10 Ways to Promote Your New Blog Post

Writing a great blog post for your audience doesn’t matter if they don’t see it. And if you have a new or low-traffic website, chances are very few people are seeing it. Instead of spending all that time planning and writing your post with nothing to show but a post that’s already collecting dust, make time to promote it.

Luckily, there are dozens of ways to promote your content. Read through the ideas here and choose the options that work best for you. Build them into a basic “promotion” plan that says where you’ll promote each new live post. For example, your promotion plan may include:

A promotion plan like this holds you accountable for sharing your content, allowing you to get the most out of everything you publish. Get ready for your blog posts to reach more people and build a brand that people remember with these  simple ideas.

Social media is the first and most obvious way to promote your new blog post. Rather than giving you basic tips you already know—post your article across all of your channels—I want to focus on some nitty-gritty details.

First and foremost, make sure the link to your blog—not an individual blog post, but your main blog page—is in your Instagram bio, since you can’t link directly to your blog posts in a caption. When referring to your new blog post, you’ll use the wording “Link in bio!” or something similar.

I use Linktr.ee as a way to include both a link to my blog, website and other resources I want to share with my Instagram audience. Notice in the screenshot below how I include a CTA for the link as well, which is important to differentiate it from the rest of the content in your bio.

On the topic of Instagram, to get the full-promotion-mileage, don’t forget to use all the features, including a story post with an image and caption relating to the new article.

When writing your caption, don’t just repeat the title—your followers can already see that. This is especially true with platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter where the title will show up anyways. Call something out from the article. This is your opportunity to get a follower to click and spend their valuable time reading your article. Finally, don’t be afraid to share your post multiple times, just make sure to space it out and always vary the caption to promote the post from a different angle.

If you have an email marketing strategy, promoting your blog posts should be a part of it. Depending on your frequency, you can send out an email for each new blog post. If your blog production exceeds your email frequency, include the best performing posts in each message you send.

Need help figuring out the metrics that will tell you which posts are performing best? Check out this blog post I wrote for Wave, Content Marketing Reporting: Key Metrics.

If you have a large subscriber list, segmenting based on their interest will drive more clicks. You can do this easily with most email marketing platforms, creating groups or segments of subscribers based on interest, past purchases, etc.

Another way to promote your blog posts is through the signature. When you publish a new blog post, you can use this online email signature generator to quickly create an attractive signature that contains a link to the blog post. This will ensure that a link to your blog post is included in every email you send. It can drive a lot of traffic, especially if you get a lot of emails and you’re constantly replying to them. 

If you quoted or sourced industry experts in your article, tag them on Twitter or LinkedIn when you post it. This lets them know they were featured and may lead to a share that helps your post get seen by more people.

Take this one step further by sending a direct message. Tell the person you included that you used them as a source and thank them for their insights. A lot of writers and experts are just like you and me, so don’t be afraid to reach out.

A popular marketing tactic for many years was commenting in forums and on blog posts. However, this quickly became a spam tactic, so approach this promotional idea with caution. Your goal is to share a post that’s 100 percent related to the conversation or article being commented on. Here are a few ways to use this tactic effectively:

Read Content Marketing Institute’s guide to marketing your content on Reddit and Quora for a deep dive into the specifics for those platforms. TL;DR:

Finally, there might also be industry specific forums where you can engage in conversation and organically promote your content as well. To find forums, do a simple Google search: “intitle:forum” + [your niche keyword]

Twitter chats are a great way to drive more followers and connect with potential clients, customers and blog readers. While many chats don’t allow linking and self-promotion, you can use this as an opportunity to share your knowledge on related subjects and find people who could benefit from your blog post.

For example, if someone asks a question that your blog post would answer, share the post with that person outside of the chat—allowing you to provide value while also driving traffic to your blog. You don’t need to do this for every blog post, but rather, keep it in mind as you participate in these chats.

We talked about sharing your new blog posts in marketing emails, but this is also a great chance to connect with potential customers and people within your network. If you write a blog post that you think a potential client might find helpful, based on a previous interaction with them, send it over with a personal note.

For example, if you’re a real estate agent and a client was recently asking a lot of questions about the mortgage process, and you just published a blog post on the topic, send it their way. This not only drives people to your blog, but truly turns it into a business tool to drive leads and clients.

This is a must-have. There are dozens of free social sharing plugins, so choose one and install it—my personal favorite is SwiftyBar. That’s the one I use for my blog, and it looks sleek and classy, while also calling attention to the sharing options available to the reader.

While this might not seem important, consider the steps your reader has to take to share your blog post if you don’t have sharing options:

When readers do share your articles, comment and thank them for doing so. This humanizes your brand, allows you to engage with your audience, making it more likely that they’ll share in the future.

Medium is a free publishing platform with a large built-in audience and can be used to republish your content in front of a larger audience. Wordstream lists the reasons you should promote your content on Medium, including:

Check out this guide from SmartBlogger on how and why to republish on Medium—including how to properly source the original article to avoid duplicate content penalties.

Promote your new blog content in guest posts. As a valuable resource, it’s the perfect link for your next piece of contributed content. If you’re new to guest posting, check out some of my guides and how-to posts on it:

As you produce and promote more and more content, don’t forget to revisit evergreen articles and repost them weeks or months later. Reposting is a great way to get continuous value out of your content and drive new traffic to older posts.

The social media platform Buffer regularly reposts their content and explains their strategy: “Something we’ve noticed is that a lot of our posts are still relevant months after we publish them. The other thing that changes after we publish a post is that more people follow us on social networks, so if we repost content from our blog that’s six months old, many of our followers will be seeing it for the first time, so they’ll get value out of it even though it’s old content.”

Add it into your sharing rotation again and again—in such a crowded feed, no one will even notice you’re sharing it multiple times.