10 Ways to Grow Instagram Followers and Engagement

“Instagram Famous” is a term that has worked its way in to social media lexicon.
Forget the YouTube stars of the past – it’s all about how many followers, likes and comments everyone can garner from the endless recesses of the internet. And claiming your favorite celeb as another member of your own personal fan club is now cooler than a Grammy, just sayin’.
But you can’t buy fame.
There’s plenty of hacks and shortcuts and “sketchy” companies out there claiming to be able to double your following in seconds or share a delicious secret to instant Instagram fame that everyone else just happened to overlook.
Don’t believe any of it.
When Momma said there’s no substitute for an honest day’s work, she was actually right.
Here’s 10 ways to grow your Instagram following and engagement the new old fashioned way.

1. Keep your photos consistent with your brand

Your Instagram is an extension of your business and your brand, so make sure that the photos you post stay true to what you’re all about. People that follow you chose to do so because there’s something they like about your brand. They want more of it, so give it to them.
Think about what your brand is all about. What words best define and describe it? Keep your images aligned to those core traits.

For instance, a high-brow interior design company would want to focus on modern, minimalist photos of chic living spaces that exemplify good taste and clean lines. If an account like that were to include images of the mess after a crazy office party or someone’s fabulous-looking salad the overall theme would be completely disrupted.
Consistency in photos will keep attracting the right kind of followers, ones who appreciate your brand and who will thoughtfully engage. It also demonstrates professionalism and your authority as an expert in your space.

2. Focus on liking and commenting on photos within your niche

When someone gives you a compliment, you want to give them one back, right?
It’s kinda like that on Instagram, too.
One of the best ways to get people coming to your Instagram and seeing what you’re all about is by liking or commenting on a photo on their page so they can follow your handle back to your account. And hopefully, like or comment on your photo or maybe even follow you.
Carve out the time to find accounts within your niche market and like 5-10 photos and leave a comment or two. Every day.
Why is focusing on accounts within your niche so important? Because they’re managed by the people most likely to be interested enough in your brand to like or comment back.
Think about it – if you’re a beverage brand and you go liking and commenting all over a footwear designer’s Instagram, chances are that followers on that page are more interested in something to add to their closets, not their refrigerators. So your chances of engaging with the right people on there would be slim.

3. Captions matter, seriously

Of course Instagram is image-based. Everyone knows that.
But how many times have you gone to like or comment on that hilarious cat photo…only to be so annoyed by the lack of wit in the comment that you can’t even bring yourself to like it. Because if one’s brand is all about hilarious cat photos, then one better have some equally hilarious comments to go along with them.
Captions help solidify a consistent tone to tie together your theme of images. They also help you connect to your followers and show that you put thought into what you do as an expert in your field.
Treat your captions as though you’re speaking right to your best customers. What’s important to them? How is what you say a reflection of your brand?
Careless captions turn away knowledgeable people within your niche and confuse your brand message.
Thoughtful captions inspire thoughtful responses and genuine followers.

4. Ask for action

Duh! Just ask people to like you, right? It’s just that easy!
Well, almost.
When you’re posting to your account, think about adding a call to action into your caption to solicit a response from your viewers and/or followers.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Just something short and sweet. For instance, under a photo of a massive ice cream cone with a text overlay that reads “Ice Cream Cures All,” you could add the caption, “Like if you agree!”
This incites a no-brainer action by the viewer vs. just adding the caption, “I love ice cream!” which doesn’t necessarily incite any active response.
Make it easy for your followers to engage by telling them exactly what to do.

5. Use and create relevant and thoughtful hashtags

As on all social media platforms, hashtags help build community and bring together people with similar likes and interests.
The people you want liking and following you.
So with hashtags consistent with your brand and tone, you’ll be attracting people within your niche who will be more likely to engage and help build your following.
Focus on hashtags that are highly relevant within your industry, such as #motivation and #fitness if you’re a personal trainer or #organic and #cleaneating if you’re a vegan chef.

