Toward the end of the “How to Market Your Blog and Turn It Into a Brand/Business” session, Elina asked the panel to give her some tangible examples for marketing her blog. I don’t think we ever really answered her question because we ran out of time, so here are my suggestions for what you can DO to market your blog.
Get Out of Your House
This is my number one tip for marketing your blog: Get out of your house and meet people! This is a great way to tell people about your blog and explain what it’s all about. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to meet other bloggers and find ways to work together.
I attend a lot of blogger events and conferences– many of which are open for everyone to attend. Here are just some of the blog conferences out there: Fitbloggin, Healthy Living Summit, BlogHer, BlogHer Food, Foodbuzz Festival, BlogWorld, Urban Running Blogger Summit, and Blissdom. (Just sign up for the event’s newsletter to stay in the loop about their upcoming events.) Twitter is also a great way to find out about events in your area. Twitter is all about WHO you follow!
Participate in the Blog Community
If you haven’t noticed already, the blog world thrives on community, so be sure to participate in anyway that you can. Here are just a few ideas: link to blogs and posts that you like, comment on blogs, host and participate in contests/giveaways, make friends on Twitter, offer to donate or bake something for an online auction, attend or host your own blogger meet-up in your area, contribute a guest post on another blog. All of these things help you make connections and spread the world about you and your blog.
Reach Out to Your Favorite Brands
Offer to write a guest post or submit a recipe to your favorite brands’ website or blog. In the past, I’ve written guest posts for Back on My Feet and Eggland’s Best. Reaching out to your favorite brands is a great way to build relationships and get new readers to your site.
Think Outside of Your Community
When thinking about guest posting, look outside of your usual blog community to find new audiences. A lot of my traffic comes from the healthy living and foodie communities, but I’d like to expand my reach to the fitness and running communities, so I recently offered to write a guest post for the Lisa Johnson Fitness.
Lisa has a large following (more than 19,000 followers on Twitter!), so I knew reaching out to her would be a great way to market my blog to a new audience. Bigger bloggers tend to get busy, so a lot of the time, they’re looking for content to feature on their blogs. It takes you just as long to write a guest post as it does a regular post on your own blog, so it really doesn’t take you anymore time or effort. The other blogger gets content for their site and you gain some new readers, so it’s a win-win for everyone. (FYI: I’m always looking for guest posts on Trading Up Downtown!)
Register Your Blog with Blog Directories
Registering your blog with various directories around the web is an easy way for people to discover your blog. Here are just a few of the blog directories out there: BlogCatalog, Healthy Living Blogs, Foodbuzz, BlogHer, BlogWise, Foodie Blogroll, and Technorati.
Create an Offline Presence
Quite a few bloggers are starting to expand their presence offline. For instance, Matt of No Meat Athlete has done a really great job with his t-shirts. I swear, I see at least one at every road race I run! There’s a million ways to create an offline presence, but anything that creates buzz for your blog will do.
Recently, I’ve had some success with creating CNC t-shirts and stickers. I only make about $1 off each shirt that I sell, but every one has the CNC logo on the back, so anytime someone wears it, my blog gets some free marketing. Similarly, I gave away CNC stickers to my readers. I had to pay for the postage to mail them, but it was totally worth it for some extra blog promotion. Plus, fun stickers make people happy.
Use Some Basic SEO Practices
At Fitbloggin‘ this year, Matt of No Meat Athlete covered some basic (not sketchy) search engine optimization (SEO) practices that bloggers can implement to help search engines find their sites. The session was summarized here: SEO for Fitness Bloggers and then later turned into a webinar, so you can see all of Matt’s suggestions. Here are a few of my favorites that I’ve used on CNC. Additionally, a great presentation about SEO for Food Writing from TECHmunch also provided a number of useful tips and tricks for making it easier for Google to find your recipes.
Post Frequently
You don’t have to post 2-3 times a day like crazy people like I do, but posting frequently keeps your loyal readers interested and coming back for more. I know a lot of bloggers who create a posting schedule to keep themselves on track. Maybe your goal is to publish a post four times a week. Plan it out on your calendar and then stick to it!
Leave Business Cards
This one is really simple, especially if you already have business cards for your blog. If not, VistaPrint.com is really easy to use and has some great deals!
At stores with community bulletin boards, like Whole Foods, Starbucks, and Bruegger’s, I sometimes post a couple of my business cards on the bulletin board. You never know who might find it, and it’s a quick and easy way to market your blog.
Create a Facebook Fan Page
People always ask me when I first I saw a spike in my blog traffic. About six months after I started CNC, I added my blog URL to my Facebook profile and posted a couple of links on my wall. Once I did that, I saw a considerable jump in my blog traffic.
Since then, I haven’t used Facebook much to market my blog, which is crazy because Facebook has something like 500 million users. A couple of weeks ago, however, I created a Carrots ‘N’ Cake Facebook fan page, and I’ve already seen a small spike in traffic. I mean, just think about how many connections the average Facebook user has— there’s so much potential for people to discover your blog!
Participate in Twitter Chats
The first step with this one is creating a Twitter account and then tweeting! Twitter is such an amazing way to network and promote your blog.
Participating in Twitter chats is another way to connect with people of similar interests and help them discover your blog. It’s also a great way to find new blogs to add to your own daily rotation. Two of my favorite Twitter chats are #runchat, which is held on the second and fourth Sunday of each month, and #FitBlog, which is held every Tuesday at 9 p.m.
What are your tips for marketing your blog? Please share!
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I absolutely love these tips. As we work to improve runningwithmascara.com and up it’s exposure, we’ve done many similar things. I also learned some new ones, so thanks so much!
