If you want to find success in the world of blogging, you need to do a lot more than ‘just create great content' for your audience.
With more than a billion active websites and blogs on the internet today, it's now more about building relationships, outreach, and promoting your content more effectively. This is the winning formula for blogging today, and you must stay up with the current content creation and marketing trends if you want to compete.
Having already found a lot of success in the world of content creation and blogging, today I'm going to provide you with some of the best resources, tools and social media tips to expand your reach and marketing in the process.
I've already covered many winning formulas on this blog with how to make money with a blog, but if you don't focus on the content creation and promotion aspect of your blog, these monetization methods will quickly dry up as well. Each of these methods is unique in their own way and can help boost your blog past the competition, while also increasing your traffic and revenue in the process.
Improve Outreach with Direct Emails
One of the most confusing and complicated tasks of content outreach is knowing who to contact at different websites and blogs. Most websites will have a contact form, you never know who it's actually being sent to. If you want to get the fastest and best responses, you need to go right to the top.
One tool that's making the process of content outreach a whole lot easier is Voilanorbert, which provides users with access to millions of corporate email addresses that are easily searchable through the platform.
What's even more enticing, is that you can send emails when right inside the platform and can keep track of what correspondence are going here and where. Try it out and get your first 50 email searches through the site for free, while also potentially getting some great guest blogging opportunities in the process.
Start Guest Blogging on More Sites
Too many bloggers are focusing solely on content creation and not enough on getting in front of new audiences and increasing readership. First of all, when creating content for your own site it's important to make sure you have articles of at least 1,200 words or more. It's also important that you focus more on the promotion of these articles, then going live with a new 500 word article daily. Think quality over quantity.
With this in mind, guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic back to your website while building a brand for yourself in the process. Your blog already has a bunch of visitors and readers, but think about all of the other sites out there that have readers you've never gotten exposure to. For example, you are reading this post today, but might not know about my main website or blog — now you do!
To find some of the best guest blogging opportunities, you can start looking online for a list of guest blogging sites or head over to Facebook and join any of the active guest blogging groups, the advantage to using Facebook is that you are going to have much faster response rates and will quickly know who has the best opportunities out there.
To get started, simply log into your Facebook account and search for “guest blogging” in the top search box, then sort by Groups.
Got a Mobile App? Get More Installs!
With more than 2.6 billion smartphones in the world and more people using their mobile device to access the internet and find information daily, it's time to think ‘mobile. We are now seeing more bloggers go live with mobile applications of their own to reach new audience and make their content more accessible. These applications are actually quite simple to set up, as often times they are just an application that converts your blog into a responsive format or viewable within its own application.
However, what's not so easy about this process is getting other people to find and download your application. It's one thing to advertise it on social media and through your website, but to have someone actually go to their mobile device open the app store and then download it, that's another. A unique tool that is making this process a whole lot easier is LinkTexting, which sends an application download link right to your mobile device, fuss making the find and download process 1,000 times easier.
You can see a visual concept of how to uncomplicate the mobile marketing and download process through the screenshot above.
Use Social Media and Author Bio Pages to Boost SEO
Getting your website or blog to rank in the search results is one of the most important things for every blogger to do. However, for this to happen you are going to need to have a site with some really high-quality backlinks and a solid Domain Authority to go along with it. Also, just ranking at the top of Google for your site name isn't going to do the trick. You also want to rank for your personal name, top keywords you know your audience is searching for and other relevant terms as well.
The more often you rank in the search results, the more likely someone is going to visit your site. A great way to instantly increase your search rankings and listings on the main page of Google is to focus on your social profile pages and any existing author profile or bio pages you might have online. You can see a great example of this in the screenshot above, as my LinkedIn, Affiliate Summit Speaker Profile and Udemy Instructor pages all rank on the first page of Google for my name.
Go search your name in Google right now and see what comes up on pages two and three — it won't be hard to push these profiles and pages to the main page with a few social shares and backlinks. Google loves social networks and they rank content like this extremely well.
