The Special Art of Marketing and Promoting Your Blog to the World

Have you recently decided to start your own blog, either to generate some side income or to voice your opinions on a topic you are passionate about to the world? You have likely already registered a domain name and signed up for a reliable web hosting service. You have probably spent some time exploring WordPress, the most popular content management and blog publishing tool available on the web today.

Now it is time for you to write and publish quality content to your blog. It is imperative that you understand the most important rule of online blogging: Content is king. In order to create a successful blog that enjoys high traffic flow, it is critical that your blog features fresh, original and engaging content. This should be the type of content that your readers would want to bookmark or email to family and friends.

Once your blog features some truly useful and interesting content, it is time for you to engage in a very special art: Promoting and marketing your blog to the roughly 2 billion Internet users worldwide. Let’s take a look at some key items you need to be aware of in order to excel at this art.

SEO and Backlinking

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an intricate part of creating a successful blog. On the Internet, content is currency. The major search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Bing, will rank your blog or website largely based on the content found on your site. You will need to do some keyword research based on your blog’s niche in order to create an SEO optimized blog. You can use the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool to compile a list of keywords that are in high demand but face low competition. This will allow your blog to perform well on search engine rankings, which translates to higher traffic flow.

Backlinking is an important practice that is very important to SEO. To keep things simple, backlinks are essentially links “back” to your blog or one of its pages. You can write guest posts on other online blogs that share a similar niche as your blog. Generally, you will be allowed to incorporate your blog’s link within this guest post. As you can see, backlinking is a means to get your blog’s link out there to as many sources as possible. This will increase overall traffic flow to your blog in two ways. The first is that many readers of those blogs you submitted guest posts to will land on your website. The second is that search engines reward quality backlinks with higher page rankings.

Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter

Currently, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter are the most popular social networking sites on the Internet. Your blog should strive to develop a presence on each of these powerful networking tools. It is very easy to create a customized Facebook page solely for your blog. You can invite friends, family and your current readers to join your page. If the content on your blog is truly appealing and useful, there is a great chance that plenty of Facebook users will join your page and visit your blog. It is also important to include pictures and videos on your page to attract Facebook users. The new Facebook Timeline gives you the ability to add a large cover photo. You can use this space to showcase some element of your blog.

Pinterest is the fastest growing website ever, according to Fortune Magazine, which makes it an important weapon in your social networking arsenal. Pinterest is a virtual pinboard-style photo sharing community. You can create a Pinterest page for your blog and create visually appealing “pins” that showcase various elements of your blog. 80 percent of Pinterest users are currently female and so it would make sense for you to try and target this base. Does your blog include any themes that would appeal specifically to women, such as beauty, fashion, home decor or exotic recipes? If so, you must use this tool to market and promote your blog.

Twitter is another powerful networking tool that belongs in your social media arsenal. You can very easily create a Twitter profile for your blog. This networking site provides its users the ability to write and post 140-character “tweets” that the world can see. Did you recently post a sensationally phenomenal article on your blog? You can write a brief headline and incorporate the link to your article.

Of course, you should follow other users on these social networking sites who belong in the same niche as you. This increases the chances that your links will be disseminated to the appropriate sources. You should also include a button to all the major social networking sites directly on your blog so that users can easily share the content on your website to the world. WordPress has several plugins that will help you add these all important buttons.

Analytics

It is vital to your marketing and promotional strategies that you closely track and monitor your analytics in order to understand how and where your traffic is coming from. You will be able to determine how much of your traffic is coming organically from search engines, through backlinks and from social networking sites. You have the ability to determine what exactly users searched on search engines to land on your page. You can really adjust and fine tune your strategies based on this information. Google Analytics is an excellent free tool you can use to track and analyze your analytics.

Your blog will gradually experience increased traffic as you implement these important practices. Never forget the most important rule of blogging, however, which is that content is king.

Rick Henderson is an avid fitness blogger, online instructor for The College City. Rick has utilized all these techniques to excel at the art of marketing and promoting his blog to the world.