Top Tips That Make Blog Marketing Easier

There are millions of blogs already. More are being created every day. As this numbers swells more and more, marketing your blog becomes tougher. Even a niche-focused blog faces fierce competition. Therefore, it’s vital that you make yourself aware of the key tactics to get the word out about your blog. You’ll certainly want to reach out a larger audience, right?
Well, given below are eleven of the most important tips that will make blog marketing easier for you.

#1. Write for a Specific Readership
When you have chosen a niche to blog about, you are actually seeking a specific audience or readership. Therefore, every post or piece of content that you publish on your blog should be targeted to that specific readership, to people who really care about what you have got to say. If you are writing for just anyone, you are actually wasting all of your budget and time.

#2. Be Consistent
Even before you launch your blog, you should make sure you have at least 100 topics in advance to write on. In fact, you should have a large percentage of this content ready-to-publish. That’s exactly where the role of an editorial calendar comes into play. By planning your content in advance, you’ll find it easy to post consistently, and keep readers coming over and over again.
Depending on the niche you focus on, you may decide to post multiple posts in a day or at least 3-4 posts every week.

#3. Create a Little Controversy
Controversy works quite well for marketing. That doesn’t mean you need to make every post on your blog controversial. But you can utilize this tactic at least a couple of times every 2-3 months. For example, if other bloggers in your niche are saying ‘right’, say ‘left’. Try to present a different opinion or angle on a hot or trending topic in your niche. This is a proven tactic for attracting tons of eyeballs to your blog over a short period of time.
However, always keep a close watch that you don’t harm your reputation in any way while writing controversial posts.

#4. Guest Post
Guest posting or guest blogging is an extremely powerful way of marketing your blog and reach out to a new audience. Select popular and semi-popular blogs in your niche and start to guest post, at least 4-5 times a month. Remember, guest blogging doesn’t only market your niche blog, but it also improves the overall SEO of your blog for the long-term.

#5. Sell Less, Teach More
If money is all on your mind, you’ll make this mistake quite easily. Over-selling sends a signal that you care less about your readers and are more focused on making money. To make blog marketing easy as a cakewalk, you should focus more on teaching or educating readers, for free.
When Mark Stelzner lauched his blog SocialMediaExaminer, he didn’t sell a thing for as long as a year. Today, his blog ranks among the most successful social media blogs on the web.

#6. Optimize (Both for People and Search Engines)
Appropriate optimization makes blog marketing easier. But you need to optimize your blog both from people’s and search engine’s point of view. On the one hand, simplify subscription by offering readers numerous options of subscribing to your niche blog. On the other hand, pay close attention to the SEO of titles, URLs, images and other parts of content on your blog.
If you are yet to understand how SEO works, it’s advisable to hire an experienced SEO professional for the job.

#7. Respond to Comments
Replying to your readers’ comments is an excellent way of saying you care. Even when people disagree with your viewpoint, you should reply in a polite and tactful way to keep them coming.

#8. Submit Press Releases
Press releases work well even today, provided you do it appropriately. Whether it’s about the launch of your new blog, addition of new features to your blog or the launch of a new product or service, use press releases to market your blog in an effective way. Don’t forget to optimize the press release.

#9. Get Active on Social Media Websites
Social media websites offers bloggers with a powerful opportunity to reach out to a target audience in real time, interact with them and engage them. If you plan to market your blog quickly, social media participation can never be ignored. In fact, you should work out an effective strategy before you join popular social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin.
And yes, don’t forget Pinterest.

#10. Join Relevant Forums
Identify useful and relevant web forums and discussion threads in your niche and participate actively. Web Master World, Warrior Forum and Digital Point are good examples of these forums where you can share your expertise, and attract eyeballs towards your blog by sharing resourceful posts with other users.
When you join a specific forum, make sure you stick to their terms and post on a regular basis. Since forums are very targeted and specific, forum marketing works extremely well for bloggers.

#11. Network (More and More)
This is one of the best. Networking with other bloggers in your niche brings you several good opportunities to market your blog. You can meet fellow bloggers or niche experts at social media platforms, web forums and industry-related events. Keep looking for such opportunities and connecting.
If you are struggling to grow your blog, you should pay some serious attention to marketing it in an effective way. With these tips at hand, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to waste any more time. So, get started right away!