Want to learn about promoting your blog? Want to learn how to gain blog traffic? Then you are in the right place! Today we are talking about everything you need, whether it be promoting a blog post when you have a new one or advertising your blog when you don’t have a new post.
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Promoting Your Blog: New Blog Posts
The first part that has to be addressed is promoting your blog when you have a new post. This is the time when people are most likely to be promoting their blog, especially if they’re new to blogging.
There are a lot of different aspects to promoting new posts, though, so let’s dig in.
Social Media
How To Promote Your Blog on Twitter
Yes, Twitter is still alive! (And, yes, I’m still calling it that.) I spend a fair amount of time on it, as do many other chronic illness patients. Since chronic illness patients are my audience, that works great for me!
Here’s how I promote a new blog post on Twitter.
Whenever I have a new post, I schedule 7 tweets spread out over 24 hours to promote it, and they are always at the same times: 8, 10:30, 1, 3:30, 6, 9, and 1 AM the next day. Then I schedule another 3 over the following 2 weeks: one post 2-3 days later, one post a week later, and the final one 13 or 15 days later, depending on what else is scheduled. Plus, in the first tweet, I include “{new post}” in it so people know that it’s, well, new.
In the 7 tweets of the first 24 hours, 4 of them mention retweet accounts, which is an account that solely retweets other accounts’ posts. Not all of those accounts retweet them every time, but at least 1 does every day.
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As I mentioned, I also tweet it out 2-3 days after it is published. In these posts, “ICYMI” (In Case You Missed It) is always included so people know that it’s a newish post. Then, I share it again 1 week later and then either 6 or 8 days after that. This way, if someone just wasn’t on Twitter one particular day, they won’t miss my post.
I schedule this many tweets because tweets have a very short shelf-life and it’s easy for them to get lost in the shuffle. By sharing my posts frequently over a day, more people are likely to see my tweets no matter what timezone they’re in or when they’re on Twitter. It also helps in that if they see a tweet when they don’t have time to read the blog post, the post is also shared later when they might have more time.
Another way to draw attention to my tweets is by including images. In half of the tweets from the first 24 hours, I include an image from my post. I always include an image description to help anyone using a screen reader (or someone low on data/WiFi). 95% of the time, the image description is just the text in the image. The other 5% of the time, the description includes a more accurate description, along with any text.
That 5% is when I share an image that’s focus is not text. The tweet below is one example.
The focus of that tweet is the different types of gluten-free flour I use. I always include my blog’s URL, though, so that my images are attributed to me. Even though the text in the image isn’t necessarily important, I include it in the description because the purpose of an image description is to provide all of the relevant information.
I also try to use relevant hashtags, but not for all of my tweets. I also don’t overload the tweets with hashtags – I just use 1 or 2. Usually, they are things like #ChronicIllness or #RheumatoidArthritis for a post about RA, or #BloggingTips for a post about, well, blogging tips.
The capitalization is, once again, for screen readers. If you don’t capitalize, the screen reader doesn’t recognize that there are 2 different words in the hashtag. This is also helpful when you are using a hashtag that could be read as a couple of different versions.
For example, in 2019, Amazon tried to market a season of their show The Grant Tour as #AmazonsHitCarShow. However, since they didn’t capitalize anything, it looked a lot like #AmazonShitCarShow. Big difference!
I schedule my Twitter posts through Buffer. The plan I have (which doesn’t exist; it’s from before the current plans, although the current plans are pretty great) lets me schedule up to 100 posts on up to 5 networks.
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How To Promote Your Blog on Facebook
Similarly, Facebook is one of the places where I promote my new posts the post, starting with my own Facebook page.
Like with Twitter, I schedule promotions of a new post on my Facebook page over the first 24 hours after it is published, and then another 3 over the next 2 weeks.
I schedule my posts to be in between my Twitter posts to cover as much ground as possible. On the day of the new post, I schedule these posts at 9:30, 2:30, 8, and 12 AM the next day.
After that, I schedule a post 2 days later, 6 or 8 days later, and 2 weeks later. Like with Twitter, the post 2 days later has “ICYMI” at the beginning of it. Different from Twitter, though, is that I don’t use hashtags on Facebook. While hashtags aren’t a problem on Facebook, the platform isn’t built around them like they are on Twitter. Think about it: how often do you search for a hashtag on Facebook and how often do you search for one on Twitter?