Automate Social Media Updates
With so many social platforms on the internet today, it would be a full-time job in itself to try and manage all of your accounts yourself. While you might have your own favorite social platform, it's likely your audience is spread across many others — whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter or LinkedIn.
One of the best ways to get ahead of your competitors and also take better control over your social media is to automate the process when possible. Through tools like MeetEdgar and HootSuite, it's possible to schedule in content and advanced while also bringing life back to your older blog post which may no longer get the traffic they deserve. To learn more about what's working best for users of these platforms, be sure to listen to these social media marketing tips from Laura Roeder.
The benefit of using such tools is that you continually have new traffic seeing your older content, while also allowing you to focus your time, work, and effort in other areas such as content promotion. Social media is one of the best ways to continually connect with your audience, but it's also one of the best ways to put automation in play.
How to Find the Most Blogging Success in the Months to Come
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to improve your content creation, marketing, and outreach efforts as a blogger. It's no longer a matter of simply creating content and hoping that people will come to your site. It's now all about putting in the time, work, and effort where others fall short. These tools and recommended methods above should help with that process.
Great article Zac, thanks for the share.
One question.
Can you do as good job without social media when it comes to blog engagement?
Kind regards,
Filip
Sure, you don’t need social media to have a successful website or blog. Instead, focus on content outreach methods like guest blogging, infographic creation, interviews and direct email. These are some of the most effective ways to reach new audiences and increase backlinks/traffic without the use of social media.
Thanks for taking the time to reply Zac, I really appreciate it.
Followed you on twitter by the way 🙂
Hi Zac,
Nice tips. Many bloggers underestimate the real power of a mobile app, though it can cost a bit to create a mobile app but its definitely a nice investment for growth.
Even if we are not willing to spend money in creating a standalone app, we should try to utilize the Apple News or Play Newsstand platform, both have great reach. One of my blogs is getting over 10k views only on those platforms, so I always recommend people to start distributing the content on Mobile channels.
– Sanjeev
Mobile is growing a massive rate and those sites/blogs/brands that aren’t adapting with it will surely miss out!
Hey Zac!
When it comes to building a successful blog in any niche, the marketing and promotion part of it is one of the most important (if not the most important) part of the whole process. Of course, you do want to have a few super valuable blog posts in your blog already, but once you have that the rest of your time should be spent marketing the heck of that content!
Outreach marketing seems to be a smart way to gain more exposure. I don’t do it a lot but I know how well it works – when you do it right, that is.
Your tips are very helpful!
Thanks for sharing!
Cheers! 😀
Content marketing and outreach are two of the most effective ways to promote a blog or online brand simply because they are solutions that you can’t throw money at and get the work done. These actually take time, work, and effort — which gives the little guy an upper leg over the competition.
Hi Zac,
Love these tips and I make it a point to guest post on 2-3 other blogs every month. So far, I’ve been able to do that.
You’re definitely correct, it’s a great way to get more exposure for your name and brand. I love it, especially when I target a blog that has been around for a while and is a lot bigger than mine.
I was just thinking how I could find some more bloggers to reach out to for a guest posting opportunity.
I’ve just reached out to a blogger earlier this week. I haven’t heard back from them, so maybe it’s time to move on.
How many emails do you recommend sending someone if you don’t hear back from them? I don’t want to pester people too much 🙂
Thanks for taking the time to share that link with us. I’ll also be sure to find some guest posting Facebook groups.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Awesome, great to hear! Guest blogging still offers some of the best marketing and branding opportunities online today.
If you don’t hear from someone that you sent an email to, I would start sharing their content on social media, then let them know you are really enjoying their content and sharing it with others. Then add a reminder at the end of this same email that you are interested in guest blogging for their site.
Keep in mind that big sites are getting a massive amount of email requests for guest blogging daily. Do what you can to grab their attention in other ways and show your real value (and that you don’t just want to submit an article and get a link from their site).