You can even create your own hashtags pertaining to perhaps a social campaign you’re currently running. When your followers start using it, you can then like or comment on their photos, repost them and create a dialogue.
Combine hashtags with thoughtful messaging to caption your themed photos and you’ll be well on your way to Instagram stardom. Or at least more engagement and a larger following.

6. Don’t forget to geotag

So simple, yet so often forgotten.
When you post your photos, remember to geotag them with your current location.
Doing so helps build camaraderie with followers who may also have a connection to that particular city, restaurant, gym, etc. or share common sentiment toward the place you’re posting from.
Because kinship breeds commentary.
For example, say you’re a food critic and you’re visiting a highly acclaimed restaurant in San Diego.
When you share a photo of your exquisitely crafted meal, be sure to geotag that restaurant as a location in your post.
This way, others who have eaten there or who live locally will be inspired to perhaps share what their thoughts were on their meals, like your photos or follow you thinking that by doing so they’ll get more insider scoop on great restaurants in their hometown.

7. Ask people to follow you via your other social accounts

Believe it or not, having additional social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook can actually help you build your following and engagement levels on Instagram.
Generally, any avenue to get your name and brand out there online will help generate interest around your brand, and thus, interest in your social channels.
But you can also use your other social channels to ask your current followers there to also follow you on Instagram.
Think about it. If they already like you and your brand enough to follow you on one account, it’s probably a pretty safe bet that they’ll be more than willing to follow you on another one.
And you can even give them a little sample of what they’re going to get on your Instagram by linking it to your Facebook page. So whatever you post to Instagram will also show up on your Facebook page.
Asking followers on one social account to follow you on another is a smart way to earn more of the “right” followers who have a genuine interest in your brand and who will be more likely to comment and create a thoughtful dialogue.

8. Consider mixing business with pleasure

In most areas of business, combining your business and personal accounts isn’t always a recommended activity.
But if your daily life can somehow compliment your brand, or vice-versa, it may be a smart idea to incorporate your personal photos into what you’re posting for business purposes.
For instance, say you promote an energy-boosting green drink, made of organic, locally harvested produce. Along with posts of your bottles as part of a well-balanced breakfast and of customers drinking it at their local gyms, you may consider posts of you harvesting your own vegetables in your home garden or shopping at a farmer’s market.
Not only do images like this reinforce your embracing the essence of your brand in your everyday life, but doing so helps potential customers and followers better connect with you, as a person. And when that happens, it leads to a deeper connection with your brand.

9. Research and learn from other successful accounts

The cool thing about social media is that the whole purpose of it is to share.
Share posts, share pictures, share copy, share…ideas.
There are tons of people out there just killing it when it comes to earning a constant stream of new followers and above-average levels of engagement. So they’re doing something right.
What?
Do they run awesome campaigns? Have a really solid brand message exemplified throughout their photo stream, hashtags and captions? Are their photos done off-the-cuff and spontaneously? Or are they highly orchestrated down to the last detail?
You definitely want to make your brand your own and stay true to your own persona and voice.
But looking for ideas that have been successful on other top accounts and applying that general framework to your overall strategy can help you take your efforts to the next level.

10. Start using Iconosquare, Schedugram or InstaEasy

Using various social tools to help you better manage your Instagram account can help you save time and strengthen your efforts to build your following and boost your engagement.
Iconosquare can help you better manage your account by offering you an easy-to-use dashboard with more detailed search and engagement capabilities involving other Instagram accounts.
Schedugram is a great tool to use if you’re looking to schedule out future posts in advance. You can set times and stay organized with what you’re featuring and how it plays into your greater brand initiatives.
InstaEasy allows you to grow your Instagram following on autopilot. You can follow by hashtags or another user’s followers. Plus you can automatically like images based on hashtags and unfollow users. Did I mention that once this is setup, it runs automatically?
If neither of those tools give you what you are looking for, you can browse this list of over 500 social media tools – many of which work for Instagram.

