Blogging is such a beautiful thing, you get your word out there and people interact with you and share your content. Or do they? With thousands of new blogs created every day, it turns out that people won’t automatically find your awesome content right away, and even if they do, it’s not guaranteed that they will subscribe to it or even leave a comment.
To solve that problem, I’ve written below what I think is the best approach for promoting your blog, especially when you’re just starting out. These tips are also relevant if you have thousands of subscribers already, as you still need to grow your audience on a daily basis.
Write kickass headlines and kickass Content
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There was a good post on Tim Ferris blog about writing effective headlines for your blog. He analyzed a number of different techniques to see which one worked best. It turns out that people like headlines that leave them with a good question and an incomplete answer.
Writing good headlines is an art that you should practice on your blog from the early days, and the reason is that if your headline sucks, people are not even going to read your post in the first place.
Assuming that you have a decent headline, the next step is to have kickass content. Content is still the substance of your article, so make sure that it is of the best quality. That doesn’t mean that you can’t start a blog if you are not a good writer, only that you should practice and do your best every time. Here’s a good article about writing exceptional content.
If you want to get traffic for your blog, you should also try to write about what people are looking for. How do you know what people are looking for? I personally use a software called market samurai for keyword research, but you can just use the free Google keyword tool which does the same job. In my experience SEO is something that you build slowly, but after a few months it’ll be nice to have hundreds of new visitors every day coming from search engines.
Interact with your community
If you want to be with people, go where people are. If you want to create a successful blog, having a strong relationship with your readers is very important.
In these days, having a twitter and Facebook page is mandatory for every serious blogger. The reason is that people are using those tools every day, and you want to be where people are.
How should you use your social media accounts? The obvious way is for sharing your awesome content, but don’t stop there. Try to interact with your readers. Ask questions, help others, search for related topics using the search functionality and interact with strangers, try to help them. Do this daily and as much as you can, you’ll be amazed by the results that you’ll have.
Another way to interact with your community is by visiting blogs and forums that are related to your niche. Same as before, try to be an active member and interact with other bloggers. Ask them if you can write a guest post for them, write as many as you can.
Encourage Conversation
There are blogs which have thousands of visitors every day but no comments at all. Why is it so? How can you encourage conversation?
There are many ways to encourage conversation in your blog. One is to ask questions at the end of your post, or you could also write something a bit controversy that causes reaction.
Another effective method is to leave a lot of comments to other blogs. When you leave a comment on a blog, its author will probably visit yours, and if your content is good they’re going to subscribe or leave a comment as well. This technique works very well, especially with smaller blogs, just remember to leave honest, compelling comments and to never spam in any way.
Tip : you should also try to respond to every comment in your blog so that your readers know that you care about them.
Do something Different
As I said earlier, there are thousands of new blogs created every day. How’s your different? If you are like everyone else in your niche, why should I follow you? What’s that thing that I can only find in your blog?
If you want to be different, be yourself, and don’t be afraid to experiment. If you’re more comfortable with doing videos than writing, do a video blog. If you think that your audience might appreciate an audio podcast, go for it, you’ll learn as you go.
Tip : Whatever you do, be yourself.
Focus on your blog
Growing your blog will not be easy and it’ll require a lot of hard work. But it will be worth it. If you blog around your passion and you put the hours week after week, you’ll be able to grow it like you never imagined, and eventually you’ll be able to make a living from it if you want to.
Most people abandon their blog after a few days because they see no traffic. I say, don’t focus in statistics. What if one of those ten readers is a major figure in your niche? Would you stop writing in your blog if that would be the case? Keep writing on it and interacting with your community. Day after day you’ll gain new readers and one year from now you’ll have something that you can be proud of.
Blogging is very easy for those who take it as a passion and not just another way of earning money so it all depends upon you and how you take it as. If you enjoy what you do then you will surely succeed in it.
Don’t forget to share what your views and thoughts are about it. Do you think you are following all the above listed points ? Any other changes or addition you want to make to the above listed points ? Feel free to share your ideas.
Excellent post Oscar.
Content is he first thing that we should pay attention to. If content is not good, then the rest of the things just goes down the drain. Once content is taken care of, building relationships is another important step, which can be achieved by interacting with the community (as you said). I have also written a post about encouraging conversation.
@Rahul,
Can you just tell me how you use those headlines as notes? For example, the headline "Encourage Conversation" with a nice blue background. Is it only HTML?
My recent post How To Get 30 Comments On A New Blog
Thanks for your feedback sourav. I definitely think that having exceptional content is really important, but also getting your word out there is important.
Hey Sourav! Nice to see you here once again
well, the one that you are asking about is done by a plugin named "wp-style box" which is a very cool, light weight and a trendy plugin 
Just google it and you will find all info about it. To use it, you got to add <p class="note"> before the line and after the line. It is quite easy to use and it styles your post quite well 
it is a must have I guess 
Hmm. Would have been better if it was all about adding codes. But since it's a light-weight plugin, I will give it a try because I need something like that. Thanks a lot for the info.
My recent post How To Get 30 Comments On A New Blog
Well if you know some HTML/CSS basics then go ahead n install the plugin (as rahul said) & if you wanna change something in that, then browser through the plugins's css to edit them. If you hv more than basics of web development (mainly PHP | CSS | HTML) then you can do it yourselves. But a plugin would definitely make ur work faster & less strained
My recent post DailyBlogging – Wrap-up of posts for August 2010
Interesting post Oscar. You are writing everywhere! How have you found so many places to guest post on? I am struggling a lot with it (and have at least 3 self-improvement posts that I would gladly guest post…).
Ruben
My recent post Eating in Iceland if you are not an Icelander
Actually Rahul contacted me asking for a guest post, so maybe you should ask him
My recent post Motivation When Youre First Starting Out – Freestyle Mind TV Episode 4
Yes! sure thing
Just drop me a mention on my twitter @bankerrahul whenever you are free and we'll catch up there and choose what's good 
you are most welcome! 
cheers 
Excellent post Oscar. Thoroughly detailed and nice images that goes excellently with the content. Looking forward to more from you.
My recent post Increase Your Facebook Subscribers With Facebook “Like” For Tags WordPress Plugin
nice post mate, main thing for a blog to succeed is the "Content" . If you don't have content in your site,then you are nothing. SEO won't help much as you won't have good content .
Hey mushipkw, I'm glad you liked the the post!
My recent post Blogging Tips – Freestyle Mind TV Episode 5
Thats a great post there. Agree to all its points. Encouraging conversations is something that I lack on my blog now. Will try to work on it.
My recent post Kitty-cat Toy That Will Keep Your House Humid
Great Article! Very well written and enjoyable! Your right, you’ve got to engage the Reader in the first 30 Seconds with a carchy Headline!
[...] There are several strategies to promote an individual post from your blog (you can read others in 5 Tips to Make Your Blog Explode) . I will cover only the basics of it, and from this you will be able to learn the rest.Social [...]
Great post!! I believe that you must be consistent on your blog and create good content .
yea catchy taglines….
draw more readors than visitors !
nice post Oscar..
yeah trying hard to turn blogging into passion but kinda tuff
i m also a blogger and i agree with u that blogging is such a beautiful thing my whole interset is in blogging…. and ur tips for perfect blogging is perfect
My recent post Inspirational Motivational Story of Woman
Hi Oscar, I particularly like your choice of photos for each point. I agree with your points about building community. Conversations are a key ingredient.
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Great post and very informative. These tips can be of great help not only to new bloggers but also to experienced ones. Having a good title which will make the reader want to know more on the topic is a good idea. Combined with a killer content then this is a huge step into making your blog a success.