Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no traffic.
Content
1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas.
2. Write the definitive guide to something. Spend time making this awesome.
3. Release a manifesto.
4. Release 2 manifestos.
5. Interview cool people. People like talking about cool people.
6. After your articles are indexed in search engines, break them up into smaller articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com (and other article directories).
7. Or just pay someone to submit the articles for you.
8. Write a list of all the cool blogs and people in your niche.
9. Check out the most popular content on high trafficked blogs. Create similar content but applied to your own niche.
10. Start a page.
11. Make that page awesome.
12. Start a group.
13. Make that group awesome.
14. Create a Facebook app for your blog.
Fundamentals
15. Wait. After you’ve taken action it can take a short while for traffic to arrive.
16. Be patient. Some bloggers may seem like overnight successes, but if you look back in their archives, they’ve been creating content for a long time.
17. Motivate yourself.
18. Read The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing.
19. Have an interesting story and overall purpose.
20. Embrace the Law of Reciprocity. Everything you give will come back exponentially.
21. Make blogging easier.
22. Take action every day. Just get one important thing done every day and eventually you’ll start getting traffic. The more you do each day the faster your blog gets traction.
23. Find people with blogs at a similar level to yours and help each other out.
24. Turn off your computer, do some cool stuff, turn on your computer again and blog about it.
25. Understand the importance of context.
26. Be consistent. You don’t need to blog every day but try to stick to at least some sort of schedule.
27. Make it a numbers game. Decide upon a definite plan of action (eg. 20 blog comments per day, 1 guest post per week etc) and stick with that.
Online Video
28. Create videos and distribute them through tubemogul.com
29. Or for wider video distribution trafficgeyser.com may work for you (expensive though).
30. Respond to YouTube videos with your content.
31. Include your full blog address at the TOP of your video descriptions.
32. Take your time with devising video titles and tags.
33. Convert your video to multiple formats, with slight editing changes, and upload it to video sites multiple times, targeting different keywords. The content remains the same but you can test what videos and titles work the best.
34. Buy the accounts of popular YouTubers and then add your blog address to the descriptions of their videos.
35. Start the first live show in your niche (Ustream, Justin.tv and LiveStream are popular choices). Make sure you record the shows too so they can be distributed as a podcast later on.
Other Blogs
36. Be the first commenter on the posts of popular blogs. But still provide value.
37. If you can’t be the first then comment anyway. But try to be the first.
38. Stumble and Digg cool blog posts you find and let the blogger know via a comment. If you have something worthy on your blog, they’ll probably reciprocate.
39. Use google.com/blogsearch to find fresh blog posts and then leave intelligent comments.
40. Link to blogs of a similar size. They’ll notice and then good stuff may happen.
41. Write a guest post for a large blog. You may not always get published, but when you do the traffic spike will be significant.
42. Write a guest post for a small blog. You’re more likely to get published and build relationships with the next wave of A-List bloggers.
43. Write some more guest posts. Can’t hurt, that’s for sure.
44. Join a blog network.
Paid
45. Start a StumbleUpon Ads campaign.
46. Get reviewed.
47. Buy some ad space.
48. Send out a press release.
People
49. Attend relevant meetups.
50. Tell your friends and family about your blog. Have them tell everyone they know.
Podcasting
51. Start a podcast and submit it to the iTunes directory.
52. Convert audio files to video files (just use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie) and send them out via tubemogul.com
53. Submit it to some other podcast directories.
Search engine optimization
54. Write linkbait.
55. Have any video or audio content transcribed and posted to your blog.
56. Register your domain name for 10 years.
57. Take advantage of sites scraping your blog’s feed by interlinking posts. Simple way to get deep inbound links.
58. Use Thesis.
Social networks
59. Join every social network you can.
60. Or, just join a couple and be really active.
61. Become active in relevant ning.com communities.
62. Convert blog posts to PDF files and submit them to Scribd — include your blog url in the description and document itself.
