Written on September 22nd, 2009 at 12:09 am by Darren Rowse
How to Promote a Blog with Social Media
Last year I wrote a post exploring how I use Social Media to promote my blogs – the post looked at the idea of creating Home bases and Outposts (a metaphor that I picked up from Chris Brogan).
In this video I extend the idea a little and talk about the importance of not only develping a presence on social media sites but also making connections with and developing a presence on other people’s home bases. You can see the full sized version of this video at How I Use Social Media to Promote My Blogs.
Here are the screen grabs from slides I’m sharing on this today at the MarketingNow conference in Melbourne.
93 Responses to “How to Promote a Blog with Social Media” - Add Yours
Jessica
September 22nd, 2009 1:11 am
Thanks Darren,
It’s nice to see the whole plan visualized. It’s easy to get so caught up in one property (twitter, or fb) that you forget that the ultimate goal is to get traffic back to your own site(s).
-Jess
William Womack
September 22nd, 2009 1:16 am
I must say, Social Media is amazing!
I started using Social Media to promote my blog and my content, and my traffic has grown by 300%!
The more you can put yourself out there and expose yourself to people, the more traffic you can get to your blog.
If you have 1,000 followers on Twitter, and you tweet to your blog, a certain amount of them will go over and see what’s going on.
And you can use it with youtube and facebook, and all of the other social media websites.
Great post, thanks!
Eric
September 22nd, 2009 1:18 am
Typo : DevelOping a presence
Ciao
Chanda | BizDharma.com
September 22nd, 2009 1:21 am
Agree to you Darren that social media can help you generate more readers but I believe very few of them become your regular readers.
Also would like to say that using more than one media channels (just for sake of using it) will either end up giving less importance to one of the channels or literally burn you up.
As you talked about Flickr I believe we need to know which channel will be most effective looking at the type of Blog we are in. Finally its all about building a relationship
Eric C
September 22nd, 2009 1:23 am
The balance between social media time and time spent working on the blog can be a tough one. Right now I only utilize three social media for my blog, and I wonder if that is enough.
Per | Healthification.net
September 22nd, 2009 1:32 am
Great stuff. Now I just have to find out where the other health freaks hang out. :o)
Travis Campbell
September 22nd, 2009 1:33 am
Darren-
When working with other “Home bases” you briefly mention that you developed a relationship with the site owner and that was very fruitful. Of all your effort represented in the content of the video and post, how much of it is dedicated to building these relationships with the home base site owners in your market or complimentary niche?
Thanks,
Travis
JoshuaElliot
September 22nd, 2009 1:38 am
I agree that being just focus on the blog itself will be able to bring in more traffic. So using other means like social media to promote the blog is a great way to expose the blog to others.
Thank you for sharing Darren.
The Bad Blogger
September 22nd, 2009 2:13 am
Social Media is good but as Chanda had said not a lot will become a regular reader, unless the content is what they are finding, as nowadays social media are more on communicating around with friends.
efikim
September 22nd, 2009 2:40 am
Personal gripe:
What is the current obsession with videos all about? its takes so much longer to listen to someone talking than it would to read what they’d said. (The worst are videos of presentation slides with someone talking over them. Just what is the point!)
Yee Shun Jian | ReadyFireIM.com
September 22nd, 2009 2:41 am
I’ve made it such that everytime I post a new blog entry, my twitter and facebook accounts get updated automatically.
As a result, without any real effort on my part, I’ve visitors checking out my new blog posts almost instantly.
Travel gear blogger
September 22nd, 2009 2:45 am
I have to agree with some of the above that social media traffic is, in general, not nearly as sticky as traffic coming from other sources. There’s something intrinsically trigger-happy (mouse-happy?) about the whole social media experience that turns people into spastic multitaskers who can’t focus on any one thing.
I dig deep into my analytics stats for several blogs, content sites, and static resource sites and in all three cases the hits coming from social media are the ones that spend the least time on the site after landing. The only thing worse is Google Images. Sure, a few will stick around, but it’s like the classic sales funnel: lots of prospecting effort to lead to a handful of actual readers. So trying to have a presence on all these social media platforms at once seems like pure masochism.