In general, I post less often on Facebook, though, because Facebook posts have a longer shelf-life than Twitter posts do, especially because on Facebook, most people aren’t viewing all posts in order of least recent to post. The all-knowing algorithm is king on Facebook.
My Facebook posts are also scheduled through Buffer.
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Another way I promote blog posts on Facebook is through Facebook groups I’m in for bloggers.
The Facebook groups I’m an active member of are Bloggers Supporting Bloggers and Chronic Illness Bloggers. I used to be more active in other groups, but those aren’t as active in general anymore. Plus, it’s hard to be an active member of multiple Facebook groups, so I just stick to those two.
The Bloggers Supporting Bloggers group has daily threads for users to connect on a variety of different networks. For example, Monday is blog posts, Tuesday is Twitter, Wednesday is Pinterest, etc. I’ll promote my new post in the thread for blog posts, but I also interact on other days to grow my social media networks.
The Chronic Illness Bloggers group has a weekly thread for blog posts and a weekly thread for social media. I participate in the blog post thread significantly more than the social media thread, and it’s one of the ways that I get blog posts to suggest to my followers on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
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How To Promote Your Blog on Instagram
Instagram is great for building your brand and audience, but it’s also a place to promote new blog posts.
Something that I’ve done for years is that I promote my blog posts in my Instagram stories … when I remember to. I have an app called Unfold in which I have a template for sharing blog posts. I download one of the images from the post and upload it to the template, and then I copy it to my Stories.
In my Stories, I’m able to add a direct link to the post, which fits the awkward space demonstrated below.
![A screen shot of an image from the blog placed in a template. The text on the image reads "2023 Recent Reads, July-December" and then "www. kate the almost great .com". Text in the template reads, "New Post! Click the link here, click the link in my bio, or [emoji of an arrow pointing to the next text] kate the almost great .com](https://i0.wp.com/katethealmostgreat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/IMG_6208.jpg?resize=600%2C1299&ssl=1)
Additionally, I have an Instagram blog page which is the link in my bio. First and foremost, this page is designed to be read on a mobile device. You can still check it out on a desktop, but it just looks better on mobile, which is important if people are coming to the site from Instagram. I do this to encourage people to stay on my blog, which helps to reduce my bounce rate and get more page views.
Now and then, I post a relevant image in my feed that advertises a blog post. For example, the picture might be of me at the hospital getting an infusion, and the caption is directing people to my blog post about being immunocompromised. I tell people to click the link in my bio or go directly to the blog. Since the links in a caption aren’t clickable, I don’t do the whole URL, just katethealmostgreat.com.
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I schedule all of my Instagram posts on Tailwind. What makes Tailwind for Instagram so great is that it can automatically post to Instagram for you, which is different from every other Instagram scheduler out there. So even if I’m in a 3-hour meeting at work, my Instagram post can go up without me having to do anything.
However, this is only true for in-feed posts. While you can “schedule” Stories and Reels, it really schedules a reminder. You get a notification to post, open the app, and copy the Story or Reel to the Instagram app.
Unfortunately, signing up for Tailwind only gives you access to Instagram or Pinterest; if you want to do both, you have to sign up for both. That being said, it is absolutely worth the value to have both, although if you need to pick between them, I’d pick Tailwind for Pinterest.
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How To Promote Your Blog on Pinterest
Over 60 percent of my blog traffic comes from Pinterest and has for 5+ years. Why? Because Pinterest is a visual search engine and I treat it as such. So here’s how I use it for new blog posts.
For every blog post that I have, I have at least 3 images, all of which are vertical. For each image, I make 2 copies: 1 with the dimensions that work best in these posts (600px wide) and 1 with dimensions that are most successful on Pinterest (1000-1400px wide). To be clear, though, only the 600px wide ones are uploaded to the blog posts.
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After I’ve scheduled a post to be published, I schedule promotions on Pinterest. As mentioned, I use Tailwind to schedule my Pinterest posts, which allows me to schedule posts on multiple boards at whatever time I want.