63. Add your Scribd documents to relevant groups.
64. Submit your best posts to blog carnivals.
65. Join relevant forums, add your blog address to your signature and start posting intelligently.
66. Sign up at ping.fm and use twitterfeed.com to auto post your latest blog content to a bunch of social networks.
67. Create lists on Amazon.com
68. Write reviews on Amazon.com
69. Better yet, create video reviews for Amazon.com
70. Answer relevant questions on Yahoo Answers, leaving your website as the source.
71. Or on Mahalo Answers.
72. Or even through LinkedIn Answers.
73. Start your own Slinkset, and feed your RSS feed into it automatically.
74. Submit your site to alltop.com
75. Write an article aimed at Digg (okay, that article won’t help much).
76. Also, befriend one of the many Digg powerusers.
77. Create a new thread on a forum and write up a really great guide with no self promotion. Simple way to be seen as an authority figure and to elicit comments on your writing (don’t forget that signature link though!).
78. Submit your content to dofollow social bookmarking sites.
79. Or have Bookmarking Demon do it for you (certainly a bend in ethics though).
StumbleUpon
80. Become an active stumbler to understand what stumblers like.
81. Friend people who stumble your content (they may just want to stumble more in the future)..
82. Have other people initially submit content (or “Discover” it as it’s known).
83. Place a Stumble button in your post template.
Su.pr
84. Sign up at su.pr and use it for all your short url needs.
85. Post content to your Facebook and Twitter stream.
86. Install the WordPress plugin to automate the process.
87. Identify the times that result in the most clicks and schedule tweets for them.
88. Setup your blog as a promoted website.
Twitter
89. Include hash tags (#tagname) in your tweets.
90. Search for your niche and answer any questions people have.
91. Place a Retweet button in your post template.
92. Follow relevant, popular, and interesting people.
93. Send @replies to relevant, popular and interesting people.
94. Tweet links to your content at multiple times during the day.
95. Love a product from a company that’s on Twitter? Review it and they may just notice and tweet about the review. It’s happened to me.
96. Sponsor some tweets.
97. Find cool people in your niche who live nearby and organize a tweet up (a meet up where you invite anyone on Twitter).
WordPress
98. Install All In One SEO Pack.
99. Automatically ping lots of ping services.
100. Create a theme, include a link to your blog in the footer, and then release it for free.
101. Create a plugin and release it for free. Add a link to your blog within the admin area. If it’s a good plugin people will love you for it.
David I like your post `101 Ways to Promote a New Blog. The list which you mentioned here in the post is really incredible. Although, I know some the tactics to promote a new blog but, there are some important tactics which you mentioned that I have never seen anywhere in the internet. I am in process of making a new blog; I will implement your ideas once it is finished. Anyway thank you very much.
I love #22…without action you will never make a sucess of your blog. It is the key to everything in blogging.
All I can say is wow. I will start my first blog boot camp on Sunday with Hollis Gillespie in Atlanta, and I will definitely bring this list to her attention. So much to learn…so it is time to do it! Such a comprehensive list is fabulous, and so well organized.
Thank you for all of your good advice and I’ll let you know how it goes. Will sign up for your daily dose of wisdom.
Excellent article. Thanks for the wonderful work. This would be a great checklist of things to do for bloggers.
Since I am relatively new to blogging this list will be a great help. I found it very interesting and informative.
I don’t own a blog but website.I think i could use 90% of your tips on my website also.Although its for promoting blogs there are some pretty interesting things i can apply to my daily routine for for my website
thanks 😀
Excellent list, I have just tried several of them and hope to get positive result soon
Comprehensive post! You could also plug in the url of your blog and blog posts and have it social bookmarked via traffic bug.
wow ! more than 4 cool methods to for promoting blog. Though i think facebook promotion method is not for all types of blogs and it rarely works with all.
Very useful article. I hope you don’t mind me putting up a link to it on my newest writing blog. This will be helpful to my readers.
A great collection. I will try to test some of these.
Any ‘All In One SEO Pack’ for Blogspot?
Wow! you said everything. I do agree that you have to wait patiently. Look at my site, its now gaining more traffic than the usual! tanx!
There are no more reasons for people of not having the tools and tips on making a new blog boost up the rankings, performance and popularity with these long list.
Thanks for all the comments guys. Glad you liked the article.
Only 101?
Tons of ideas, although it may take me some time to work my way through them all.
Good idea to group the suggestions under different headings, makes it easy to pickl and mix.
Lots of social networking… I really have to make an effort to get into it! This post might be the one that makes me get started.