Growing your following and engagement isn’t an overnight achievement

Rome wasn’t built in a day.
We’ve all heard that one before. But in today’s world of instant gratification, patience is at an all-time low. For everything.
If you’re looking to work your way to Instagram fame the right way, by earning followers who really care about your brand and who want to contribute to intelligent conversations, the investment of your time and energy is an absolute must.
You’ve got to regularly engage with people within your niche, upgrade your caption copy, seek out popular hashtags, ask people to take action and to follow you – and don’t forget to geotag.
At the end of the day, your potential to gain a mass following and high engagement depends on the kind of effort you’re willing to put into each one of these tactics. Of course, you can choose to use an automation tool like InstaEasy to help you skip the mindless and redundant necessities of you Instagram account.
And with the right amount of work and the right amount of patience, you’d better start planning what you’re going to do with all that newfound fame.
Because in the right amount of time, you’ll have Instagram success in the bag.
Ready to become “Instagram Famous”?
Let me know how you plan to do it in the comments below. Or if you are already a star, why not spill the beans on how you did it?

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Incredibly Useful Instagram Tips for Small Businesses

IT’S no secret that Instagram is a channel your small business can no longer neglect. As of September 2015, Instagram had over 400 million monthly active users.

That’s quite a bit more than Twitter’s reported 327 million monthly active users.

But here’s the deal:

You mostly hear about Twitter needing to be the channel to focus your small business social media marketing on and not too much is said about marketing on Instagram.

• Are companies not buying into what the Instagram platform offers?
• Perhaps it’s the lack of tools and automation available on other channels?
• Is it because small businesses don’t know what to do?

That ends today as I show you 4 incredibly useful tips small businesses can get more out of Instagram.

Know Who Your Audience Is

Look, there’s no point in jumping into marketing on Instagram if you don’t even know who you are marketing to. If your messaging doesn’t align with your audience and the channel, you will be fighting an uphill battle.

You’ll need to understand who you are marketing to. This is typically accomplished by creating personas of your target customer.

Doing this process will help you to better understand who you are marketing to and what messages resonate with them.

Aside from knowing who you want to follow, you can also study who is already following you.

There are several tools out there that can give you this insight, or you can be like me and use Microsoft Excel to get Instagram data for you.

With Excel, you can filter by keywords, number of followers, number of users they are following, or even the amount of posts they have made on Instagram.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how you get the data – the key is to look at it closely to understand who your audience is.

Creating Engagement on Instagram

Once you know who your ideal audience is, you’ll have a better idea how to best go about creating engagement with them.

Of course this will probably be different for everyone depending on what industry you are in and what type of content resonates with your audience as there are a variety of ways to create engagement. I’ll touch on a few ideas of how to create engaging posts.

Perhaps, you sell a physical product like bowling balls.

A great way to subtly market your product to your audience is to not only show your product in use, but to also show the success or accomplishments that can be achieved by using your product.

For example, take Ebonite Bowling. They are a manufacturer of various bowling products including bowling balls. Check out this post that not only shows one of their products in use, but also demonstrates the success of using it.

What’s nice about this approach is that there is not any direct selling occurring. Instead, Ebonite let’s their product market itself by showing that you can also be successful by using it.

A few other ways you can create engaging Instagram posts are:

• Sharing behind the scene videos of your company
• Giving sneak-peek previews of upcoming products
• Showcase employees/the company
• Participate in weekly hashtags (#TBT, etc)
• Show time-lapse videos of how your products are made
• Promote your brand evangelists using your product

By creating engaging content on Instagram, you will help expand your reach through people commenting, liking, and sharing your content.

Find New Audiences

What happens when you feel like you have hit a wall in growing your audience?

It’s sometimes easier to partner with other Instagram pages in order to reach a new audience. Especially, an active audience.

This is typically called a “shout for shout” or “shout out”.

What this means is that you will post something to your account that promotes someone else’s account. In exchange, the account you are promoting will post something to their account that promotes your account.

You can do this the old fashioned way by manually identifying large Instagram accounts that have an audience demographic similar to yours. Once identified, you will need to contact them to see if this type of exchange interests them.