I upload my Pinterest-optimized images and schedule them for as many boards as applicable, and I use the interval tool to schedule them to be published over time and not all at once. With 3 images per post, I have them be 3 days apart. Additionally, the first time each pin is published is on the day the post goes up, the day after, and the second day after. I use their optimization tool to, well, optimize the time they are published.
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Missinglettr
Missinglettr is a tool that lets you set up an automated set of social media posts. I first learned about it from a blogging course I took, and it has made a big impact in getting blog traffic.
When you set up a campaign, you pick how long you want it to be for, which can be anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 year.
The free plan gives you 1 social media network and 50 scheduled posts at any given time. The posts look like this:
These are the steps for creating a campaign in Missinglettr:
- Set up a campaign for a new blog post
- Accept or reject different quotes it pulls from the post
- Choose hashtags and images from the post
- Review the posts
- Decide if I want the posts to be scheduled over the course of an entire year or over less time
- And I approve the campaign
Then I don’t think about those posts any more!
In the last year, I’ve gotten over 670 clicks just from Missinglettr posts, and I’ve gotten over 3,400 clicks since I started using it. Considering I spend less than 5 minutes setting up each Missinglettr campaign, that’s pretty incredible.
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Promoting Your Blog Post in an Email Newsletter
We’re going to skip the part where I tell you that you should have an email newsletter and that’s where your most loyal readers will be, etc., etc. First of all, tons of bloggers and experts say this and you don’t need me to add to that. Second of all, if you don’t currently have a newsletter, then this section doesn’t apply to you.
So let’s talk about how to promote your blog post in an email newsletter.
At the very least, you should be sending your new blog posts to your newsletter subscribers. This could be whenever a new post goes live, or every week or month recapping the new content posted. Maybe you’re sending your subscribers a ton of different stuff.
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Here’s how I do it.
My newsletter is weekly, going out on Monday nights, and my new blog posts are published on Tuesdays. Among other things I send my subscribers, I include a link to last week’s blog post. Sometimes it’s within the body of the email, but primarily it is after I write a bit to my subscribers.
When I don’t have anything to say except for “Here is a new post,” I just send the new post. The subject line is the post’s title with “{new post}” at the end, and the content is the first paragraph or so of the post, followed by “(Keep reading)” which includes the link. I also include a preview image from the post.
Plus, at the end of the month, I send my subscribers a monthly wrap-up. This includes all of the blog posts from the last month, which is helpful if someone missed a post or only recently found my blog.
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Plugins
As someone using self-hosted WordPress, I use a lot of plugins for my blog. Some of them help me promote my blog, and most of them are related to sharing my posts. This is because sharing posts helps others find them.
jQuery Pin It Button for Images
Pinterest is vital for every blogger, so you want to make it easy for your readers to pin from your posts. That’s where this plugin comes in! This plugin “adds a ‘Pin It’ button over [images] for easy pinning” (jQPITFI). This makes it easy to pin images to your Pinterest board without too much effort.
This plugin makes it easy to share the post(s) on other networks. It “adds social media icons to your website with tons of customization features!” (SMSI) Simply click the icon of the network you want to share and there you go!
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Well, friends, that is how I promote my new blog posts! But that’s not all I do to promote my blog. But I also make sure to promote my blog and my older posts when I don’t have a new one. So let’s get into promoting your blog when you don’t have a new post.
Promote Your Blog without a New Post
But how do you promote your blog when you don’t have a new post? I publish 1-3 blog posts a month, which is not the same amount of days in a month. So while this is the less glamorous part of promoting your blog, it is the more important part.
I also want to remind you that I’ve been blogging for 10+ years and have a treasure trove of old posts, which definitely helps the process.
Social Media
How To Promote Your Blog on Twitter
On days that I don’t have a new post, I schedule blog post promotions of another post using the same schedule that I noted above. I try to do posts that are at least a month old, and I spread my post niches out so that I don’t have posts from the same niche promoted 2 days in a row.
I do this because I have 3 categories, which are really 3 niches on their own: health, writing and blogging, and lifestyle. For example, this is (obviously) a blogging post, and I’m trying to spread out the posts I promote across the week for different niches. While most of my blogging and lifestyle posts are now based around health, they are still different, and there are still posts that aren’t health-related.
