100+ Effective Tactics to Promote Your Blog Content

You spent hours researching and writing your new blog post. You hit ‘Publish’, share it on social media, and then, crickets…

There are millions of blog posts published every day. Content promotion platforms are extremely competitive, and it’s getting more so each year.

Bloggers and content teams want to spend their time writing, but to gain real traction with your content, you have to promote it and get it out there.

The team at The Atlantic spends roughly 50% of their time distributing and repurposing content. As a result, more than 50% of their traffic comes from content produced in the past.

To get your content the exposure it deserves, you need to spend 60% of your time on promotion (40% on writing).

We created the following list of promotion tactics to help you amplify your content and grow your website traffic and conversions. Add it to your bookmarks. We’ll update the list frequently as we test and discover new tactics.

Promote Your Blog Content With Your Existing Audience

• 1. Emails/Newsletters: Your fans and subscribers are 3x more likely to share your content than casual blog visitors. You can send an email every time you publish a post, include your posts in a newsletter or have an automated RSS campaign send emails to your subscriber list.
• 2. RSS Feed: With a little bit of configuration, your site can generate a RSS feed (e.g. https://www.gethighlights.co/blog/feed/). Don’t make it difficult for readers to subscribe. You can get good traffic from your RSS feed.
• 3. RSS Feed Directories: Although the most popular feed directory, AllTop, no longer accepts site submissions, there are many other feed directories you can get traffic from.
• 4. Your Other Content: Link your old posts to your new content and add links to your homepage. You can use Highlights to find pages worth linking to in seconds.
• 5. Push Notifications: If you’re using a web push notification platform like PushCrew or PushEngage, you can send content updates to your subscriber lists.
• 6. SMS Messages: This may not be possible in all countries and jurisdictions (GDPR!), but if you have access to your subscribers’ phone numbers, you can share your latest posts via SMS.

Promote Your Blog Content on Your Social Profiles

• 7. Your LinkedIn Profile: LinkedIn is becoming increasingly effective for content promotion. Tell a story. Be assertive. See how marketer Noah Kagan is using LinkedIn updates to promote his content.
• 8. Your Facebook Profile: Depending on the relationship you have with your friends on Facebook, it may be a good idea to occasionally promote content on there too. Especially if the content you’re promoting feels personal.
• 9. Your Twitter Profile: Only a small portion of your Twitter audience sees all your tweets. To be successful on Twitter, you need to publish and re-publish. You can use tools like MeetEdgar or Recurpost to repeat postings, and tools like Tweriod to find the right timing.
• 10. Your Google Plus Profile: Although Google Plus never became a major social network, there’s still 395 million monthly active users on there. It can be worth experimenting with G+.
• 11. Your Email Signature: A link to your latest post in your email signature can give your a good return on investment if you send a lot of emails each day.

Syndicate Your Content on Another Content Promotion Platform

• 12. Medium: Medium is one of the most active blogging platforms today. You can import a story you’ve already published on your blog using their Import feature. When you do, Medium applies a canonical URL telling search engines not to consider it duplicate content. To extend your reach, you can ask to join a leading publication on Medium (ranking #1, ranking #2).
• 13. LinkedIn Articles: LinkedIn won’t automatically add a canonical URL, which can typically hurt your SEO, but Google doesn’t seem to be flagging it as duplicate content. Publishing on LinkedIn can help you reach the audience beyond your 1st degree connections.
• 14. IndieHackers: IndieHackers is a community of over 300,000 developers and entrepreneurs owned by Stripe. You can safely republish an article on their content promotion platform to reach an engaged tech audience. The team at IH sends content roundups on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings PST.
• 15. Top Blogs: Large publications like Business Insider or Huffington Post are open to re-publishing your articles if they feel it’s good enough. You can reach out directly to Business Insider or Huffington Post and apply.

Create Content Previews on Social Media

• 16. Instagram: Close to a billion people use Instagram. To drive traffic to your site, you can publish a visual from your post, add a portion of your content in the caption, and add a link to the blog post in your bio. Hashtags are your friends on Instagram.
• 17. Instagram Stories: Stories only last 24 hours. You can publish a short video or a visual promoting your post with a link back to it.
• 18. YouTube: YouTube videos rank really well on Google. You can create a short video summing up the key points of your post, add links and re-publish it from your various social media accounts.
• 19. Vimeo: Although Vimeo is more targeted towards filmmakers, a similar approach might work.
• 20. Snapchat: Snapchat is the original Instagram Stories. You can create a preview of your content on Snap and reach a different audience.
• 21. Quora Blog: Quora also has blogging functionalities (found under your personal profile). You can write a summary or a preview of your post and link back to your article. Quora blog posts are displayed in search results.
• 22. Tumblr: Tumblr is a smaller social media / blogging platform popular with artists and photographers. If your content fits the platform, you can create a blog and link to your website and latest posts.

