Half-assed free ways to promote your blog posts

Just because I know 20 ways to promote a blog post doesn’t mean I promote my blog post 20 ways. It is a big huge blogging world out there and it can be hard to find your audience if you are a half-assed blogger. Here is a numbered list (because the blog gods like them) to work with if you are motivated, organized, and patient. My blog is a self hosted WordPress blog. Some of these things work only for WordPress. Some work everywhere. Some may work nowhere.

Low Hanging Fruit (Easy)

1. Stumble thumbs up your own post. I do this 100% of the time. SU is my third biggest referrer and the absolute easiest thing I do. I also make sure I thumbs up pages that I like in the world outside of my blog. Then SU thinks I am useful. I have my stumble bar open all the time. I don’t have many followers and I still get clicks on my posts.
2. Have each blog post pushed to your Facebook Page. The Facebook WordPress plug in does this for me. I don’t remember angsting over setting it up so it must have been super simple. Facebook is my second biggest referrer.
3. Share that Facebook post onto your own timeline. AFTER you have clicked through to the post. Facebook math penalizes promotion that happen without link follows. I don’t know how they know or why they care but they do and they do.
4. Tweet your blog post from within your blog. I have tried lots of social share buttons. None seems to work better than the other. Right now I am running Ultimate Social Deux. Because it sounds fancy and, like, the best.  Feel free to do this every day for a while.Those twitter feeds can handle repeat tweets. Also use hashtags like the ones in this article. My favorite hashtag #amnotwriting. It hasn’t caught on yet though. Want to follow me?
5. Share your post on Linked In. Try to skip the ones with swear words and drug use if you might someday be using linked in for professional reasons. I hear people do that. Linked in is pretty low on my click back list. But then again I only share the posts without swears so that limits a whole bunch of what I write. Want to link up?
6. Share your blog on G+. I share to the public. It is less effective than Pinterest, Stumble Upon, Facebook. and Reddit. It is easy though. Particularly because I do this through my Buffer dashboard. What is buffer? I will tell you about this at the end. So keep on reading.
7. Share your post on reddit. It is easy because there is a reddit button to add to your browser. It is difficult because readers there are intense. You need to select the correct subreddit or people will tear you a new one. I posted a sex post on the wtf subreddit. My post was called Fuck your husband. It seemed like a fit. IT WAS NOT A FIT. They let me know. In fact they let me know so clearly that I have started a new account just today.  That said it does send readers over even if they are an angry sort.

Takes Set Up but is free (Medium)

1. Share your blog on Medium. I started. Then I stopped. Now I am going to start again. I plan to post only my posts that feel literary or are about writing. I love the clean look and unlike all of the other cluttery content sources out there my feed is unspoiled and of great interest. Here I am.
2. Flip your blog onto a flipboard magazine. I have a magazine for my blogposts and then topic magazines so I flip each post twice. Or I theoretically do. I often forget to go back and re-flip. I am very new at using flipboard so I can’t give a huge review but I can say it is better than google plus. Which is praising with faint damn. Want to follow me?
3. Share your post on IG. This is frustrating to me because you are supposed to use all 30 of your hastags #writer, #blogger #parenting #parentsofinstagram #petsofinstagram #someotherthingsofinstagram AND people have to click to your bio to see the post. This annoys me. So I pretty much just take pictures of flowers and cars an small dogs. Zero of my traffic comes from here. Follow me if you like cats, dogs, flowers, cars and architecture. Oh, and graffiti. Also food. If you like none of those you are obviously some sort of heathen.
4. Pin your blog onto Pinterest. Elena is the expert at maximizing pinning strategy. I pay for someone to design my pins and Tailwind to pin the shit out of them. See below.
5. Share your blog on Bloglovin’ I have an account. I try to follow people in my niche. I usually forget it.
6. Share your blog on Blogher. This takes bios and copies and pastes. It does send some traffic back. In 6 months I had 233 click backs from the few posts that I shared. That said I stopped doing it. Like so many things it might have been a slow climb to actual effective promotion but there are only so many hours in the day.
7. Add click to tweet boxes to your posts. Click on them. I use Easy Click to Tweet Boxes by Cheeky Apps. (Not an affiliate link. That would be difficult to set up.) I do this less than 10% of the time. I don’t track its efficacy. Try to remember to add your twitter handle in your click to tweet box. [Tweet theme=”basic-white”]Add click to tweet boxes to your posts. Click on them. via @annawritesstuff[/Tweet] Classic. It is not working. I’ll leave it here to remind us of the real life of blog promotion. Maybe I will update the plug in.
8. Share your blog on Facebook Group Boards. Before you click on over you need to be ready to read, comment and share other people’s posts. This is the honor system and there is no honor in pasting your link and flying out of there. Here are my top three group boards. 1. 2. 3.
9. Share your post on Triberr. I set this up. I never went back.

Takes Set up (maybe) and money (Hard)

1. Pinterest (the way I do it.) Make a custom pin for each post. I have a blog board. Then I have topic boards. Then I have many group boards. I share each pin at least 25 times using Tailwind. I set intervals so I don’t share the pin in a spammy way. I also pay someone to make my pins. As you can see in the last 6 months Pinterest has been my biggest referrer. If you want to include all of the UK, NZ and other international Pinterest boards you will be even more impressed.
2. Promote your post on other blogs. I have paid two bloggers to link back to my work. It has cost 1.38/day. I earn $3.52 a day.
3. Scoop.it  I have never tried it. I have a friend who loves it. Figured I’d throw it in here. For it to work you need to upgrade from the free trial. Let me know if any of you love it.
4. BUFFER. Some of you love Hootsuite, some of you love co-scheduler, some of you love Edward, some of you love buffer and some of you are drowning in social media. I pay for buffer and use it for the facebook groups I admin, the middle school page I run (which I mix up and Gary helps set me straight) and all of my various twitter, linked in, google plus IG, etc etc etc. Not only can I share my post with a single click but I can schedule and re-post popular posts as well as get analytics. I would be even more grumpy without buffer.

So that is that.This list of ways to promote your blog is exhausting if not exhaustive.  [Tweet theme=”basic-white”]This list of ways to promote your blog is exhausting if not exhaustive via @annawritesstuff. [/Tweet] (Nope. still not working). I am going to use every one of these methods to promote this post. HA. I will use a few of them. Do me a favor…tell me how you got to this post, and add on your own blog promotion tips. Particularly if they are free and easy.