I schedule my posts with Buffer. This way, older posts (or at least not new ones) still get traffic and eyes on them.
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How To Promote Your Blog on Facebook
Like on Twitter, I schedule blog promotions of another post on days, and, like with Twitter, the schedule fits my Facebook schedule described above. And like with when I have a new post, I try to schedule these posts in between Twitter posts.
I also schedule 1 older post for every single day, and it’s at a different time from other post promotions. As mentioned, my blog post promotions on Facebook are at 9:30, 2:30, 8, and 12 AM the next day. Also, at 11 AM and 1 PM, I schedule interesting posts by other people, questions designed to inspire conversations, or an inspirational quote. So the older post promoted every day is scheduled at 7 AM, 8 AM, 9 AM, 12 PM, 3 PM, 4 PM, 5 PM, 6 PM, or 7 PM.
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Additionally, I sometimes promote old posts on regular traffic posts in Facebook groups. Remember earlier how I said that some of the groups I’m in have daily sharing threads? Well, sometimes, I don’t publish a new blog post in the previous week, so I’ll share an older post in those Facebook groups instead.
I do want to note, though, that I always follow the rules of the Facebook groups. One, it’s not worth being kicked out of a group because you didn’t follow the rules. Two, if you spam someone or a group, then people are just going to not like you and not promote your things.
However, if someone asks a question and I have a post that answers that question, I will share it in the comments as a response. But I never post the link and only the link. I always include a few sentences such as, “I dealt with that, too! In this post, I talk about how I deal with it.”
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How To Promote Your Blog on Pinterest
You can do so much with Pinterest and, once again, if you’re not using it, you’re missing out.
When I pick an old post to promote on Twitter and Facebook, I make a new image for Pinterest, and I add to my Tailwind queue.
I make this new pin with Tailwind’s program called Tailwind Create. This is Tailwind’s smart tool for making new images. You add a link to a blog post, add the title or wait for it to populate from that link, choose some photos (including from stock images they have), and it makes a bunch of images. You choose the ones you like and download or schedule them!
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Otherwise, though, all of my Pinterest management is done by my Virtual Assistant. This is a big change for me! As I described in this post, I hired VAs for the first time in 2023 for when I recovered from surgery. And it made a massive difference in my blog traffic!
When I recovered enough from surgery to take things on again, I kept with the Pinterest VA, and I haven’t looked back. It improved my traffic massively! This was because a professional who knows what she’s doing is handling it and also because I now have time to work on the things that I’m the best at.
If you have the budget, I definitely suggest outsourcing Pinterest work.
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Missinglettr for Older Posts
A lot of my blog posts are evergreen, which means they apply for most of the year and over multiple years. But every now and then I write a post that isn’t evergreen.
When I have lots of room in my Missinglettr queue, I’ll add a 2-week or 2-month promotion of a seasonal post. This is especially great for posts I wrote 3 years ago but that still apply for 2 months of every year.
Plugins
Learn about all of the plugins I use in this post!
Revive Old Posts
This is a plugin that helps to share older posts, and it’s one of those “set it and forget it” plugins. This plugin helps you to keep your old posts alive by sharing them and driving more traffic to them from whatever social media platform you pick. You can set the time and number of posts to share to drive more traffic. Since I’ve published over 1,000 posts, it can be hard to keep them alive. So this plugin helps with that!
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Advanced Recent Post
This is another plugin that helps drive traffic to older blog posts. But unlike Revive Old Posts, this shares older posts on my blog instead of social media. This is a “Plugin that shows the recent posts with thumbnails in the widget and in other parts of the your [sic] blog or theme with shortcodes” (ARP). So if you scroll to the bottom of this post and see suggested posts after the text of the post, that’s this plugin at work.
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Kate Mitchell is a blogger, chronic illness patient, and advocate who helps people understand chronic illness and helps chronic illness patients live their best lives.
Clever scheduling strategy! I love the mix of retweet accounts and spread-out posts. The “new post” flag is also genius for grabbing attention. This whole approach feels well-balanced and engaging, I’ll definitely be using some of these to promote my neuropathy treatment blog.