If your following is similar in size to their following, typically you can do an even swap. Meaning that you each post promoting each other without having to pay anything.

Should you want to get a larger account to send out a shout for you, they will probably want to be compensated. You’ll need to decide what you can afford and what is fair to both parties.

There is another option to get access to new audiences without having to do a “shout for shout” exchange. However, this will definitely cost you some money.

You can use a service that essentially arranges the shout out for you. Instead, their service allows for a one-way shout out. Basically, you pay a fee to the site in order for them to facilitate the shout out with an account of your choosing.

One such site is ShoutCart. While I have not used them, the option is there if you want a quick way to reach a new audience.

You can filter the results by industry, audience size or price in order to identify accounts that may be a good fit for you.

One thing to note when ordering, you will have the option to have your post live on the Instagram account for a set time or indefinitely. If you choose a set time, then your post will be removed from the account after it has been live for that set time.

Depending on the amount of followers an account has, chances are your shout out will get pushed pretty far down a user’s timeline within two hours. However, this is something you should test and monitor as everyone’s audience will be different.

Streamline Efforts Through Tools & Automation

The last Instagram tip I would like to cover is automation. On channels like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn there are quite a few social media tools to help with automation.

Unfortunately, with Instagram there are not too many.

However, I have identified several Instagram tools that can help with certain aspects of marketing your small business.

• FameBit – Find, hire and work with influential stars on Instagram
• FollowAdder – Automated social networking Instagram management software
• Iconosquare – Get key metrics about your Instagram account
• Instagress – Accelerate your life on Instagram for more targeted likes, comments and follows
• Keyhole – Real time hashtag tracking on Instagram
• Latergramme – Schedule and manage your Instagram posts
• Ninja Outreach – Find thousands of Instagram influencers with a simple keyword search

As with any social network, there is not a one-size-fits-all tool. You will need to take a step back and see what areas make the most sense in utilizing a tool. I will say that you will need to use automation with caution. Using tools should help you be more efficient with your social activities.

However, there is one thing that social media tools can’t replace. And that’s interaction.

In the end, it is up to you to use automation to help with efforts that don’t necessarily need a human touch or are repetitive. Interaction and engagement should be a manual process.

Get More Out of Instagram for Your Business

There’s no doubt that your small business can take advantage of Instagram marketing. It may differ from the approaches that you have taken on other social channels in terms of messaging, media, and automation.

While I have given several tips that you can use on Instagram, it’s up to you to test and see what does or doesn’t work. If you aren’t documenting your activities, how will you know if it’s working?

Instagram might be one of the newer social media networks, but success is driven by the same core activity that works on all the other channels. Engagement.

You might not get much engagement early, but as the account grows your business will build relationships with the target audience. Over time, this will lead to compounding engagement on your business account that will help you get the most out of Instagram.

I’d like to hear about how you or your small business gets the most it can out of Instagram. Please be sure to let me know in the comments below.

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Use Roundups to Explode Your Traffic Overnight

Have you got the new site blues?
You’re writing great content, day after day, but no matter what you do, you just can’t seem to get more traffic back to your site.  It’s frustrating. The work you’re putting in isn’t translating into more visitors.
You’re on a tight budget, so spending big on Facebook or Google ads isn’t an option. You need a way to get traffic without having to pay for it.
You just want eyeballs on your site. You’ve done everything you can to optimize your blog, but now you need traffic.
So, what can you do to drive traffic to your blog that’s free, easy, and takes a simple investment of your time?
It’s called the roundup post, and it’s one of the best ways to generate traffic to a new blog. As a bonus, you’ll also build relationships with the influencers in your niche at the same time.

What is a Roundup Post?

A roundup post is made up of responses from multiple experts in your niche on a topic that’s important to your audience.
By publishing a roundup post, you leverage the expertise and popularity of your niche’s experts. And by asking your experts to share your post with their audience, your traffic will increase exponentially.
Here’s an example of a roundup post from Ashley Faulkes of Mad Lemmings:

It’s a popular topic and provides a ton of value to readers, which is why this post has reached over 20K shares. Ashley has added even more value by rounding up the best posts and resources on each of the business ideas, along with tips and advice from experts.