Excellent list David, thank you. It’s great for beginners and those of us who have been around for a few years but need a little reminding to tweak here and there. There’s so much to do to promote a blog that it can be overwhelming at times; that your 101 ways is in list form makes it easier to follow and implement.
I’ll bookmark and use it as a reference.
Has anyone used bookmarkingdemon.com
Thanks for posting this great list.
There are many on here that I know and some I wasn’t looking at yet. I will keep this list handy. Great stuff!
Cool article, really usefull!
The Facebook section and the fundamentals sections were particularly good.
Some of the stuff not so much, but a must read.
Awesome list. Going to check out his blog and possibly subscribe.
I think I will go down this list and do everyone of the items. It will be fun and lots of work 🙂
Sigh. I just wrote up a brainstorm on publicity, and was looking for posts like these. I’m glad its available…now.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to seeing if this has any new ideas to add to my plan.
A wonderful post indeed. Will try most of them for sure.
Ton of great ideas. I’ll definitely tweet this.
Fantastic list, I will definitely use some of your advices. Thank you!
Tweeting this! Thank you!
Pretty comprehensive list there! So much to do, so little time.
Blogcarnivals really stuck out to me, I’m going to head over there now.
Great list! I am working on it.. 😉
Wow. And to think this list, as long and extensive as it is, could have even more added to it. It is excellent, and what I don’t do now I will try a good many of the things on the list.
I have tagged this message (email) as important for future reference. I have mixed feelings about some of these things – it begs the question, how serious do I want to be about a blog?
Thanks for a great post.
Gosh. This post itself is an interesting an useful post! I’ll practice it one by one. Thanks a lot! =D
Superb list! Bookmarked, will try to work on most of them.
Very comprehensive post David. Now I have to decide which ones are the biggest bang for the buck and implement them!
Best,
Bob
tks for the great post! still, how come we cannot save it Bookmarks? u forgot to put THIS plugin on yr blog… how come? 🙂
Wow! It really is 101 ways!
Great list. Not so much for the content as too having it all together at once. Many thing you have read somewhere, but having them in a list, really makes you ask yourself: why again wasn’t I doing this already?
Wow, thanks!
just in time as i really need some blogging guide!
Great list. Bookmarking it.
This list is a good list! It contains a number of specific items and definitely makes blogging look less like rocket science. 😀
mighty
Cool, the more tips you use, the more traffic you will get, but also the more time you will spend.
David
This is an excellent post and contains a lot of ideas on promotion that have never occured to me previously. I guess people who are daunted by it should choose their immediate choices (ie.the ones on the list that are an absolute must and vital to your blogs success)and work down the list.
The great thing about a list like this is that it allows you to pick and mix your options and whilst some of them will only be a case of ‘if I ever get the time’, the blogger can decide what is important to them.
Great post, it looks like there is nothing I can add or can I?
I’d add two, which are related:
1. Don’t even THINK of promoting your site until you have been writing it for at least a month. Very few survive a month. Running around telling everyone, hey, come read my site! when it’s day 1 and you have one post of, is a waste of all that effort.
2. The best thing you can do is write really good content. If you write it, they will come, and you don’t have to do too much crazy artificial stuff to promote it. I’ve seen people put up a lame weekly post and waste time promoting it. They may come look – and then never come back. By the way, I disagree with you WRT daily. DO write daily. If you don’t have at least an idea a day, what are you doing writing a website? Just go contribute occasionally to someone else’s.
Some great advice and information here. I love the organisation of this list. I found it interesting that even though I use a lot of these options, I’m probably not using them particularly well. Thanks for a great post.
Lots of useful stuff here, I need to update my todo list!
Thanks for compiling such a great list and sharing it with us David! Quite a bit of things I’ve seen and knew already, but forgotten about it over time. Lessson learned, I really gotta start writing these things down and put them on a plan.
Good job, David !
Great to see my name up on the blog again. And thanks for the comments so far guys. You definitely don’t have put *everything* listed into use, but I thought a bunch of practical tips could be useful. 🙂
I am but prompted to say, by the time I reach the ‘facebook’ stage, I will already be one exhausted blogger, abandoning whatever I have started and never to return.
Maybe I’m just plain lazy, but blogging is no fun this way. LOL.
This is an awesome post, I would say.
I agree with most of your ideas.
From my point of view, I think advertising is a good way to promote blog. IN your list I’d like to suggest Google Adsense.