11 Article Promotions That Helped Me Get 97 Backlinks and 598 Shares

Anyone who has been blogging for a significant amount of time will tell you that quality content is only half of the battle.

The other half – and often the more difficult half – comes with promotion. In a perfect world, great blog posts would be rewarded with thousands of shares, countless comments, and dozens of brand new subscribers. Bloggers would only have to worry about churning over the best material possible while letting their work speak for itself in generating views.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in a world where content goes viral at random, and where bloggers have to work just as hard to promote their work as they do to actually conceptualize it.

As someone who has been blogging for several years now, I would like to think that I’ve come up with a few tried and true methods that work for me through extensive trial and error.

That isn’t to say that all of these promotion methods are going to work 100% of the time for every single struggling blogger out there – it’s all about what works for you and your individualized needs –  but there is a good chance that at least one will help you out a bit.

Below are the steps I take on my site Wise Startup Blog, that teaches people how to start a blog.

Use my steps as a starting point, and adjust to fit your exact niche.

These 11 methods have helped me get nearly 600 shares on my most recent article and as an addition to other backlink building tactics. Use as few or as many as you’d like, and be sure to let me know how they work for you!

1. Use SumoMe’s Welcome Mat Plugin to Get 2X Email Subscribers.

If you think that email subscribers aren’t important for blog views, you’re just plain wrong. Most bloggers will promote their latest posts in their weekly/bi-weekly subscription emails, which makes growing a strong email subscriber list even more important. Using the right email newsletter tools is important. A tool like convertkit isgeared towards creators and have a couple of list growth tools included. 

As a way to generate more subscribers, I highly recommend using SumoMe. They have a free and premium membership option, both of which have numerous tools embedded into the program that promise to help you garner more subscribers.

For the sake of this tutorial, we are going to focus on the Welcome Mat Plugin, which is designed to help you get email subscribers every time they visit your site.

All you have to do in order to get started is install the plugin, and enable the Welcome Mat option. From there, I highly recommend that you check out this in-depth tutorial to figure out how to configure it best for your site.

The idea behind this is simple: The more subscribers you have, the wider the audience when you send out your subscriber-only newsletters. You should absolutely promote your blogs in those newsletters, so your subscribers know about it and can take a look at their earliest convenience.

2. Use Buzzstream to find an influencer for a quote in your blog post.

It can be intimidating, if not outright terrifying, to reach out to truly influential people in your niche. Perhaps that’s why websites like Buzzstream exist at all.

Buzzstream, which is a place for bloggers like you to find influencers, is a great place to start.

All you have to do is search in your niche and find someone who looks like they may have something to add to the blog post you are wanting to promote. Then, once you have decided on an influencer (or several), send them an email and ask if they would like to provide you with a quote to help your blog post along.

Most of the time – because influencers are willing to help and like to get their name out there as an authoritative voice – they will cooperate. If they do, you can and should send them a link to the finished product and suggest that they share it with their audience if they see fit.

If the article has been written well and there are no glaring errors, they’ll probably do it to show off that they took part in its creation. Now, you have free promotion from those people who follow the influencer AND those who search that influencer’s name just because you received that quote from them.

3. Use Buffer to schedule your posts to be shared across social media.

Buffer, a social media sharing tool, allows its users to automatically schedule posts. This is especially important for those who want to be on multiple social media platforms. With Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook, etc. all having their own unique audience, you want to be able to reach the largest number of people possible.

Scheduling these posts with Buffer just may be the answer. It’ll even tell you the optimal time to post across your platforms!

4. Create an infographic of your blog post on Fiverr.

Fiverr, a marketplace for people to seek out freelancers, is an awesome spot to find a cheap infographic. The skill level of the freelancers is varied, but Fiverr has a review process which allows other users to give honest reviews of the freelancer’s work for other shoppers to see.

After you are done producing your quality content, all you have to do is go to the marketplace and search “infographic” to find a number of willing freelancers who will create an infographic for you for just $5. Then, once the infographic is made, simply post it on your social media accounts with a link to the full written article. You can also do shortened guest spots on other people’s websites with the infographic as well!