Blaine Bullman
September 22nd, 2009 2:46 am
Creating a network is so important but a relationship network is key when your blogging especially when your starting out. Doing things like commenting on other blogs is great because it gets you traffic, backlinks and build relationships with the owners of the blogs.
Jeff Johnson talks about something similar to this about feeder sites so in the end these other sites are just bringing traffic and building your home base.
Wesley Craig Green
September 22nd, 2009 2:48 am
Social Media should be seen as a way to market / build your brand and build communication channels with driving traffic to your blog as a side-effect.
The key to making social media work for you is to find those channels which produce the results you are looking for, and then dedicate so much time each work day to those channels.
Wesley Craig Green
The Geek Entrepreneur
Gif Blog
September 22nd, 2009 2:51 am
I have had much success with my Gif Blog on SU and Reddit…. will lesser success on Digg, twitter and facebook. But they all help to bring regular readers to your blog.
Marie
September 22nd, 2009 3:04 am
Love this post! I’ve just started a new blog of my own (having moved away from my old one for a while now) and am looking to gain some new readers!
I’ve found that social media works best when you focus on a narrow group of readers. Definitely worth the time it takes to increase your readership.
Mike Stover
September 22nd, 2009 3:21 am
This was a pretty simple breakdown of promoting a website and on that many of my clients will find easy to understand, and thank your for that.
I believe it is possible to have the social media community become regular readers. It’s just as any reader coming from any other community; if you have consistent information on consistent topics and your writing offers a value to the reader they will return.
Ms. Freeman
September 22nd, 2009 3:28 am
Visit other blogs and forums
I not only enjoy using Social Media to promote my blog but also to meet new and interesting bloggers. I like the idea of being able to help promote others as well via Social Media sites like Twitter and SU.
But, I definitely have to keep a good measure on the amount of time I spend on these sites and not neglect my own Home Base.
Dayo Nurudeen
September 22nd, 2009 4:02 am
that is the way its, home base is the most important part of it, social media will only help if you have a strong homebase.
Roger
September 22nd, 2009 4:04 am
Excellent information! It appears that social media provides very important exposure to bloggers. I would think that making connections, or outposts, would be extremely beneficial.Thank you very much for sharing these useful tips.
David
September 22nd, 2009 4:08 am
I find social media a great way to get the word out but the problem I face is deciding if I should have a single twitter account (@digmo) for all my blogs or a separate one for each blog (@flixelpix) (@amuze). The problem is they are 3 different areas of interest :( Great post and sm definitely gets the word out and grows subscribers.
Alain
September 22nd, 2009 4:39 am
Very interesting ideas in this video, plus it is very easy to understand and to put in place. Thanks for the advice Darren.
Andrea Dennis
September 22nd, 2009 4:40 am
Great post. Thanks.
David I’m having the same issue of do I or don’t I separate my identities. I worry that someone following me professionally may not care about something I’m interested in that is a hobby. But I’ve sort of given way to the @garyvee style of things. He mostly tweets about professional stuff but there’s definitely a large portion of personal tweets. And I heard him speak one time when he said that your personal interests can be a game-changer – in a good way – professionally too. So, for now, I’m using one acct for everything. Not sure how long that will last though. Good luck.
Dave Braden
September 22nd, 2009 5:09 am
Great video break down Darren. The visualization really makes me realize how important visiting, and communicating with other similar sites is. Something I often lack!
Reggi D.
September 22nd, 2009 5:35 am
I agree with you at 100% Darren!
And now with the social media applications that you can download on “iphones” and other smart phones, it gets easier for your blog to get noticed. All this can be done in the palm of your hands.
Bloggers should take advantage of these social media web sites to promote their blogs because TREMENDOUS amount of traffic can generated from them.
Without spreading the word out you wont get visitors any time soon.
