Your blog is written, it’s got the keywords in the right place and it’s posted for all to read. The final step is to spread the word. The purpose of your blog is to drive traffic — either to your web site, landing page or event. And the broader your readership, the more traffic you can expect.
To increase your blogosphere, you need to expose more readers to your content. Sharing your blog through social media is the best place to start. If you have a business Facebook page, you can have your blog automatically update your status. The same can be done on LinkedIn. Assuming you have dynamite content, it’s an easy step for your friends, likers or connections to share it with their friends.
But how do you expand beyond your sphere of connections? One of the easiest ways to do that is through social bookmarking sites, like Stumbleupon, Digg and Reddit. As of January 1, 2011, Stumbleupon generated more website traffic (referrals) than any other social media site, including Facebook. Social bookmarking sites are the equivalent to your favorites, only made public for all to see and share.
There are a number of social bookmarking sites, some general and some industry specific. The most popular general interest sites are Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Diigo, Mixx and Fark but there are dozens more. To submit a site, you will need an account setup at each of these sites. When you are ready to submit your new blog post, you then login to each one and add the link.
But I’m all about time saving. If you have to go to each site, add the link, add an excerpt, then submit it, it’s going to take some time. Despair not, grasshopper. Simply add a plugin to your WordPress blog called ShareToAny. Once you activate the plugin, ShareToAny adds a button to the bottom of each blog post that will automatically connect you with all the above social bookmark sites, as well as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and close to 100 other potential sites.
When I first discovered this technique, I closely monitored my web traffic to see if it did have an effect. Almost without exception, every time I submit a blog post, I see a significant spike in traffic to my web site as a result.
Now, you’ve learned some of the ninja master’s most guarded secrets. It’s time for you to go forth and make your way in the blogosphere.
Gary Wagnon, owner of 800biz.com Digital Marketing Solutions, specialize in helping small business owners maximize their traffic through web site design, search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and mobile text message marketing.