Why are Roundup Posts Effective at Generating Traffic?

Roundup posts are effective traffic generators because featuring popular experts, and asking them to share your post, gets your content in front of a huge audience and you’ll get more shares overall.
BuzzSumo found that if a single influencer tweets your post, you’ll receive 31.8% more shares. And the overall share rate only increases as the number of influencers who share your post increases.

So, are you ready to boost your traffic with a roundup post?

How to Create Your First Roundup Post

Creating an expert roundup post can take a bit of time, but it doesn’t need to be difficult. The key is to have a system in place and follow it closely.

Step 1. Decide On a Topic

The first thing you need to decide on is the topic of your roundup post and the question that you’ll ask your influencers.
But how do you work out what’s a good question?
There are a few factors that go into a good question:

• It must be something your audience wants to know the answer to
• It can’t be answered by a simple yes or no
• There’s no obvious answer

When brainstorming for content ideas, you consider asking your email subscribers by sending them a survey. Click here for a really great tool that can embed a survey right into your emails! It is super easy to use & will have you on the right track in no time.
Another alternative is to check Quora, Reddit, and other forums to see what questions are being asked and which ones have the highest engagement.

Step 2. Choose the Experts You Want to Feature

It’s a good idea to always include more bloggers in your initial list than you want to include in the final post. Bloggers, marketers and entrepreneurs are busy people and not all will respond to your request in time, if at all.
Plus, the more experts you feature, the more traffic you’ll potentially receive.
For example, an HR company had the greatest traffic result from one of their roundup posts that had responses from over 150 experts. Two other roundup posts of theirs featured fewer experts and received less traffic. So, you don’t want to feature too few experts.
But how do you find enough experts to participate in your roundup?
Chances are you already know many of the experts in your niche. However, if you’re putting together a large roundup, you’re going to have to go digging.
Here are three ways to find more experts for your roundup
1. Search for Previous Roundups in Your Niche
There are a couple of different ways you can use to find previous roundups. You can search on BuzzSumo or Ahrefs to find popular content, or you can do a simple Google search for your keywords.

Once you’ve found a roundup in your niche, you can choose which featured experts you want to add to your list of targets.
Matthew Woodward suggests targeting the experts that engaged with previous roundup posts, as they are more likely to share and engage with your roundup post.
2. Alltop 
Alltop lists top blogs by category. A search of your niche will bring up plenty of blogs to search.
This is a more time-consuming method, as you’ll have to manually click through to the blogs to determine if you want to include the expert in your roundup.

3. Hashtagify.me 
Hashtagify.me can be used to determine the top influencers for different hashtags. Search relevant hashtags to find Twitter influencers in your niche.
Check their Twitter profile to find their blog and determine if you want to include them in your roundup.

Keep the list of bloggers and entrepreneurs you want to approach in a spreadsheet. If you can’t find their email address on their site, go ahead and sign up for their email list. You should be able to reach them on the email address they send the welcome email from.

Step 3. Prepare for Responses

Now that you’ve created your list of influencers to approach about participating in your roundup, you’ll need to prepare for responses.
A roundup post involves dealing with a lot of data, so it’s imperative to have a clear organization strategy before you start collecting information.
The simplest way to collate responses from your influencers is via a Google Form. It’s free, and very easy to get started.
You’ll want to include fields for:

• Name
• Website URL
• Twitter Handle
• Short Bio
• The question

You can quickly and easily set your form up to auto-populate a Google Sheet. Then all you need to do is link to your form when you email the expert to ask for their input.
The hard work of collating responses is done for you and when the time comes to write your post, it’ll save you loads of time.

