A blog is seen as the “swiss army knife” of social media marketing. You can demonstrate thought leadership on your blog and at the same time it could be the vocal point of your marketing strategy. If you have just launched a new blog and you would like to let people know about it,  how do you start promoting it?

Promote your new “blog”

Use targeted keywords: Before you start blogging, select keywords and topics that your best customer and reader will find interesting.  Prepare a list of targeted keywords from the topics you have chosen and use those in your titles, content and links.

Regularly ping update services: Every time that you publish a new blog post on the web, your blog sends out a small text file to the internet only containing the title of your blog post, the first few words of the content, the date it was published and where it can be found. Most of the popular blogging systems including WordPress automatically pings popular blog services every time you publish a new blog.  Visit other ping services such as Ping Goat where you can ping different update services at least once a month.

Content is king: Blogging is really not about selling at all.  It is about engaging and educating your readers with interesting and thought-provoking content.  Create a blogging plan that will include your topics, keywords and audience that you would like to focus on.  Always use this plan to keep your content focused.  Interesting and original blog posts will ensure returning visitors.

Comments: Comment and be active on other related blogs in your topic and niche.  Leave comments regularly with your blog URL.  Always make your comments insightful and interesting.  If people reading the comments and find your comment meaningful, chance are good they will follow your link back to your blog.

Forums: Try to participate in forums as the expert in your niche.  Look for forums where you can promote your blog in the signature line of your forum posts.  Include keywords in the link anchor text back to your blog.

Email signature: Include your blog URL in the signature of every email you send out.

Social networking: Setup profiles at popular social network sites such as Facebook and Linkedin where you can promote your blog.

Always remember this when promoting your blog on various social media channels – “Social Media is all about listening before you start selling and providing value before you start marketing”.