Terri Bork | TerriBork.com
September 22nd, 2009 5:44 am
Thank you Darren for that great video. I agree that it is vital today to develop you relationships as you are growing and developing your own blog and business. It is through these relationships that new ideas and companies are formed. Thank you for sharing this with us. I look forward to learning more from you :)
Terri Bork
Author
http://www.TerriBork.com
Marelisa - Abundance Blog
September 22nd, 2009 6:14 am
Hi Darren: I guess it’s about standing in front of the traffic you want to draw toward your blog (by visiting the blogs your target readers visit, engaging them in the social sites they’re already active in, and so on) instead of standing alone in your little island hoping people will get on the ferry and stop by.
needmoney.com
September 22nd, 2009 8:27 am
No reddit in that map? You’re missing out!
Digital Photography
September 22nd, 2009 8:37 am
Great post Darren! Been using some of the social sites you talked about but having your visial tool clears the focus more.
Technology Slice
September 22nd, 2009 9:18 am
I’ve found social media traffic to be hesitant in participating at my site.
Jannie Funster
September 22nd, 2009 10:34 am
It was encouraging to hear your passing reference to “over the years,” as it relates to building your blog readership. You remind us it takes time to grow a blog.
Cool! Thanks.
George Passwater
September 22nd, 2009 12:14 pm
Great post.
By building up your homebase first and then going out to outposts such as Twitter and Facebook, you build a solid foundation. I believe that without a foundation, everything else will fall to wayside. As you said, don’t spend too much on a outpost when it is something you can’t control.
I also love that you emphasize to get out and meet others. Socialize and building relationships is the name of the game.
With a strong foundation and strong relationships, you can’t go wrong.
Matt - Zero 2 Hero
September 22nd, 2009 12:14 pm
Great visuals. I’ve had things like this in my head before, but i’ve never put it down to paper (or computer) for that matter.
Rajj
September 22nd, 2009 12:45 pm
pictures speaks thousand times more than words. Thx for the clear explanation..
EQ Plat
September 22nd, 2009 1:56 pm
Thank you Darren,I have used Twitter\digg\stumbleupon and so on to promote my site. I think this is very useful.
Henry D'Andrea
September 22nd, 2009 2:19 pm
Great post Darren! I definitely agree that Social Media is a huge part these days in blog/website promotion! Plus, it is fun to use, to make new online friends!
Henry
http://www.thehenry.net
SeoNext
September 22nd, 2009 3:11 pm
Great post Darren..Its really a great post.Thanks a lot for sharing this post with us.Really a great post.
Jonny
September 22nd, 2009 4:11 pm
Thanks for sharing. Use of this strategy can bring some serious Google domination implications. For keywords with lower competition you could easily take over the front page of Google.
patchkabel
September 22nd, 2009 4:20 pm
Thank you for this. I was trying to tell my sons why having one main site is so important. It’s so important to have ‘your own’ and then the sites that aren’t yours. You are simply awesome Teacher….thank you so much.
DJ
September 22nd, 2009 4:46 pm
Great information as always. Social media networks have helped me get some traffic but I have a long way to go. My blog is very young and I still have a long way to go. Keep all the good information coming Darren!
Sarge
September 22nd, 2009 5:43 pm
Great video Darren – such an ease to watch/listen to.
The point you make of not putting all your effort into just maybe one or two outposts is a great one. I’m guilty of spending the majority of time on my twitter account than possibly my home base being my blog site.
Also developing your presence on the sites where people in your niche will be hanging out in was another great point.
Thanks again Darren!
Ronblogger
September 22nd, 2009 5:45 pm
Social Media has been a really big help on our blogs nowadays,thanks for a great information there
liam
September 22nd, 2009 6:14 pm
Good video! He has some good ideas about social bookmarking.. But you can’t get better ideas then roadtotheriches.org but thanks!
tips facebook
September 22nd, 2009 7:11 pm
thanks for your article,i will try to application this technique,visualisation make me undestand about that.
anti virus
September 22nd, 2009 7:46 pm
Excellent information!… It appears that social media provides very important exposure to bloggers. Thank you very much for sharing these useful tips..
Bibokz
September 22nd, 2009 8:02 pm
Social media networks has made a great impact not just in blog but in internet. And collaborating it in your blog could help you alot.
