Design, Coding, SEO and Social Media Marketing, WordPress & Facebook

OK. You've set up your blog, in a subdirectory of your primary domain, you've implemented a well considered "taxonomy" for categories and tags, and you've begun to blog. You're very pleased with the posts you've created (you should have at least 4 or 5 posts published) and want to begin promoting your blog.

In promoting your blog, the most important thing you must remember is don't overdo it!. In the community of bloggers and social media, patience is the key. Make sure your primary objective is adding value to the Web. Be sincere, relevant and informative.

Three Things You Should Know About Blogging

• Check your facts, your grammar and your spelling!
  Remember, you are your brand. Your posts represent who you and your brand are to the world. Your reputation — your expertise and your attention to detail — is on the line with every post. Poor writing, erroneous facts, and spelling errors scream "Amateur!" First and foremost, take that extra bit of time to get it right before publishing.
• Make Sure Your Blog is Properly SEO'd!
  These SEO steps are essential in maximizing your search engine rankings for each post:
  • Your posts should be search-engine-friendly, and this is more than just incorporating keywords into your content. Your posts' URLs should be natural-language, keyword-rich: "/your-blog-directory/the-title-of-this-post-keywords/", not "/your-blog-directory/?p=123" (in WordPress, use "Permalinks" to accomplish this).
  • Your category "taxonomy" should be well organized with keyword-aware category names.
  • Each post should have a unique, descriptive and keyword-rich title tag and "description" meta tag (Read my post on SEO Best Practices for your WordPress blog).
• Again ... Don't Overdo It!
  Remember, you're entering an established community. Take time to introduce yourself, get to know the conventions and etiquette of the blog space, and be patient. If you make contributions of value to the conversations, you will get value in return. Here is an excellent list of suggestions of what NOT TO DO to promote your blog!

Initial Steps to Promote your Blog

• Set Up a Feedburner Account
  Feedburner (purchased by Google in 2007) allows you to manage your blog's RSS feeds, provides tracking data, and enables you to allow email subscriptions to your feeds which can significantly increase the number of subscribers to your blog.
• Make Sure It's Easy to Subscribe to Your Blog via RSS
  A link to your RSS feed as well as a widget to allow users to subscribe to your feeds via email should be prominently displayed on your blog, above the fold. Here are examples from the HyperArts blog:

  RSS Feed Icon: Clicking on this icon either takes the user to your feed or to the user's feed reader.

  The code provided by Feedburner when you enable Email Subscriptions will create this box which can be added as a text widget and styled with CSS.

• Register Your Blog with Blog Search Engines
  Register your blog with Technorati, Google Blog Search, Bloglines, and other Blog search engines. Check out this excellent list of blog search engines.
• Submit your Blog to Blog Directories
  Submit your blog to the top blog directories. Be careful not to submit to directories that might be considered "link farms" by Google. Here's a list of reputable blog directories.
• Announce your Blog
  Post an announcement of your blog to subject-matter-related forums. Most forums have an "Announce" section where you can do this. You can also announce your blog via a news release, using one of the many online new release sites.
• Add a blog feed to your Facebook page
  Create a feed of your blog into your Facebook Fan (aka Business) Page. This is easily done and creates another channel where your Facebook fans can read your blog posts and comment on your posts inside Facebook. Here's a tutorial on adding your blog feed to Facebook.

Ongoing Blog Promotion

• Post Regularly, on a Schedule, and Set Expectations
  The Web is littered with abandoned blogs, the artifacts of good intentions not followed through. In order to build a dedicated roster of subscribers, it's essential that you post on a schedule that is at least somewhat predicable. Whether it's three times a day or twice a month, you need to set expectations. Obviously, the more frequently you post quality content, the more your blog will attract attention and subscribers.
• Inform Blog Search Engines and Directories of New Posts
  Once you've submitted your blog to the blog search engines and directories, you will need to let them know when you've published new content, by "pinging" them. In WordPress, you can copy and paste into "Settings > Writing > Update Services" this list of sites to notify/ping when you publish a new post, and they will be pinged automatically when you publish a new post.
• Comment on Other Blogs
  Visit other blogs and add comments — useful comments that contribute to the conversation, not just link-dropping comments such as "Great post! Thanks!" You want to find the sites and communities where conversations around your topic are already happening, familiarize yourself with the space, then establish a presence via useful comments. (Watch Darren Rowse's video on how to do this.) Remember, as Kevin Geary says on a ProBlogger.net post, comments should be "sincere, relevant, and valuable."
• Use Twitter
  Use Twitter to announce new posts. However, make sure your tweeting is as much about your industry as it is about you! Shameless self-promotion on social media is a doomed strategy. People follow those who provide news and information pertaining to subjects in which they're interested, not those who are just promoting themselves. If you over-promote, your efforts will fail. A good engagement strategy is to ask a question that your blog post addresses. As Chris Brogan suggests, "Instead of telling your Twitter audience that you’ve published a new post, ask them their opinion on the core topic you’ve covered." Finally, remember: It's not about how many Twitter followers you have; it's about the importance of your followers and their relevance to what you're tweeting about. You want to follow relevant people in whose tweets you're interested.

The above should help get your blog successfully launched. I'd like to hear what others think about this.

Cited Resources for Blog Promotion

• Aviva Directory - 21 Surefire Tips for Successful Blog Promotion
• 20 Essential Directories to Submit Your Blog To
• Sites to Ping When Publishing a New Post
• List of Blog Search Engines
• How Not to Promote Your Blog: Top 10 Broken Blog Promotion Strategies
• How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog (Chris Brogan)
• How to Use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers (Darren Rowse)