Surefire Ways to Promote Your Blog and Grow Your Audience

Surefire Ways to Promote Your Blog and Grow Your Audience – How you can make your blog grow quickly!

Back when I started my blog, I was constantly spinning my wheels. I had no idea what I was doing and all I wanted to do was to make it big. Looking back on it, I did pretty well finding my own way, but I still wish that someone had laid out a plan for how to get your blog off the ground.

I wish I had something showing me how to get started in the early days; in the days when just my mom read my blog. This is why I’ve opened up a monthly group coaching program for bloggers to learn how to become a pro blogger and make money faster. This will seriously cut years off your blogging journey! It’s like the easy button for blogging! 🙂 Click here to get the deets! 🙂

So I’m giving that to you! I’m sharing with you the surefire ways to promote your blog and grow your audience.

Shout it from the rooftops!

A great way to start promoting your stuff is by telling family and friends about your blog. For me, this part was hard. It was like inviting all of my family and friends to know exactly what was going on inside of my head; kind of like inviting them to read my journal.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got such a positive response from family! They not only loved the content, but they helped me organize and polish my blog’ appearance and content to where it is today. They’ll even share posts on Facebook! When you’re starting out, this free advertising is so helpful!

Plus, telling friends and family is a great way to practice telling people what your blog is about. If you can’t share it with your family, who can you share it with?!

Related: The First Pay Day I Got From Blogging

Link up!

Another great way to get some free advertising is to go to popular link ups and post your latest and best content while reading and sharing others’ great content. Starting out, link parties are a great wat to promote your blog and grow your audience.

A link up, link party, or blog hop is a place where a lot of bloggers can go to share their content and gain traffic.

You can find link parties by searching on Twitter for the hashtags:

• #linky
• #linkup
• #blogparty
• #linkparty

A good link up will have a lot of participants and a “prize” for the number one post each week. The “prize” will be that the winning posts needs to be shared by everyone on their social media channels or it could be that the hosts share it on their channels.

Make sure that you follow the rules of the link up. If the hosts tell you that you need to follow them on their social media outlets, then follow them. Lots of places want to make sure that you click and comment or share on at least 3 other posts.

My favorite thing to do is to share my favorite posts that I’ve found on the linkups on Pinterest. Which leads me to…

Sharing is caring!

Social media sharing is really the cornerstone to promote your blog and grow your audience.Did you read something great from Facebook? Share it with your followers! Practice good karma when it comes to sharing. If you would want people to do the same for your content, do it for someone else!

My favorite thing to do is to link my Twitter to my Pinterest. This way, I can tweet the posts that I love AND pin it at the same time. Double win!

Related: 5 Signs Blogging Isn’t for You (& 1 Sign You Should Start Today!)

Guest post!

I wrote to one of my favorite sites after I read a guest post and I just asked if I could share my story with them, and now I’m a monthly contributor! It allows me to share my story with a big audience from a well-established blog. I even get to link back to my site and to my Amazon Affiliate link (when it’s appropriate, of course).

Chances are, you won’t get the green light from every place you submit a post to. But “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” (-Wayne Gretzky).

So ask away! The worst thing that happens is that they say no. Even then, you didn’t lose anything. Brush yourself off, and try again!

** If you want to submit a guest post to Cow Country Housewife, feel free to email me and we can add your post to the rotation!

Make friends!

This really ties into the whole sharing-karma mindset. Find other bloggers in your niche and get to know them. Make friends and help each other out.

Especially with blogging, there’s no one “right” way to do everything. The more, different ways that people are doing things, the easier it will be for everyone to figure out what works best and what doesn’t. You can also get together and swap guest posts. This will help both of you grow your audience while helping out a friend.

But remember not to always be looking for what you can get out of friendships! If you’re only out to promote your blog and grow your audience, you’ll be missing out on a lot of opportunities for real friendships. Plus, it’s just not kind. Always do unto others as you’d have them do to you!

Related: The First Pay Day I Got From Blogging

Get social!

Get onto Facebook!

Crystal Paine from Money Saving Mom swears by Facebook as her biggest traffic driver! Facebook can be an amazing way to drive traffic to your blog and to reach a whole new group of readers who may have never heard of your blog otherwise.

If you’re like me and have been looking for the right way to start your Facebook strategy, I’ve found an amazing ebook for you. Brittany Ann, from Equipping Godly Women, has grown her Facebook following from 2,000 likes to 100,000 likes in just five months and her traffic to her blog has skyrocketed.

No, there’s still no magic formula, but there’s a lot less guess work and wasted time on your end. If you want to learn how to make Facebook work for your blog, this is a great investment.