Suneel
September 22nd, 2009 8:05 pm
Darren, they dont say 1 picture is worth a thousand words as a matter of fact.
What you could have done explaining in 500+ words, you gave it to us in 3 simple images and pronto, it hit the bullseye. You definitely know how to put the content to good use.
Thanks again.
Tm Henderson
September 22nd, 2009 10:25 pm
Very Good memory jogger here Darren, thank you.
I had been so busy doing my Networking,but not much in the way of a back up plan for my Biz Hub
Blessings
Tim Henderson
yourfunjob.com
ITrush
September 22nd, 2009 10:59 pm
Another important ways to promote a blog here Darren.. your technique looks very effective, hope I can implement it right away.
Leesa Watego
September 23rd, 2009 12:07 am
Thanks so much! What a great simple explanation. I’ve always found the balance between my blogs & Social Media too skewed (an unproductive). I’m now much clearer about which should come first. I think I might create my own slides to stick on my wall & remind myself of my homebase & outposts. Of course – big thanks for Mr Brogan too.
Nicholas Z. Cardot
September 23rd, 2009 3:19 am
I definitely like the concepts presented here. I really like how you emphasize that it’s not enough to get out into your own outposts but that it’s also highly important to get out into other people’s home bases.
I’ve found a huge number of readers and built a rather large following through interacting with other bloggers and webmasters.
Lydia, Clueless Crafter
September 23rd, 2009 4:50 am
I’m a visual learner and need more of these posts, Darren. Thank you!
Fernanda Gomez
September 23rd, 2009 6:02 am
Great video thanks for making and sharing it.
Ryan Biddulph
September 23rd, 2009 7:20 am
Great post Darren. Promotion is relationship building through as many channels as possible. Don’t get attached to the channels, get attached to the idea of providing value and meeting people. When focused on these core ideas you’ll naturally hit as many outposts as possible.
RB
Robert
September 23rd, 2009 8:22 am
As most of us know, promoting a blog is NOT easy. Great content alone won’t do it–you gotta promote it.
Fakhrul Alam
September 23rd, 2009 8:37 am
Thanks Darren for sharing this useful information about social media and how to bring quality traffic to website.
Social media is one off the great marketing technique in internet marketing.
Alam
Andy
September 23rd, 2009 11:25 am
Thank you Darren for posting a very insightful comment on promoting your blog.
I’ve been thinking for a long while on this subject matter since I started blogging a few months ago and everything you said in the video is in congruent to my thoughts on using social media networks as catapult to get your blog out there in your own niche market and make it ‘well-known’.
It’s not easy at the start, but I’m hoping in the long run, it will pay off, if doing properly.
The key thing behind this blog promotion is about building relationships with people. Good relationship-building leads to having good online reputation naturally.
Kat Eden
September 23rd, 2009 2:14 pm
LOVED your presentation at Marketing Now yesterday Darren. Much of it I’ve already read on your blog, or other blogs, but you did a great job of putting a lot of information together in an extremely concise and practical way. You’ve given me fresh inspiration, in particular toward rolling out 2 new blog ideas that I’ve been keeping in the back of my mind. Persistence is the plan!
PS – thanks for the new-blog monetisation advice.
Paul Hassing
September 23rd, 2009 2:55 pm
Great stuff, Darren. Man, you sure bring home the point that I need to get on the video trail pronto.
Camtasia Studio seems like an awful lot to learn, but I’m beginning to see the danger of confining myself to the printed word.
Many thanks for the smack in the head; it was just what I needed! Best regards, P. :)
Benjamin Cip
September 23rd, 2009 6:19 pm
There are a lot of social media network (I have a long list on my blog) but it seems only few of them are effective for me. If every visitors were bookmarking my posts, I would no doubts reach the top of some social media networks’. The problem is that only few of my readers bookmark my posts comparing to the amount of comment I receive everytime. I have to find a way to interact much more with my readers and make them bookmark my posts more often.
chandan saud
September 24th, 2009 2:07 am
I am doing my best for promote my blog. My blog is all about legitimate work at home jobs. I am trying to help people by informing some best legitimate work at home jobs.