Step 4. Reach Out to Your Experts

You’ve got your question ready, and your Google form is good to go. Now you can start reaching out to your influencers.
How do you go about this?
Influencers are busy people. Neil Patel suggests engaging with your chosen influencers before you send them a request to participate in your roundup – they are more likely to respond to someone who they’ve interacted with before.
You can get on your expert’s radar by commenting on their blog posts, joining their email list, responding to their emails, and sharing their content on social media.
When you craft your email to your influencers make sure you:

• Are clear about what you want them to do
• Outline the benefit to them
• Leverage social proof – if you’ve had a response from a popular, well-known blogger, let them know!

Here’s a template example from QuickSprout on how to word your outreach email:

Step 5. Write the Post

Once the responses are in, it’s time to organize your responses into a blog post. You won’t have to do too much writing – your experts have done it for you – but you’ll still need to write an introduction and conclusion, and format the post in a way that makes sense.
For your experts’ responses, you’ll need:

• A headshot from their website, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Gravatar. Save each image under their first and last name to make sure you’ve attributed the right head to the right influencer!
• A link to their website
• Their response
• Short bio
• A click to tweet (optional)

Here’s an example from Time Management Chef of how to format your expert’s response:

Step 6. Email Your Experts and Let Them Know the Post is Live

Email your influencers to let them know you’ve published the post and thank them for their involvement. You can ask them to share the post with their followers in this email.
Here’s an example email template from Sue Anne Dunlevie of Successful Blogging:

Step 7. Share on Social Media

The next step is to share the post on social media yourself, tagging the experts who contributed.
You may not be able to tag every expert in one post, so space it out over the course of multiple posts until you’ve tagged them all.
Here’s an example of how to tag featured influencers on Google+ from CrazyEgg:

Wrapping it Up

If you’re a new entrepreneur and you’re not getting the kind of traffic you want, try a roundup post. A roundup post is an excellent opportunity to reach out to influencers, form relationships with them, and leverage their audience.
By reaching out to expert’s in your niche, you can leverage their expertise and popularity helping you bring a ton of value to your readers and reach an entire new audience.
To start, choose a valuable topic by finding out what your audience wants to know. Looking at Quora, Reddit or using a simple tool to survey your audience can give you some insight into what your audience is struggling with. Next, you want to reach out to influencers to have them answer a question about the topic. Go ahead and use the template from Neil Patel to craft your email.
Once you’ve received your responses, write the post and start sharing it on social media. Don’t forget to ask your experts to share it with their audience as well. This is the crucial step as you are leveraging their audience and connections to help you grow your traffic. Use the template email from Sue Anne Dunlevie to help you craft the perfect message.
The final step? Sit back, relax, and watch your traffic and audience increase! If you’ve chosen your influencers well, it’s really that easy.
Have you published a roundup post? What were your results?

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10 Ways to Promote Your Latest Blog Article

YOUR article is polished and ready to go. You hit “Publish,” and eagerly wait for reactions. Whether it’s likes, shares or comments, any response is welcome.

As an author, feedback fills you with a sense of accomplishment and confirms that what you’re doing is meaningful. Engagement validates that your overall message is resonating with your followers and allows you to make a difference.

Still, one of the biggest obstacles bloggers face is how to effectively promote their articles. You’ve invested so much time into creating content that matters, naturally you’d want to find the best way to promote your content in order to get as many followers as possible!

So, here are ten ways you can promote your latest blog article:

1. Share It on Social Media

The most popular form of promotion is sharing your article on social media. However, it’s not enough to simply just share the link or use the autopost. Instead, use these methods to enrich your status update:

• Add images for visual interest (more on that here)
• Add relevant hashtags
• Include engaging intro text
• Tag relevant people or accounts
• Use a tracking link to keep an eye on engagement (hint, hint – try Click Perfect)

Image source

2. Ask Influencers to Share Your Content

Influencers are respectable people in your industry, and as such they have the power to boost the success of your article tremendously.

Try to reach these individuals through social media channels, or via email, and ask them to share your article.

Keep in mind that the article has to be both relevant to the industry and of high quality in order to intrigue and inspire them to share.

3. Send an Email to Those Mentioned in the Article

Whether you’re referencing articles, eBooks or 3rd party material as resources within your own post, make sure you contact the authors as a part of the promotion.

