Time is scarce. More so for bloggers whose job often entails complex and time-consuming activities. So let’s get smarter about blog marketing, and kill more than two birds with the same stone.

In this post, find five ways not only to promote your blog, but also to get content indexed faster by search engines, and to build credibility and authority in your niche.

A word of warning: before you start promoting your blog, you need to first build a solid blog marketing foundation, or your results won’t be as good as they could be. In fact, you can promote till you’re blue in the face, but if your content is poor, you’ll only be wasting your time.

Essential to know is that blog marketing needs to be done with great subtlety. It’s selling without selling, and it’s always about providing real value.

Tip 1. Distribute blog links on social media

For this method of blog marketing, you’d add the link to your blog post from social media channels. To make sure it serves two purposes instead of just one, you’d need to make sure that the social media channel you select to add blog links to, are where your target audience hang.

If it’s not, you may get traffic to your blog, but not of the right variety – what’s the point of getting traffic that won’t make you any money in the long run?

The other aspect to take into account, is that on social media, images and video are what drive clicks, so make sure you add awesome attention-getting pics to your blog post. They should not be of the regular stock image variety.

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 This blog post received a whopping 10K + Facebook shares

 See this unassuming little post on Facebook? It was shared 10K + times!

Why? Well, it has a good title – it would catch the eye of many people because it is emotionally based (always a good thing on Facebook). The image is real. You can see it’s not a stock image, but rather it contains two real people, and the image is interesting and cute.

Yes OK, we can’t all go around taking shots of ourselves and adding them to blog posts, but there are other ways you can make an image interesting. Use a tool like Canva to add text or get creative with a stock image, to add extra interesting dimensions.

Tip 2. Answer questions on Q & A’s

Providing well thought-out, value-add answers to questions on Q & A forums can achieve three purposes, all at once. Not only can it send traffic to your blog, notify search engines of new content, but when done properly, could become a source of profit if someone wants what you provide.

Find the right forums for your niche at this comprehensive Q & A list.

Find questions to answer on the site or sites that you select. Make sure the blog post you want to promote is able to be included in your answer in a natural way, like this:

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 Tip 3. Speak out on other blogs

Find blogs who are in your niche, and comment on posts. As with tip #2, this method of blog marketing may also generate new business, if it’s done properly.

Making a comment that provides no value to anyone may only work to get more traffic via search engines, but why not take a little more time, and maximize this method so that it might also generate enough interest from others to be clicked on, and which may result directly in additional revenue?

All you have to do is provide value. The more interesting the comment, the more it’s likely to attract attention from others. Think of commenting on other blog posts as a PR stint.

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 Romano Law adds value with a comment on Neil Patel’s blog post

Tip 4. Get yourself interviewed on podcasts

To make this method work, you need to be considered an “expert”, or someone who can provide value to the conversation. It can be as simple as being interviewed on Skype, so there’s no need to travel, but of course this depends on the organizer.

Find opportunities by doing a search on a term like: “podcast”+ “topic” or try podcast directories like PodcastDirectory.com to find shows interviewing guests like you. If you can’t find the organizer’s details on a website, try them on social media.

Submit a pitch to organizers as to why they should interview you, remembering that it’s not about you, but it is all about how you can add value to them.

Being interviewed should get you a link back to your site, but double check beforehand to make sure.

Tip 5. Pay for Facebook ads or boosts

Getting clicks back to your website from paid Facebook ads or status boosts counts exactly the same as getting clicks from a blog post link on your status. If you boost your blog post, you are likely to get a much better response than if you didn’t pay for it.

Facebook ads are cheap and when you do it right, the results can be phenomenal.

To summarize

Before you start promoting your blog, build a solid foundation. Once that’s sorted, increase your traffic with these multi-purpose (they achieve more than one goal) blog marketing tips:

  1. Send traffic to your website via social media
  2. Answer questions on forums
  3. Add value-add comments to other blog posts
  4. Get interviewed as an expert on podcasts
  5. Pay for Facebook advertising