5. Use LinkedIn groups to promote your articles.

The cool thing about Linkedin, in addition to it being an excellent resource for people to connect with potential employers, is that it also offers groups for just about every niche under the sun.

If you want to promote your posts on Linkedin, all you have to do is join one of the groups and start posting!

Pro Tip: Don’t join a group that is full of people promoting their own work that has little to no comments received. Your work will absolutely go unseen. Instead, try to find a group with a few comments per post — and, if you have the time, you may even want to consider adding to the comments! People will feel more inclined to read and comment on yours if you do the same for them, after all.

6. Promote on Twitter using your influencer.

Some people say that name dropping is weird. I disagree. Doing so in excess, of course, can be a bit tacky. But mentioning someone of prominence who helped you write a blog post is perfectly acceptable.

Of course, you shouldn’t make a habit out of doing so. The first time you drop their name is totally okay. The second time, you may be starting to look a little bit desperate. If every single one of your tweets includes an @mention of someone who has more followers than you, you’re going to send out a bad (desperate) message.

7. Recommend your article for a weekly article roundup post.

Many bloggers do weekly article roundups, where they find the best blog posts of the week and most them in one giant master list. This is an excellent place to be seen, primarily because many readers will intentionally seek out these roundup posts to only find and receive their information from the best of the best.

If you want your article to be included in one of these roundups, don’t be afraid to reach out to the person who runs them and shoot them an email. You don’t have to be unnecessarily pushy or forward with their request – simply say that you really appreciate the time and effort it takes to put one of these posts together, and you would love if they read over your article and perhaps included it in their roundup if they feel it fits with the high calibre of content they usually include.

Remember, a little bit of kindness goes a long way!

8. Use Yoast SEO Plugin to ensure your content is SEO friendly.

Search engine optimization is just about the first thing as a blogger that you’ll learn when it comes to making their content promotion friendly. It not only helps you rank higher in search engine results, but it also tests how readable your content is, and whether or not your links are in good, working order.

Yoast SEO, a WordPress plugin, is just about the best of the best when it comes to SEO checks. The plugin, which is consistently one of the most popular plugins in the WordPress marketplace, can be very involved and perhaps even a bit intimidating to beginners.

It also works well when you have multiple WordPress authors, guestpostsers or work in a team, as the scoring and your target keywords remain visible inside the CRM – and allow you to revisit and update your posts for SEO optimization. 

If you need a little extra help, don’t be afraid to look around on the web for a more in-depth tutorial on how to use it and get the most out of it. I managed to pull a pretty great tutorial out of Google that you can find over here on Yoast’s own website.

9. Use “Top XXX Blogs” Lists to find influencers in your niche.

Alright, so we have already established that influencers can make or break your blog post, right? So now we’re going to look at a different way to reach out to them.

First, to find the influencers, you need to do a very simple Google search. All you have to do is search “Top *niche* blogs”, with “niche” replaced with your own blog’s niche. Then you are bound to find several dozen (if not more) posts of other bloggers across the web who have put together top posts.

Take a look at all of these top roundup posts, and find bloggers who have been mentioned more than once. Heck, find ANY bloggers who are considered “top”. Then start reaching out. You can even import all of your contacts into Pitchbox, and use that to automate the sometimes tedious email process because we do want to have a link building strategy that is scalable. 

10. Seek out Facebook groups in your niche.

Much like we were able to use Linkedin as a way to get involved with groups, we can use Facebook in the same manner. Facebook groups have existed for years now, so there is no shortage of them to choose from.

I suggest that you join a group that has a significant number of people, but be careful to avoid groups that move too quickly. Your post, in this case will get knocked back very fast and will most likely not be seen by an optimal number of people.

11. Make it easy for your readers to promote your posts on social media.

Widgets are a beautiful thing. You know when you’re on a website and there’s that little logo button for Facebook or Twitter glaring at you on the screen? That’s a widget.

Placing these buttons somewhere on your new post – an optimal place is either on the side of the post or the bottom, as people will see it while reading and perhaps feel inclined to share – will almost always increase the number of shares you receive.

If you make it so that your readers only have to click one single button in order to share your post, you are simplifying the process for them so much that they will have almost no choice but to do it.