5 Ways to Market Your Blog for FREE
When your blog is in its infant stages, you may not have a marketing budget to get it off the ground. By making a few key strategic moves, you can not only market your blog but begin to get eyes on your content without spending a ton (or any!) money.
It’s important to note, Rome wasn’t built in a day and your blog isn’t going to reach thousands — or even hundreds of views over night. Don’t give up! Keep creating high quality content that your target audience actually wants to read and provides them value. Celebrate the little wins and keep on, keepin on!
Be active and engage on social media
With so many platforms, it can be tough and next to impossible to be active and genuinely engage on every single one. Pick a few platforms you want to begin to build your community on and focus a good portion of your time and energy into those. I always recommend small businesses start on Facebook to start.
The beauty of Facebook is that it isn’t a highly visual platform and content is easily shared. If graphics are not your strong suit, Facebook is where you need to start. Be sure you invite your friends and family to ‘like’ your page and share content from your blog related to your niche often (read: at least three times per week)
If you are able to produce high quality, cohesive photography and graphics — then you should start on Instagram! Instagram is a slow to growth but highly valuable platform where people can easily find your content if you set it up correctly. Make sure your page is appealing to the eye. When people click on your page, your feed is going to be the first thing they see & the first impression they make about you and your blog. Be active on stories, use proper hashtags and ENGAGE with other users. Leave genuine comments and follow accounts that inspire you.
YOUR FEED IS WHAT GETS YOU THE FOLLOW, YOUR STORIES MAKE THEM A DEDICATED FOLLOWER.
Pin your blog posts on Pinterest
If you haven’t already, create a Pinterest account and pin your blog post. Use different images and graphics to test and see what people are more attracted to. Change up the title and caption. Join community boards that are related to what you are sharing and share your content there.
Join Facebook groups for bloggers or others within your niche
If you are a building up your mom blog, join motherhood related Facebook groups and share your posts when they are relevant to the conversation. Join blogger groups, who typically have weekly promo posts where you can plug your latest blog. Continue to share your content with people who may be interested. It is VERY important to follow a group’s rules! You can see the rules of a Facebook group before you even join it. If the rules specifically say, no self promotion, maybe that is not a group you want to join to promote your blog.
Leave comments on other blogs within your niche
Coming back to the up and coming mom blog you are producing, read blog posts from other motherhood bloggers and leave comments on their posts. Actually read the posts and leave an authentic comment about something you enjoyed about their post. Here is an example of a good comment that can actually lead to someone coming back to your blog:
Hey Mary!
Thank you so much for writing this post! I loved your idea of creating a fun chore chart that encourages the kids to help around the house! Do you have any tips for getting our husbands to help too?!
- Emily | www.TheBigIdeaCreative.com
Make sure you are on top of your blog’s SEO
This way of marketing your blog is always what people have the most trouble with and the reason a majority of my clients reach out to me for help. Your blog post needs to be optimized so that way when people Google the topic you are writing about, your post shows on the first page of results. If you are not on the first page, your post does not exist to the person searching.
Again, SEO is a LONG game. Your blog needs to prove that it deserves to be at the top of the search ranking. It is never too early to make sure your posts are optimized though because it will help you appear higher, faster.
What tips have you found for free or low cost marketing strategies for your blog? I would love to hear them in the comments below!