Promote Your Blog Content on Appropriate Upvote Sites

• 23. Hacker News: Hacker News was started by the team at Y Combinator. Its target is developers and entrepreneurs. A feature on HN’s homepage can drive 50,000 people to your site.
• 24. Designer News: Designer News is similar to Hacker News, but targets designers.
• 25. Growth Hackers: GrowthHackers was started by growth marketer Sean Ellis. It caters to marketers and seems to be the heir apparent to Inbound.org (now Growth.org).
• 26. DataTau: DataTau is similar to Hacker News, but focuses on data science.
• 27. Zest.is: Zest.is is a new content promotion platform for marketers. The Zest team curates the content they promote. They’re not big on self-promotion.
• 28. Lobste.rs: Lobste.rs is an invite-only version of Hacker News also targeting tech people.
• 29. Digg: “The homepage of the Internet”. Digg was once a much more popular site than it is today, but it’s still worth publishing content on there.
• 30. Web Designer News: Web Designer News is a curated site for web designers…
• 31. Sidebar.io: Sidebar.io is another site for designers. It features the 5 best posts each day.
• 32. DesignFloat: DesignFloat is another upvote site focused on designers.
• 33. BizSugar: BizSugar focuses on small businesses.
• 34. Manage WP: Manage WP focuses on WordPress.
• 35. Blokube: Blokube is an upvote site focused on social media.
• 36. Blog Engage: Blog Engage is a general-purpose upvote site.
• 37. Do Splash: Do Splash is another general-purpose upvote site.
• 38. Amplify Blog: Amplify Blog is a general-purpose upvote site.
• 39. Bootstrappers.io: Bootstrappers.io is a community dedicated to bootstrapping a business.
• 40. SaaS Invaders: SaaS Invaders focuses on Software as a Service news and tech.

Re-Purpose to Promote Your Blog Content

• 41. SlideShare: You can turn your blog post into a presentation or pitch deck to benefit from SlideShare’s SEO and tap into a new audience. Here’s a process you can use to repurpose your content on there.
• 42. Flickr: Flickr is an image sharing website with millions of active users. You can extract images from your post, publish them and add links in their description.
• 43. PDF: You can convert your blog post into a PDF and submit it to PDF/Document sharing sites like Scribd. Make sure it includes your bio and links back to your other content.
• 44. Infographics: Although it may require a bit more design/work, you can turn your content into an infographic and submit it to sites like SlideShare and Visual.ly.
• 45. Product Hunt: Can you turn your content into a product? The definition of “product” is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier. Product Hunt has a lot of good traffic among early adopters that you can capitalize on if you can position your content as a product.
• 46. Amazon/Audible: Can you turn your content into an ebook or an audio piece? Amazon and Audible are very popular search engines. They can help your content get more visibility if you can get listed.

Curate Existing Content for Promotion

• 47. Pinterest: Pinterest is one of the most popular social networks today. You can create pins out of your post images or content and add links in their descriptions. You can also submit content to boards, but make sure you learn to use it as a content promotion platform first.
• 48. Flipboard: Flipboard also has massive traffic. You can create boards and submit your articles. Other users will see your boards while flipping around and can add content to them.
• 49. Feedly: Feedly is the leading RSS reader. You can create personal feeds, populate them with some of your content and share them for others to follow.
• 50. Del.icio.us: Delicious is a social bookmarking site. It used to be a lot more popular than it is today. It might still be worth experimenting with it.
• 51. Scoop.it: Another social bookmarking site, Scoop.it allows you to create topic pages and curate content (yours if you want).
• 52. PearlTrees: PearlTrees allows you to create collections and share them with others.
• 53. Paper.li: With Paper.li, you can curate your own newspaper and share it on social media. You can include your own content along with others’.

Answer Questions Related to your Content

You can find questions that relate to your blog topic with meta search tools like BoardReader or Product Validator.

• 54. Quora Questions: Quora is a Q&A site. You can answer questions related to the topic of your post and add links back to your site. To avoid wasting time, look for questions with a lot of followers. Quora will send them an email if your answer gets enough traction among readers.
• 55. Stack Overflow: Stack Overflow is a Q&A site for developers. They’re not keen on self-promotion so you have to be subtle.
• 56. Yahoo! Answers: Outbound links are actively deleted from Yahoo! Answers. It’s probably no longer worth your time.
• 57. Ask.fm: Ask.fm is a social network built on a Q&A format. It has over 200 million users. You can answer questions and promote your blog content on there.