A best practice is to ask for an opinion, however you can also politely ask them to share on social media or link from their own blog while you’re at it! In most cases, they will respond positively, as it beneficial for both parties!

Important: Don’t forget to list resources in your article and always provide links back to the original content.

4. Contact People Who Have Shared Similar Content in the Past

Those who have already shared similar content might be interested in reading (and sharing) more about this topic, which is why this method is great for finding people who are genuinely interested in the niche you write about.

A great way to locate these individuals is through mentions and hashtags on social media.

You can also find blogs and websites that have shared similar content using a tool, such as Open Site Explorer. Simply copy the link of the related content, look up the web addresses that link to that content and get in touch to recommend your own article for inclusion.

5. Repurpose the Content to Target Users on Different Platforms

Repurposing content helps you expand the reach of your content, by leveraging the power of different platforms. For example, if you have a blog article, try creating a presentation featuring the same content, and then share it on relevant platforms, such as SlideShare. This way you reach SlideShare viewers, thus increasing the number of online users you reach.

6. Feature the Article on Your Website

There are two ways you can promote the article on your own website.

Firstly, make sure you feature it on the front page. Add a feature section specifically for your blog, that way anyone who visits your site will see the content.

The second way to boost its performance is to share it as, “Latest news” in the sidebar. This way you promote the article to the users who reach your website through other content. A sidebar is a great way to catch their eye and keep their attention once they’ve finished up looking at what they initially clicked through to see!

7. Leverage the Power of Subscribers

Once you publish the article, create an engaging email send it to your subscribers. After all, they provided their email address because they wanted to be informed about new content that you publish!

Feel free to ask your subscribers to share the article as well. If they liked the content, why wouldn’t their like-minded friends or followers benefit from the information too?

8. Take Advantage of Bookmarking Websites

Bookmarking websites, such as Reddit, StumbleUpon, or Triberr as a way to gain exposure to users who are part of these online communities. All you need to do is join a bookmarking website and create a profile, and then you’re ready to promote the articles through the platform.

Since social interaction is integrated into these types of websites, you should try to be active and interact with other users if you want to increase the number of people that see your posts through the platform.

9. Add the Article to an Online Magazine

User-curated online magazines is also a great way to promote content, as it allows you to create your own online magazine focused on a particular topic, or allows for the possibility to be featured by another curator.

Platforms such as Flipboard, Paper.li and ScoopIt, already have large online communities with users eager to explore and discover new interesting content.

10. Use Paid Advertising to Boost the Article

Paid advertising is always an available option for article promotion, regardless of the platform you want to focus on. Whether you are seeking promotion via, Facebook or Twitter Ads, promoted content on LinkedIn, etc. paid advertising boosts traffic and increases the reach of your article much faster than using any alternative, free methods.

Each promotional strategy has positive and negative aspects, each with a specific way to achieve desired results. As an author, you need to explore all available options, and find those that are most beneficial to you in terms of traffic and lead generation. Give your content the best possible chance to reach as many readers as possible! After all, this is what blogging is all about – inspiring others, sharing knowledge and making a difference.

Don’t worry if, for example, you haven’t seen valuable results from repurposing content. Even though this technique may work for some publishers, find the technique that works best for you!

Perhaps you find that social media activity works for you or maybe contacting influencers has shown great results in the past. Focus your energy on the options that bring you the best results. Time is valuable and it’s important to find the most effective option that works best for you!

Final Thoughts

In the end, it’s quality that matters most!

Search engines and social media filter out ineffective content, therefore it’s of the utmost importance to publish high-caliber blogs.

Make sure that the article you’re promoting is worthy, as this has a significant impact on the outcome of the promotional activity. Also, make sure you optimize your blog in order to keep visitors interested in your content and maximize your lead generation.

We all know that article promotion is very important part of blogging, so we’d love to hear from you about your results.

Which promotional method would you add to this list? Talk to us and share your ideas!

While you’re at it, please share on social media to help get the word out!

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