Blake @ Props Blog
September 24th, 2009 4:45 am
One things I really appricated from this post to remember to stay focused on my home base. When I first started my site about 2 months ago, I got really caught up in all the social networking and didn’t pay as much attention to my home base as I should have.
Recently, I’ve become much more content focused regarding regularity and quality of content.
It’s easy to argue that Twitter/Facebook aren’t going anywhere, but 2 years ago people might have said that about myspace too.
MarketingInfo
September 24th, 2009 4:55 am
I recently started blogging more seriously, and mostly use commenting and social media and bookmarking to promote my site, it worked pretty good for my first site, I recently started to use classifieds and video so I hope this works as well.
abrablog
September 24th, 2009 6:16 am
Agree. I also done that.
Master Dayton
September 24th, 2009 8:51 am
Interesting post, and I definitely like the video and visual aids to help show your readers exactly what you’re talking about. It’s always interesting to see every individual’s specific strategy in promoting their work.
MichaelR@VoIP and Tech Blog
September 24th, 2009 11:01 am
I believe the law of average got something to do for Social Media to work. I eman whats the average percentage of peole will click on your Twitter link if you post one? Usually I find it about 1 percent. But you can up this percentage if you target the people you follow (with the same niche) and hoping they will follow you back.
Anyways I guess the bottom line is, to be effective you need a lot of followers on Twitter, a lot of friends in Facebook and so on.
Reza Winandar
September 24th, 2009 12:43 pm
I believe that you should create a special account for promoting your blog in social network site like Facebook or Twitter. Split it up between your personal account and your business account. This will make your jobs much easier without being confused.
bloggers payback
September 24th, 2009 8:36 pm
This is known as a linkwheel. What you should also do is link all the 2.0 together creating that wheel. Then from there use one of your 2.0 properties to then create a wheel around that. Soon you will then have a big network.
istanbul
September 24th, 2009 11:45 pm
It was encouraging to hear your passing reference to “over the years,” as it relates to building your blog readership. You remind us it takes time to grow a blog.
Cool! Thanks.
Brian
September 25th, 2009 1:08 am
This information has been very helpful. I’ve been trying to leverage social media to get more traffic for quite some time but never really sat down to map out a logical plan. This gives me a pretty good start.
Amazooo
September 25th, 2009 5:38 am
I’m using a lot of social media bookmark such as facebook, twitter, yahoo buzz, stumble, etc….
They work well and I receive a plenty of traffic from social media.
BookMarking Demon
September 25th, 2009 7:42 am
Thanks Darren for the video. It is true that social networking is important; the difficult part is taking the time to make meaningful connections; but well worth it!
Sarah Prout
September 27th, 2009 10:24 am
Great post Darren. Some excellent points about people not nurturing their home base as much as their social media outposts ;-)
Zulit
September 27th, 2009 11:26 am
Social media networking sites only work if your blog has something people will actually care about having a conversation about.
MANY niche blogs are on topics that will not receive traffic. I still use Only Wire on the niche blogs, but it’s purely for the sake of the search engines seeing presence – honestly not sure if it helps the blog(s) though.
Having a social media presence when your blog is all about acne, won’t likely help much.
Angel Wilson
September 27th, 2009 7:55 pm
I WOULD LIKE TO SHARE A LITTLE THING ABOUT YOUR BLOG JUST KEEP PROMOTING AND UPDATE ALWAYS YOUR BLOG NEAR FUTURE YOU WILL SEE MANY VISITORS.
See also how I earn money online as your formula to success your business online no tricks, no gimmicks free visit my site
Antiques
September 27th, 2009 10:49 pm
51% of journalists use blogs: survey – [Via BlogHerald] Here are ReveNews we get read by plenty of journalists. Most of which I speak to don’t like to fully admit they use blogs as a PRIMARY source of ideas for stories, but they do. Just another reas
cricketnow
September 28th, 2009 6:01 am
I suggest social media and networking to promote a blog. Works great for me :)
Vicky Miles
September 28th, 2009 10:03 am
Fantastic video, Darren! I very much liked the home-base and outpost concepts, and making sure we don’t forget our home-base by spending too much time on social media sites. Also, I think the idea of being present in other people’s home bases is a great reminder!