Hey thanks for the tips on how to become succesful! mabye you could check out my blog:)
Thanks for the tips! Commenting on other people’s blogs is definitely a great way to ‘put yourself out there’
I’m checking out just about every link you posted on here! Thank you so much!
Love these tips Tina! So very helpful and thanks so much
This is such a great post! Your posts on blogging are always so helpful
This is fantastic! I just started blogging a few weeks ago, and the more I explore the blogging community, the more involved I want to be! These are great tips even for someone who just writes for fun.
And by the way, I’ve become a huge fan of Carrots N Cake! Always looking forward to your next post!
~Kate
great tips, tina! i shared them on my facebook!
Even though I just started my blog and have no intention of turning it into a business, these tips were really helpful. I’d love to just have readers outside of my family, so this post gave me some good ideas.
I really don’t do much to market my blog, so I could really use these tips. Thanks Tina!
I love this! So many great tips for us newbies… thanks Tina!
your post came at a perfect time! Thanks for helping us newbies out!
Thanks for the great ideas, Tina!! I really appreciate your words of wisdom!
Thanks so much – goal of September – get on twitter ….honestly still don’t get it….fingers crossed!
@Corey @ Learning Patience:
Ah me either, I just created one after I set the same goal almost a month ago and I’m still clueless!
I love that you shared all these helpful tips…perfect timing! I just started blogging and have found that I am very un-blog savvy, so every little bit helps & is much appreciated
Keep doing what you’re doing, LOVE the blog!
Even though not all of these are practicable for me, living in Australia where blogging is only just starting to be recognised, some of these are really great no-nonsense tips. Thank you!
Hi Tina,
These are some great tips! Thanks for sharing them.
We’ll implement some to revive our blog
Mikaila
GREAT tips with great, easy to follow examples. Thank you!
Thanks for writing this post! i definitely felt like we weren’t given enough real tangible examples during the session. Good stuff here!
Do categories help at all? Do you find them helpful?
Great tips, as always, Tina! I wrote a bunch of them on my “to do” list, seeing as one of my goals for the month of August is to make my blog better. Great timing! Thanks for the info!
This is great info and I missed it earlier (crazy busy week…good thing you did your superlatives post…thank you!
Nice post Tina. These tips are great and I appreciate you sharing them.
Great post…very helpful, indeed! I’m not new to blogging, but did just recently start a new health blog. I know content is huge and putting yourself out there, but I appreciate some of the links you mentioned…and ideas for “casual” promotion. Will have to do a little more research!
Thanks for the ideas! Every time I post on my blog it automatically puts a link on my facebook and twitter. It has really helped me alot. I’ve also had some giveaways and I send out some “Hey! Hope you’re doing good, don’t forget to check us out” mail with about 5 business cards inside. I have business cards but its been really hard for me to figure out where to put them but I will definitely look for these bulletin boards you mention! Thanks!
nice tips, thanks for sharing
I just launched my blog and Fanpage last week….and since I have put so much work into it I I do want to get more traction to my blog so I will look into Ping.fm…have not use it. Also what do you think about using the {plz Retweet function} I wanted to try today but I wanted your opinion before I post on twitter……. never did that before
Thank you for posting this article…very helpful to newbies like me @ http://www.chairtospare.com/
Thanks for the tips Tina. I am loving it.
Hey Tina! Love your blog. Do you have any tips on graphic design for blogs?
Unfortunately, I don’t really. I hired someone to design mine. Sorry!
Great tips, thanks!
When I started my blog, I was so unaware of many things that I am continuing to learn, but marketing the blog is completely new to me. I hadn’t even thought of such aspect until I started my blog. I am learning and enjoying. Thanks for sharing the pointers, because people like me “newbies” are in need of such information. Thanks!
Tina, thank you so much for sharing this information. I used to blog for fun as my creative outlet, but I have decided to take the next step and blog fulltime. I have started a new blog about being the mother of two teenage vegetarians and the wife of a meat loving husband! There is so much information out there, but you really simplify it and as someone who is currently experiencing information overload, while navigating through Wordpress.org. I REALLY appreciate it!
Awesome tips, Tina! I recently stumbled upon your blog when researching low-cal cocktail recipes to use on my blog. Can’t wait to utilize your tips for marketing myself!
Thanks for the great advice… I’ve become more and more interested in expanding my reader’s circle, but don’t want to feel spammy/intrusive/annoying. These methods don’t seem overbearing and are more my style (than some I’ve encountered)… Interestingly, my boyfriend suggested the business card method. I laughed at him. Perhaps I should listen to him a little more often
Great tips! Need to start implementing some of them. Thanks for posting still relevant today! Timeless information!
I appreciate your tips, especially those about food since I write about food allergies and asthma and “safe” recipes are huge in our world of managing food allergies! Thanks again for sharing.
Thanks for the great tips! It is awesome to have some guiding light as a new blogger – hoping to continue to expand using you tips!
Just discovered your blog and am reading all of your blogging tips! Thanks so much! I am a new blogger and your tips are so helpful! Off to read more!
Love the tips, thanks so much!
Thank you so much for these tips. I’m going to set up a face book page very soon.
Tytenisha
Hi Tina, thanks for the helpful tips. I started blogging a few months ago and getting a little discouraged, as I don’t get many followers, so have been thinking about “packing it in”, but after reading your tips, feel I need to give it more of a chance.
There is still much I have to learn about blogging, but decided to do it, to motivate others and share our running/clean eating stories etc.
this is such a great post! thank you for the tips.
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