Hello Zac,
Great tips over here 🙂
These are some really savage tips which can help us to expand our market search and attract more people to our blogs.
The concept of direct emails is something very interesting, as many sites do have a contact form page and sometimes the people miss out their contact form page.
The tool you introduces up here Voilanorbert looks very promising and their trial period of 50 mails is good, I am looking forward to grab my hands up on this one.
No, one can deny that, the high end users are active through their mobile phones, apart from their laptops and desktops.
The easy to search and get going every where, its good to have a mobile optimized web site, they are bit costly,but they can surely get back our investment in a quick phase of time.
Thanks a lot for sharing these tips among us.
Shantanu.
Email outreach is definitely time-consuming, but it works extremely well. Be sure to create a spreadsheet of all sites that you contact (name, URL, email). This way you can see who responds, and also allows you to build up a nice contact list and directory in the process. This is something you can outsource to a virtual assistant if you have the resources as well.
I definitely agree that although mobile apps have the capability to increase outreach massively, getting people to download the app or even make them look for it can prove to be quite challenging. Creating the app is not much of a problem for me since I have tried subscribing to BPO services before.
I get the idea of linktexting though. Maybe I’ll give it a try.
Great article by the way, these are really helpful. Cheers!
Lucas
Hello Zac,
All these five tips are very useful in blogging journey. I agree that with creating great content it is also very important to build healthy relationship and promoting your content more effectively.
Great to know about voilanorbert tool to access millions of corporate email address. Here you share very effective tips and tools which can solve our blogging mistakes.
Am also a big believer in “Think quality over quantity”.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Best Wishes,
Praveen verma
Social media and blog engage go hand in hand. Many people don’t put efforts on social media and lack traffic from there. Guest posting help to build personal relationship with blog and social media helps to accelerate this relationship with your user.
Great tips Zac.
Thanks for sharing.
Have a great day ahead! 🙂
>SK Lohar
Hey, Zac,
All these strategies for increasing blog engagement are really great. I actually use infographics, facebook sharing, content writing, blog commenting. But don’t use email outreach, mobile apps, and Guest blogging. Thanks for these cool strategies. I will definitely do these work for getting more audience.
Commendable…!!
Thanks for the information Mr. Zac it helps us alot for our sites.Only good content is not enough for site to perform well today we have to market our product & services via our site to different social media and other linking sites as said rightly. I started schedule media update recently & used directory, forum blog commenting & social media but have not use email out reach and guest posting.I will try to follow your tips.
thanks again for sharing..
Hi Zac,
It looks like that Guest blogging has worked for me always. I really appreciate your effort in crafting this amazing post.
Have a good week ahead.
Hey Zac,
This is a really great post. So far, the only medium I’ve been using is the social media and it’s not even automated yet. Pretty sure I’m gonna have to start automating it once I consider utilizing those other strategies. Thanks for listing them down.
Cheers!
Hello Zac,
I supposed to be a good content create, but i am not willing to do, i am still trying my best to give but the things are not going well for me.
Yes, i totally agree with you their are billion of active website are in this world today. Outreach to direct emails is short term period method, but if really works it has most tremendous part of of this work. Really is worth.
Quality over quantity is very necessary to attract to people, they must be willing to do so.
Thanks for the share
Aman
Great post Zac, as always.
If a new blogger asked me for just one piece of crucial advice for growing their blog I would say start building an email list TODAY. A quality list is one of the most dependable sources of traffic a blog can have, and it’s so easy to get started.
I haven’t had the best of luck with guest blogging but this post has inspired me to give it another try.
Keep up the great work!
HI, I get what you’re saying, but please tell us how much it is possible to find a unique niche in this modern day. The internet is flooded with information, how can a subject be unique?
Hey Zac
Thanks for adding this beautiful post. Currently I am working on blogger and adding posts on daily basis. I have a question? Can you reply how much blog posts are required to have ad-sense account.
Thanks