EDITOR'S NOTE

This page is no longer active.

We regret any inconvenience.

More about our terms
Back to Forbes
BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here
Edit Story

The Ultimate Tactical Checklist For Promoting Your Next Blog Post

This article is more than 8 years old.

You probably already know that creating content is only half the battle. In fact, according to recent research from Moz and BuzzSumo, 75% of articles published online get little to no traction. This means all the hard work you put into creating blog posts could be for nothing.

This article will provide you with a checklist for promoting your blog posts, to increase the chances of getting them read and shared. Some of these tips are a little more involved, while others are quick and easy, and can be done on a post-by-post basis.

The next time you hit ‘publish’, run through this list to make sure your content gets the attention it deserves!

Immediately after publication

1. Tweet your article on your personal and business Twitter accounts, then create a schedule so it auto-tweets/shares at regularly set intervals: after a few days, a week, and even months down the road. Hootsuite can help with this. Use relevant hashtags when sharing your post. Tweets with hashtags receive 2x the number of retweets, helping increase the reach of your post. Also, ask your followers to retweet it for you. According to Dan Zarrella, tweets that explicitly ask for a retweet get shared 311% more often.

2. Promote your post on your Facebook page. Don’t just share a link…offer some context to your post, and always (always!) include a relevant image. If your blog post doesn’t contain an image, Facebook gives you the option of uploading one to share with your post.

3. Share it with your social media fans and followers on LinkedIn & Google+. Use a tool like SNAP to automatically share your blog posts on various social networking sites. Once you hit ‘publish’, SNAP does the rest, auto-posting to the networks you’ve selected. To ensure other people can share it easily, make sure your blog post has a floating share button sidebar; its prominent placement makes it hard to miss!

4. Submit your post to Triberr to get your post seen by other bloggers in your niche.

5. Re-publish your post on LinkedIn using the ‘Publish a post’ button located on your LinkedIn profile homepage.

6. Share your post in relevant LinkedIn groups. Make sure the group allows self-promotion before sharing.

7. Don’t forget about Pinterest: Make sure your blog post has at least one relevant, eye-catching image, then post it to a topical Pinterest board. Want to get more pins for your post? Try using a plugin like Pinterest Pin It Button For Images so your Pin it button appears right on your images.

8. Promote it on Facebook using paid “boosts”. You can choose whether to promote it to your fans, your fans’ friends or people you select through targeting.

9. Share it in relevant Facebook groups. Not all groups will allow sharing of your blog posts, so be sure to check the group guidelines before posting. If you have your own Facebook group (highly recommended!), you can definitely share your post there.

10. Publish your post using Facebook’s new Instant Articles. This will ensure your post loads almost instantaneously in people’s feeds….up to 10x faster than even the mobile web.

11. Submit your post to content aggregators like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon. If your content gets picked up, you could see a huge boost in traffic!

12. Ask the owners of a popular industry-related Facebook group to share your post with their members. This works best if you have a pre-established relationship with the person, or are a regular contributor to the group.

13. Turn your blog post into a slideshow and then share it on SlideShare (with a link back to the complete post on your site). Record a video of you reading and explaining your blog post, then post it on YouTube and Facebook. Think of other ways to repurpose your post to drive more traffic and engagement. For instance, package it up with other related posts to create a topical eBook you can promote on your site.

14. Set up some PPC ads on various platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc.) to send traffic to your blog post.

15. Syndicate your post on other sites. Scoop.it is a great place to start.

16. Find a related question in Quora, answer the question, and include a link back to your blog post (or find as many questions as you can!). You can also use Yahoo! Answers.

17. Create an eye-catching image for your post, overlay your headline or other relevant text, then share it with your Instagram followers. A tool like Canva can help with this.

18. Submit your post to various niche bookmarking sites (for instance BizSugar.com for business content, N4G.com for gaming-related posts, Techspy.com for tech posts, etc.)

19. Send an email to, or @mention (Twitter) or tag (Facebook) anybody you mention in your blog post. These mentions will ensure your post gets seen not only by that person, but potentially by their fans and followers as well.

20. Promote someone else’s blog post on social media. You’d be surprised at how many people/companies will reciprocate by sharing your most recent post!

Within one week after publication

21. If you run an affiliate program, send a link to your blog post to your affiliates. If they promote it using their affiliate link, they get a commission if their visitors buy!

22. Put a link to your blog post in your email autoresponder. This way all your new email subscribers will see your post (I only recommend doing this for blog posts which have already proven popular with your audience).

23. Identify influencers using a tool like BuzzStream and reach out to them via email. Build relationships with influencers and share their posts so they're more likely to share yours.

24. Each time you create a new blog post, make a point of linking to it from another post on your site. Consult your analytics to find a popular, relevant post, and then include a link either within it or at the end to direct readers to your new post.

25. Do a search for industry resource pages and submit your post. For examples, search for “resources” + “keyword”.

26. Get press for your post through a free service like HARO. Look for media queries related to your blog post, and respond to the journalists with helpful information and a link to your post.

27. Put a link to your latest blog post in your email signature. WiseStamp can help with this, by automatically linking to your freshest blog post within your signature!

28. Try renaming your post using negative keywords (e.g., “Avoid These 5 Mistakes” rather than “Do These 5 Things”). This may increase the performance of your post, as was demonstrated here.

29. Check the length of your blog post. Is it under 1,000 words? Consider adding an additional section or two, or digging deeper into your topic. We know that longer content tends to perform much better in terms of likes, shares and links.

30. Reach out to other business owners in your niche to ask about cross-promoting each other’s blog posts.

31. Make sure your post is optimized for the search engines. Here is a great checklist to make sure your on-page SEO is done right.

32. Add a link to your latest blog post in any forum signatures where you’re a regular contributor. I definitely wouldn’t recommend doing this for every post…only for the most significant ones.

33. Share it via your email newsletter. Not only will this help extend the reach of your post, but pasting in an excerpt from your post will save you from having to create new email content from scratch.

34. Use BuzzBundle or BuzzSumo to find out who has shared content similar to yours. Connect with them and let them know about your blog post (works best if you have a really amazing blog post, or you have a pre-existing relationship with the blogger!)

35. Do a search for industry roundups and submit your post. For example, search for “roundup” + “keyword”.

36. Make sure your post contains relevant long-tail keywords. These can be easier to rank for, and can send you highly targeted traffic. Here’s how to identify long-tail keywords for your SEO campaign.

37. If you’ve written a particularly significant post, consider promoting it in a top bar. A plugin like WP-TopBar will allow you to display one at the top of every page of your site.

General tips

38. Use a plugin like Tweet This to embed tweetable content boxes within your blog post. This makes it easier for your visitors to share your content, and you get to suggest the content of their tweet!

39. Set up Twitter cards on your site to make sure anytime someone tweets your post it displays rich media (great for increased click-throughs!).

40. Create a post or page on your site where you round up all your content on a particular topic, such as a resource library. For instance, you might create a post called “Top Resources For New Business Owners”. Each time you create a blog post that relates to this topic, add a link and brief description to the roundup post.

The next time you publish a post, run through this list and implement as many tactics as you can. Most won’t take you more than a minute or two, and can have a significant impact on the number of views, shares and links your blog post gets.

Looking for more insights on marketing your business online? Grab my eBook, The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online.

What other strategies would you add to this list? Share below!