Promoting Your WordPress Blog Post

If you are new to blogging or are wondering how to spread the word about your blog, here are a few tips for promoting your WordPress Blog Post:

Tip #1 – Publish the post on other social media accounts: there are several ways to do this and the method you choose will depend on the specific social media platform and your schedule.  We’ll go over a few options for publishing your posts on Facebook and Twitter:

Manually Publish: Go to your social media platforms and enter the url  for your blog post. Keep in mind the best posting practices for each platform:

For Facebook Fan Pages, 1-4 updates per day is recommended, so publish your blog post once on your Facebook Page. Put the url for your blog post in a Facebook status, with a short description of the post.

For Twitter, remember that it’s best to Tweet others’ content 4-5 times for every 1 time you promote your content.  Type the post url in a Tweet (Twitter will automatically shorten the url or you can use another shortening service like bitly.com). Add text (such as the post title) to the Tweet.  Note: leave room for others to Retweet – so make sure your Tweet is 120 characters or less.

On Twitter, you can send multiple Tweets promoting your new post but space them out and change the wording for each Tweet.   For example, to make your self-promoting Tweets more interesting, take a different key phrase from your post for each Tweet and then include the link to your post. (You don’t want to Tweet the same thing repeatedly.)

Use WordPress Plugins: There are numerous plugins that publish your new post directly from WordPress. You can do a search in the Plugins dashboard or do some research on the most popular ones, but here are a few:

WP to Twitter

1-Click Retweet/Share/Like  or Network Publisher

Simple Facebook Connect

Facebook Page Publish

Tweet Old Post (once you’ve built up a collection of posts, this plugin will let you automatically publish older posts to Twitter  – you define the date/time parameters)

Use scheduling software: There are also a variety of dashboard-type programs that assist in promoting your WordPress blog posts. Hootsuite or Social Oomph are two that I’ve used. You can post on several social media platforms simultaneously and also schedule future posts. So you could develop a standard promotion schedule for your posts (i.e. Send promotional Tweets once a day for 1-2 weeks; then use the Tweet Old Post plugin to automatically promote your posts once they are “older” – you can define the parameters).

Tip #2 – Customize your Email signature: You should have a link to your blog in your email signature already; now simply add another link to a specific blog post (especially if the email relates to the post’s topic)

Tip #3 – Use the CommentLuv plugin: Install it on your WordPress blog to encourage more interaction. Then leave your comment on blogs that use CommentLuv (but add helpful comments on others’ blogs, don’t comment just to get traffic back to your site)

Tip #4 –  Network: Join a blogging community or take part in a blogging challenge like the one that I participated in recently – the Ultimate Blog Challenge (next start date January 2012)

Tip #5 –  Encourage return visits: Write a series of posts on a topic so your readers look forward to your next post. (See our posts on the recent Facebook changes.) Mention the upcoming post(s) and a scheduled post date (if you can stick to that schedule).

Tip #6 – Promote Internally: Once you’ve built up a collection of posts, add internal links so your readers can enjoy other posts on similar topics. For example, since we are talking about scheduling updates on Twitter and Facebook, I would link this text to last week’s “What Now? Wednesdays” post.  

These are just a few tips for promoting your WordPress Blog Post – share any tips that work for you!