Aug. 3: Day 3 of 31DBBB

Today’s exercise for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog is:

Day #3: Promote a Blog Post

I already do this regularly, according to the instructor’s explanation of promotion. Here are ways he suggests to promote a specific post (which he prefers over promoting an entire blog):

1. Pitching Other Bloggers – I can’t do this. I might privately message another blogger to share a post with them, but I certainly wouldn’t ask them to re-post something I wrote, or to push it for me.
2. Social Messaging – I link to most my blog posts on Facebook. Occasionally I share them on Twitter.
3. Social Bookmarking – Again, this is a bit out of my comfort zone. Not that I would mind showing up on Digg, but I can’t go around telling everyone how fabulous I am. I just can’t.
4. Internal Links – This is done with the “You might also like” thing at the bottom of each post. Built-in self-promotion, I can do.
5. Newsletters – I don’t send out a newsletter. I usually share my blog URL on our Christmas letter, but that has a fairly small circulation and I can’t imagine I get a lot of traffic from that.
6. Other Blogs Comments Sections and Forums – I frequently comment on other blogs, and occasionally on forums.
7. Email Signatures – Been doing this for years.
8. Followup Posts – I link to previous posts all the time.
9. Advertise Your Post – I don’t have advertising set up on my blog. If my numbers got way up high, I’d do it, though.
10. Pitch Mainstream Media – Haven’t found an appropriate post for this yet.
11. Article Marketing – Again, not yet. Maybe someday.

I think the only thing on the list that I would feel comfortable with (that I don’t already do) is maybe being more active on other blogs and forums. Not that I think this exercise was useless; it’s good to be reminded of alternatives for promotion. If I ever decide to try to make my blog go nutso-popular, I’ve got new techniques tucked away in the back of my brain.