to my blogposts and have my profile URL set to point to my LinkedIn profile. Then back again in LinkedIn I use my status updates to alert folks in my network when I’ve published a new blog post and direct them to view my profile to read more.
It’s all one big freakin’ circle of life!
Ande - GuruZaz.com
May 17th, 2009 1:21 am
The post I was promoting is:
http://guruzaz.com/2009/03/30/six-steps-to-use-astrology-to-improve-your-personality-and-relationships/
So I did a search for the top astrology blogs and found a few. I emailed three of them and made it clear they were doing me the favor by reading my post to see if it was appropriate to put on their site. I offered to promote either their site or a post from their site on http://www.GuruZaz.com – my blog.
I had one immediate reply from the busiest blog which shows how finely tuned her system is – thank you Elsa: http://www.astrodispatch.com/2009/05/16/six-steps-to-use-astrology-to-improve-your-personality-and-relationships-by-swami-zazvatananda/
My Two Seasons
June 3rd, 2009 6:02 am
Thank you this great post! I get nervous about asking people for stuff, but I got brave and did it! I also promoted on Twitter and Facebook. It’s proved to be somewhat successful so far!
Here’s my post I promoted:
http://mytwoseasons.com/2009/06/02/7-calm-and-quiet-activities-for-little-ones/
Kevin Chapman
June 7th, 2009 7:08 am
I’ve been promoting this article: http://lollujo.com/2009/06/10-weight-loss-tips-for-beginners.html for the last couple of days.
I’ve signed up with Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious, and that article was my first Digg. I’m also in the process of starting a StumbleUpon ad campaign.
As usual, I promoted the article on Twitter and Facebook, but I’ve also joined Plurk as well, and promoted it on there.
As it’s still early days, I don’t have any results yet, but fingers crossed it’ll drive some traffic to my site.
Kevin
Kevin Chapman
June 7th, 2009 7:09 am
I’ve been promoting this article: http://lollujo.com/2009/06/10-weight-loss-tips-for-beginners.html for the last couple of days.
I’ve signed up with Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious, and that article was my first Digg. I’m also in the process of starting a StumbleUpon ad campaign.
As usual, I promoted the article on Twitter and Facebook, but I’ve also joined Plurk as well, and promoted it on there.
It’s also been added to my email signature, and I’m going to try and put some internal links on my site.
As it’s still early days, I don’t have any results yet, but fingers crossed it’ll drive some traffic to my site.
Kevin
owen
June 7th, 2009 5:42 pm
My post:
http://francetales.com/2009/06/06/five-free-or-low-cost-ways-to-amuse-yourself-in-toulouse-in-june/
I Stumbled it, though I didn’t send it directly to my friends, kinds time consuming on SU, unless they have changed or someone has a tool for sending one post to all your friends.
I Dugg it but again didn’t send it to all my Digg Friends.
I added it to my Delicious favorites.
I went to Blog Catalog and went to a few forums and post it and promoted it.
Funny thing happened. I haven’t yet gotten much traffic for the post but I have gotten a few visitors and comments on other posts, that I know are a direct result of my promotion, Blog Catalog user names etc.
I put it on my FB profile and Twittered it.
Since it also included a concert for a friends band I wrote on her wall on FB with the link, which she thanked me for promoting her concert.
Her band has a page on FB and I put it on their wall.
I did a little bit of a lot of things. I would like to develop a strategy though so it doesn’t take so much time.
Ferry Prima
June 11th, 2009 8:15 pm
I think the best way to promote is by commenting on others blog. Beside the promotion, we can also build a nice relation with other blogger and I think it really helpful :)
Dwight Anthony from financiallyeliteblog.com
June 18th, 2009 4:04 pm
Darren,
Very good points. I’ve been doing quite a few of your points now and will add some that you hit on. It makes you more relevant from referral links as well if you aren’t always promoting your home page but say permalinks instead. Powerful way to grow your traffic organically. Now if i could just figure how to show my latest blog post dynamically in my email signature via feedburner, i’d be set!
Phinisee
June 27th, 2009 9:13 pm
michael jackson dead at age 50 from cardiac arest http://www.michaeljacksonupdates.com
ED Hardy
June 30th, 2009 7:42 pm
here is an blog i always dedicate to: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/
hope guys will like it….
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