Add Comments on Relevant Blogs

• 58. Blog Comments: You can use Google or Twitter hashtags to find blog posts on similar topics. Find discussions where you can genuinely add value and offer a link as a referral. Don’t spam, and don’t force it.
• 59. CommentLuv Enabled Blogs: CommentLuv is a free plugin for WordPress designed to incentivize commenters on blog posts. It adds a commenter’s latest blog post at the end of his/her comment. Although the SEO benefits are limited, you can find lists of blogs using CommentLuv here and here.

(Carefully) Promote Your Blog Content in Communities

• 60. LinkedIn Groups: There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn. If you contribute to the groups and the group policy allows it, you can share and promote your content with group members.
• 61. Facebook Groups: Over 500 million people use Facebook Groups. Again, if the group policy allows it and your content relates to the discussion topic, it can be a good source of traffic.
• 62. Twitter Hashtags: Twitter hashtags are like chatrooms. With the right hashtags, you can add your content to discussion threads. To find popular or trending hashtags, you can use this site or that one.
• 63. Google Plus Communities: Google Plus has several large interest communities. If you’re an active participant in the communities and your content relates to the discussion topics, you can share your content with an interested audience.
• 64. Triberr: Triberr allows you to promote your blog content by leveraging the networks of other tribe members. You can find tribes related to your industry and ask to join. The best tribes are harder to get in, but once you’re in, you can drive good traffic to your site.

Target Forums Around Your Keywords

• 65. Sub-Reddits: Reddit has massive traffic that can crash your website (50,000 to 500,000 visitors on the front page!). If you focus on sub-Reddits (forums) and add value before sharing, you can get good traffic. Redditors don’t like promotion, so share your blog posts at most once or twice a month and keep a promotion to contribution ratio of 1 to 10.
• 66. Slack Communities: The number of Slack communities has exploded over the past few years. You can find relevant communities here, here and here. Mind the group policy and share your content with restrain.
• 67. Discord Communities: Discord is a competitor of Slack. They’re a little bit less established, but you can still find good communities for promotion there.
• 68. DZone: DZone is a forum for developers with over a million members. If your target is technical, it can be a good option for light promotion.
• 69. Forums: You can discover forums dedicated to your topic by using the following search format (including quotes) on Google: “Your topic” inurl:forum. A few forums we visit at Highlights include Bootstrapped.fm, Litmus and Unbounce.
• 70. Niche Communities: There are a lot of niche communities like N4G (gaming), FilmWatch (movies), TechSpy (tech) or 11×2 (football) that you might be able to leverage if your target relates.

Target the Other Social Networks

• 71. WeChat: WeChat is the most popular social network in China with over a billion active users. It can be great for promotion if you’re interested in the Chinese market.
• 72. LINE: LINE is the largest social network in Japan with over 75 million monthly active users. It’s a bit of a challenge to promote on the network though.
• 73. VKontakte (VK): VK is the most popular social network in Russia. You can leverage VKontakte groups to promote content.
• 74. Telegram: Telegram is a messaging app with over 100 million active users started by the founders of VK. You can promote your content on Telegram in the public channels.
• 75. Amino: Amino is a mobile-only app for communities and interest groups. It can be leveraged to promote your blog content.
• 76. StumpleUpon Mix: StumbleUpon was a social network for content discovery. It recently shut down and became Mix, a social network for interest groups. It’s too soon to tell if Mix can be a good option for content promotion, but keep an eye out! ?

Reachout By Email to Promote Your Blog Content

• 77. Mentioned Sources: Are there brands or influencers you mention in your post? Give them a heads up. Mention them in a tweet, tag them on LinkedIn and send them an email. If they like your work, they’ll promote it to their followers.
• 78. Sharers: Search Twitter for posts around similar topics. Find the people who have shared similar content and reach out. You can use BuzzSumo to build lists of sharers. You’ll be able to find their email addresses using Clearbit Connect or Email Hunter.
• 79. Roundup Posts: Reach out to bloggers who publish weekly or monthly roundup posts or roundup newsletters on your topic. These people are constantly looking for fresh content. You can search on Google to find them: “keyword”+”roundup”.
• 80. Resource Posts: You can also reach out to bloggers who have published relevant resource posts (e.g. Best of email marketing). Again, you can use Google to find those: “keyword”+”resources” or ‘best of “keyword”‘. This can help you earn good backlinks and build decent traffic.

