4 Solid Ways of Promoting Your Content

Content is, without a shadow of a doubt, the absolute undisputed king! Quality content is the cornerstone of any good blog, regardless of its niche; produce enough amounts of it and you’ll have what is referred to as a successful blog.

But producing quality content is only half the story; the other half entails actually promoting your content, reaching your potential audience, getting the word out, and getting targeted traffic to your blog.

This involves a fair bit of marketing, as well as finding ways that bloggers and internet marketers can promote their content online on the internet to get more visibility, get backlinks, get more targeted visitors, get more direct as well as organic (search engine) traffic, and build brand authority.

Without marketing your content, you cannot expect anyone to know about your content, or read it for that matter.

Which is why bloggers and internet marketers are often forced to spend time on promoting their content.

So what are the best ways to promote your blog’s content on the internet? Lets have a look at few of these, shall we.

1. Guest Blogging

For me, guest blogging remains one of the best content-promotion techniques on the internet, and despite the fact that Google has warned against abusing this particular method of building back – something which has become more common in recent times – it still remains one of the best ways of marketing and promoting your content on the internet. Choose an authority or high-PR blog to promote in your niche, and write an excellent blog post for it – something that will engage its readers, and help establish your authority in your niche. Put a link to your own blog in the author box, or in the article itself (according to the blog’s link policies). Not only will these backlinks allow you to promote your own blog and bring traffic to your blog, they will also do a world of good to your blog’s PR.

2. Social Media

Social media is perhaps web 2.0’s greatest gifts, one of its biggest achievements. As a blogger and/or a marketer, it would be absolutely criminal not to harness social media’s power. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn provide marketers and bloggers with a fantastic opportunity to promote their content… for free! All it takes is creating a Facebook fanpage, a Twitter or Google+ profile or any page/profile for your blog, set it up by putting all your information on it, and start posting updates, news and valuable information on it. It takes time building up a sizable following, and for people to start ‘liking’ or sharing your updates – and you could also look into paid methods of promoting your page and your updates (such as Sponsored Posts on Facebook). In addition, I recommend following the 80-20 rule on social media: 20% of the links you share should be links from your blog, while 80% should be valuable and interesting information from your industry/niche. PRO TIP: Use HootSuite to manage all your social media profiles from a single window!

3. Social Bookmarking Websites

Like social media, social bookmarking websites are (still) an excellent way to spread the word about your blog and its content. Unlike social media though, its effectiveness has waned in recent times. Nonetheless, bookmarking websites still get millions of page views on a daily basis, which means there’s a good chance that your link will be seen by a large group of people! Start off with bookmarking websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Delicious. Get yourself acquainted and accustomed with how these websites work, and where you could post your links. DO NOT spam these websites incessantly with links to your blog, only share a link if you think its worthy, appropriate and worth sharing. Reddit, for instance, has ‘sub-reddits’ or sections for different interests; so if, for example, you run a photography blog, you could share one of your latest posts on this sub-reddit with the people who have subscribed to that sub-reddit – allowing you to promote your content and bring targeted traffic to your blog.

4. Leverage Blogging Networks

Get in touch with other authority and high-PR bloggers in your niche in order to come up with mutually-beneficial ways to promote your content. One of this involves the aforementioned guest posting. You could also ask these bloggers to link to your content, in return for a review of one of their products. Or submit one of your older posts to another similar blog that it might be extremely relevant to. Or perhaps you could even look into joining a community and exchange links with other authority bloggers and blogs (a word of caution: don’t participate in spammy link-exchange schemes or pay-for-link programs, they could land you in hot water with Google!).

Your Turn

What are some of the ways that you use in order to promote your content? Looking forward to your comments in the comments section below!

Best Ways of Building Backlinks in 2013

Apart from some of the traditional methods of building backlinks, which we can still use with great effect in 2013, here are is my list of a few great ways of building valuable backlinks in 2013:

1. Create Great Content: Great content was, and will always be the most effective backlink building strategy. If you consistently create excellent, high-quality and highly-relevant content on your website, and then market your content effectively, it will provide you with the opportunity to build backlinks effortlessly, as people that come across it will want to link to your content, or share it on social mediums. Create content that your readers simply cannot resist sharing, and other bloggers find so invaluable, they are forced to link to you!

2. Share Great Content: Another solid strategy to build backlinks includes sharing content from other (external) sources. One great way to do this is to perhaps share the top stories from your niche on a weekly basis, or set a day, any day in the week, for a ‘best of the week’ post, where you could put up some of the best links, resources and articles that you come across. Doing so will not only provide your readers with excellent information (and hence giving you more shares and backlinks), the people you link to may also return the favor by linking back to you. (As is probably clear, it is important to post content that is relevant to the people in your niche).

3. Guest Blogging: Guest blogging rose to fame in last year as one of the most effective ways of building backlinks. However given the fact that it’s been started to get abused as a backlink-building strategy, AND the fact that Google will introduce measures to counter this abuse sooner rather than later – which may change its effectiveness – safe guest blogging, following the best-practices, will still yield excellent results as far as building high-PR backlinks goes.

4. Make Videos: Making and sharing videos was, is and will be one of the best ways of creating backlinks! It’s incredibly simple to make videos, and you don’t even need expensive or high-end equipment for it, contrary to popular belief. Above all, a single video can be put up on a multiple number of video-hosting websites, which means that not only do these videos have a lot of potential to be shared by users of each of these websites (Youtube, Vimeo, MetaCafe, DailyMotion, etc), your videos also have the potential to go viral (and be seen by thousands!). Look into making videos to build backlinks.

5. Blog Comments: Like guest posting, posting comments – valuable, insightful, and thought-provoking comments – on other authority and high-PR blogs within your niche was and still is an excellent strategy to create backlinks. My recommendations, as far as ‘blog commenting as a link-building strategy’ are as follows: find relevant, authority blogs in your niche (similar to yours), read their content, and use these blogs to leave thoughtful comments on their post, along with a URL of your own blog. Some blogs use certain plugins (such as CommentLuv) and give you’re a do-follow backlinks to your blog or one of its posts. Always remember to put in the link to your blog in the ‘URL’ field, and refrain from posting spam comments or even one-liners such as ‘thanks for this post’.

6. Social Media: Social media’s rise in prominence since the turn of the decade, and especially in 2012, has been nothing short of phenomenal! Facebook, the undisputed king of social networks, crossed the 1 billion users mark (yes, billion, with a ‘b’!). Similarly, the likes of Twitter and Pinterest (and even G+) boasted similarly-impressive numbers. What this means for you, is an excellent opportunity to build backlinks!

7. Social Bookmarking: Lastly, a word on social bookmarking and whether it is still a viable backlink-creation method and if it should be a part of your backlink strategy or not. The answer to both these questions is yes it is, and yes it should be! Social bookmark websites – such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Delicious and Reddit – organize external links and articles according to different interests. Users simply go on these websites, find their interests, and look through the sites and article and share them with others as well! Submit your content on these social bookmarking websites.

Your Turn: What backlink-building strategies do you think will be effective in 2013? Leave your comments below!