Thanks for this fabulous advice! ;-)
Vicky
rightriot
September 28th, 2009 1:06 pm
Hey, this is a great post– one of many, Mr. Rowse, and I don’t just say that to be unctuous– I consistently come up with your site on Google searches related to blog traffic so you must be doing something right. And this has been consistently true since 2005 or so. But this is the first comment I’ve left here.
Does anyone have any ideas for building traffic TO social media and bookmarking sites? I recently started a crowdsourced news site– a little over a month ago– and we’re getting roughly 50 uniques a day but I would very much like to see it growing faster. It’s really not so much a “get rich quick” thing as blogging and sites seem to be for a lot of people– if I knew I was going to be getting good traffic in five years I’d be perfectly fine with the traffic I’m getting.
Any suggestions? We’re a community-driven news site for conservatives and libertarians.
Blogging Guide
September 28th, 2009 6:37 pm
An excellent video, there are so many ways to promote your blog, some of the ones i can think of are:
article marketing
social bookmarking
forums
message boards
backlinks
becky grant
September 28th, 2009 9:07 pm
Darren,
You have an excellent mind for this sort of thing. I really admire your talents when it comes to the internet.
I think the internet opens up a tremendous amount of opportunity to those who seek it!
-Becky
SonixBee
September 28th, 2009 9:57 pm
Darren, it’s awesome how you go on with your work… what can i say, keep on going and growing.
Hot News Today
September 29th, 2009 2:41 am
Great post..i studied SEO with social bookmark this lately..
Study..study….
moonwalker
September 29th, 2009 9:22 am
it seo it will take times to achieve but the result is awesome,im also use social bookmark to get PR for my blog.
Tom Wanek
October 1st, 2009 10:06 pm
Darren, WOW, this is a great metaphor and visualization that deepens understanding on promoting your blog. Thank you for sharing.
dantanner
October 6th, 2009 8:42 am
I spent too much time one one site..twitter. This post and the video which I tweeted to my followers opens your eye and hands you down reality.
Whats real is you need to develop your core business and not spend all day hanging around twitter or Facebook or other ” outposts”..
Karolyn
October 9th, 2009 8:49 am
Great article! I’ve seen some junk out there on this topic that doesn’t really give people any useful information. It’s great to see that you have provided excellent information, as well as a well put-together visualization. It’s amazing how Social Media can really drive traffic to your blog, but we cannot forget about “home”.
IMERGENT
October 10th, 2009 10:18 pm
Great post i have ever seen. The way you have described these things is really good and attractive. I am impressed with your writing style. I really appreciate this post. The graphical representation of ur blog makes the blog more valuable….it’s so useful for all d bloggers……….. Thanks a lot for sharing. Keep blogging.
Matt Kim
October 11th, 2009 12:55 am
Recently I started blogging and it has been really a difficult task promoting my blog. I can see clearly from your presentation that social networks are among the best ways of promoting a blog. Some how you made me think social media is some kind of tool for getting links to your site. Thanks for the presentation.
ECOMMERCE
October 11th, 2009 6:56 pm
Nice post. Its nice to read a useful article for beginner like me. Some of points from this article are very helpful for me as I haven’t considered them yet. The layout of your blog is really attractive and impressive. I really appreciate it. Thanks a bunch for sharing such a great and informative post with us. Keep blogging.
joseph
October 12th, 2009 11:38 pm
your blog helps me on how i can promote my site.
thank you!
keyboards
October 27th, 2009 10:11 pm
I’m still a college student, and I only recently got into the whole social networking thing, but your post makes a lot of sense and has good information on how to leverage the social media sites to promote a business. I’ve been considering starting a small business now that I am almost out of school, and I will definitely be looking to use social sites to promote.
Kavita
November 2nd, 2009 11:04 pm
Nice illustrated suggestions…. I will definately try to promote my blog http://ngogrant.blogspot.com Thank for your valuable guidance….. Bye…
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