Improve the Virality of Your Content

• 81. Social Sharing: You can get more from your content by making it really easy for readers to share. On our site, we use the AddThis widget, but there are a lot of sharing widgets you can use.
• 82. Click to Tweet: If there are excerpts in your content that you feel are particularly strong, you can use Click to Tweet to create and embed a ‘Tweet This’ link.
• 83. Highlighter: Along the same line, you can use a widget like Selection Sharer (what we use at Highlights) or Highlighter from Sumo to let readers highlight and share excerpts from your post. You can see this in action in this post.
• 84. Image Sharer: Image Sharer is another content promotion tools from Sumo. It adds one-click share buttons for all the images on your site. You can see an image of it right below.
• 85. Unlockable Content: Similar to a content upgrade, you can restrict a part of your blog post and make people share your article to unlock it. A platform like Social Locker will help you do that.

Use Content Boosts to Amplify Your Reach

• 86. Boosts / Sponsored Posts: Most social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, etc) allow you to increase the visibility and reach of your posts for a fee (paid content promotion). Before you do that, you can use Highlights to make sure your pages perform well and are worth turning into sponsored content.
• 87. Native Ads: Once you know that your post performs well for your site objective, you can create a native ad – an ad that looks like regular website content – on Outbrain or Taboola.
• 88. Twitter Promote Mode: Another interesting option is Twitter Promote Mode. For $99 per month, Twitter will promote your tweets and help you reach a wider audience automatically.
• 89. Quuu Promote: For $40 per month, Quuu will promote your blog post on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn by sending it to influencers in their network.

Join (or Create) a Social Sharing Group

• 90. Your Own Group: To help you share and upvote your blog posts, you can create a small group of upvoters on Facebook, Skype, or others. Alternatively, you can join an existing group if you know other bloggers in similar situations. Be careful with some of the upvote sites like Hacker News. Too many shares or upvotes from similar locations can get your account banned.
• 91. ViralContentBee: ViralContentBee is a more-formalized option for mutual promotion of content.
• 92. EasyRetweet: EasyRetweet is an alternative to ViralContentBee.
• 93. JustRetweet: JustRetweet is another alternative.
• 94. Creator Collabs: Creator Collabs is another option for creators interested in sharing each others’ content.

Publish Your Content on Another Site

• 95. Guest Posts: To create initial momentum for your blog and content, you can write on other blogs as a guest writer. To make this work properly, you have to write quality content on a site that has enough authority to help your traffic. You can often add links back to your site in the guest posts, but you decshould not overdo it. You can find popular sites to contribute here and there.
• 96. BuzzFeed: BuzzFeed has over 200 million monthly active users. If your blog post (or elements of your post) has the potential to become viral content, you can submit it for review on BuzzFeed. A feature on BuzzFeed can drive a large amount of traffic to your site.

Get Creative With Promotion

• 97. Sniply: Sniply lets you add a call-to-action to every link you share on social media. The more popular the article you share, the more people will see your call-to-action. Robbie Richards explains well this approach on his blog.
• 98. Sumo Discover: Sumo Discover adds a “You may also like” badge on your site. To get your blog posts shared on other websites of the network, you need to earn credits by advertising other people’s content. It’s win-win. It’s also free.
• 99. Podcasts: You can promote your blog content by doing a round of interviews with podcasters covering similar topics. Podcasters are always looking for guests. Just reach out and try to get an invite. You can get good backlinks that way.
• 100. Google Content Suggestions: Google Content Suggestions are shown at startup in the Chrome browser on mobile. There are ways to convince Google to suggest your content and it can drive a lot of traffic.
• 101. Help a Reporter (HARO): Although this won’t directly affect the traffic to your content, you can join HARO and become a source for journalists writing about your area of expertise. Getting featured in articles can give your site credibility and visibility.

How to Promote Your Blog Content Effectively

Many tactics on this list won’t work for your content. Yet, many tactics on this list will work.

You have to experiment to find the right content promotion platform for your blog content.

Research your target readers (where they hang? what they read? where they go to find new articles?), pick 5 to 10 tactics and start promoting your content.

Look at your traffic sources in Google Analytics and other key blog reports. See what’s working and what’s not. Double-down on the things that work, and kill what’s not working.

Re-promote your content regularly; probably more than you’re comfortable with.

As a general advice, spend twice the amount of time you would have spent sharing your content had you not read this post and see where it takes you. ?