Check out more about Strategies Worth Sharing: How I Grew My Facebook Page from 2,000 Likes to 100,000 Likes In Five Months HERE.

Ramp up your Pinterest!

I can’t get over my love of Pinterest. I loved it when I was planning my wedding on a shoestring budget 5 years ago, and I love it even more now that I have a blog to promote! What’s the key to Pinterest success? I have enough for a full post on that (coming soon!), but here’s the Cliff Notes version:

• Join ALL the group boards: Ok, so not ALL of them. But find some in your niche and ask to be a contributor! All you have to do is follow the instructions in the description to get added. Some boards ask that you comment on the owner’s pins, some ask that you email them. Either way, just ask!  But first, to find the group board you will want to join. There are a few different ways to do this:
  • Pingroupie.com is an amazing source. You can search by keyword to find group board that you might want to contribute to.
  • Pin board groups on Facebook are great too. This is the one that I’ve joined and they’ve been really great about adding people from the group!
  • Check out which group boards your favorite blogger’s in your niche have joined. This has been my favorite way of finding boards. I like this because it’s already like that blogger is giving the board their seal of approval. Plus, it’s really a cool feeling to be in the same group as your favorite bloggers!
• Get BoardBooster – You can get 3,000 free pins here. You also get to see their list of the top group boards that have the highest repin rates (which is what you want; it means that for each pin you have, it will get repinned that many times on average).
• Organize your Pinterest page.
  • Make your description personal and show off your personality. Offering an incentive has helped bring traffic to my site, as well!
  • Put your best personal pin board that line up with your brand at the top. Organize the boards however you would like from there, but put your best boards at the top (“above the fold”).
• Get the Pinterest tips from the pros
  • My friend Rosemarie had a killer success from her blog all thanks to her Pinterest strategy. She shares her secrets to getting her pins seen by 4 million (yes, MILLION) people each month in her Pinterest Cheat Sheet.

Related: Best Blogging Podcasts to Follow

Don’t overlook the power of Pinterest!

Yes, I just mentioned Pinterest for getting social to promote your blog and grow your audience. But I really mean it. It deserves a second spot on this list because of its amazing power!

I started using Pinterest and unlocked the power of group boards just 6 months ago and it has made all the difference in the word. I now get my posts seen by 3 million people each month and I’m growing my followers by 1,000+ each month.

The secret to Pinterest success really lies in group boards combined with BoardBooster. Setting up your Pinterest scheduling with BoardBooster is a lifesaver! There’s just no way that I’d ever be able to pin 100 pins each day to the right boards! Not to mention how much time that would take.

Here’s the super short version of everything you’ll need to do to have a winning Pinterest page:

• Have at least 25 boards of your own that are specific to your niche.
• Fill each of those boards with at least 100 pins.
• Spend 15 minutes each day pinning new finds from your home feed to these boards to beef them up and add more great content that people will want to follow you to see.
• No, you don’t just add your own posts to your boards. You can add it with other content, but deifnitely don’t just limit all of your posts to your own.
• Make one board “Best of [Your Blog Name]” and pin all of your own content here.
• Follow all of the biggest pinners in your niche.
• Don’t do “follow for follow” stuff unless it’s with people who are in your niche. You’ll wind up with 10,000 followers and no one repinning your content. That defeats the whole purpose of having followers.
• Learn how to implement the best strategy for your Pinterest.

Invest in your blog!

If you haven’t made any money from your blog, I know this one is tough. But trust me, coming from the cheapskate of the century, it’s worth it to promote your blog and grow your audience. If you want to turn your blog into a business that will make money for you, it’s time to invest into making sure that you get where you want to be in the quickest way possible.

That’s where classes come in. But I’m not just talking about any classes. I mean GOOD classes. No, GREAT classes!

If you only take one class all year, let it be Blogging on Point.

Blogging on Point can be the catalyst that takes your blog to the next level. When I started investing in education and courses, I took my blog from 100 daily pageviews to 4,000-13,000 pageviews each day (yes, it can fluctuate that much in a week!) in less than 5 months. It shows you how to do everything from setting up your blog the best way, to making the right graphics, to social media strategy, to making serious money, and even into hiring a staff when you get too big to do everything on your own.

There’s no other program like it out there. No other class will hold your hand and give you very specific, itemized, step-by-step tasks that you need to accomplish before moving on to the next part. Each and every step is a building block to the next one that will bring you closer and closer to your goal of making a full-time income blogging. If you only invest in one program for your blog, let it be Blogging on Point. You won’t regret it!

Ready to get started?

Learning how to promote your blog and grow your audience is a cornerstone in building a profitable blog from the very beginning. All of these steps are the ways that helped me to grow very quickly into the blog that I have today.

What was the best way that you grew your blog?