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If you’re an experienced blogger or just started blogging recently, you probably know that choosing where to promote your blog for free to increase traffic is what takes most of the time.
After trying several platforms and channels to promote my blog, I have compiled a list of the ones that work best for me.
When picking channels to promote your blog, you need to take into consideration your blog niche, as some channels might work better than others, depending on your niche.
Here Are 12 Places To Promote Your Blog For Free:
1. Pinterest
Pinterest is widely used by most bloggers and many of them rely on it for most of their traffic (up to 70%). If your target market is in the US, as most of its users are based there, Pinterest is a gold mine.
Do, however, have alternatives to Pinterest, and even if most of your traffic comes from there, do not rely solely on it because if your account gets suspended, like mine, you wake up one day that you need to take everything from scratch and all your hard work is gone.
Make sure you read all their guidelines, in order to avoid being suspended.
2. Pinterest Group Boards
Pinterest group boards have proven to be very effective for many blogs, including mine, as there is always activity, users sharing new content on a daily basis.
Since joining group boards, my blog traffic has doubled. When choosing which group boards to join, make sure that they are very focused on the niche that your blog is part of, instead of being very broad.
For example, if you blog about Tips for starting a blog, SEO, Affiliate Marketing, etc. You should look for these keywords, instead of just Blogging, Bloggers Unite, etc.
3. LinkedIn
As I mentioned above, depending on your niche, some channels might work better than others.
Since I am a Digital Marketing Specialist and my blog is focused on providing career advice, I have had a good return from this platform when sharing my posts there.
4. Facebook Groups
I am actually not a huge fan of Facebook, however, since I purchased Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing course from Michelle of Making Sense of Cents, it came with access to her closed Facebook Group.
Being a support group and with everybody being active, I am getting constant traffic from there. There are many other Facebook Groups that you can choose from, in order to promote your blog and increase traffic.
6. Comments On Other Blogs
If you have already created a Gravatar (globally recognized avatar which follows you everywhere), whenever you leave a comment on other blogs, your picture, name and blog URL will show and people can click on your it, to be sent to your blog.
Make sure that if you leave comments, they are genuine and you are not including links to your blog. This is frowned upon by the blogging community and besides, it is a Black Hat SEO practice and can get your blog penalized.
You can read more about White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO here.
Comments are also a great way to get to know other bloggers and to show the love to the ones that you follow and admire.
The blogging community is very supportive and when you are loyal to a blogger and engage with comments and shares, they might return the favor.
7. Camooni
Camooni is a social network for bloggers, a startup founded by blogger Nina Hartmann, free of charge, where you can share your blog posts (title, picture, and link) and people interested in reading more will be redirected to your blog.
The traffic that I am receiving from Camooni is constant and most of the users are based in Germany, so I’m tackling a market that normally I wouldn’t have access to.
8. Quora
Quora is a forum where people ask and answer questions on a multitude of topics.
You can create an account and follow the topics that interest you and then answer questions on those topics.
Once you develop authority on a particular topic, after answering a high number of questions, you can get pretty steady traffic to your blog from Quora.
9. Reddit
Although Reddit is a social news and web content rating, it is very similar to Quora, as it has a forum section as well.
Once you find the topics that interest you, that have a lot of engaged followers, Reddit can bring quite a good amount of traffic to your blog.
10. Instagram
I haven’t listed Instagram next to Facebook and Pinterest because Instagram usually works better for visual niches, such as food, beauty, fashion, travel, etc.
Instagram is challenging as well because it’s hard to make the people click on the link in bio and direct them to your blog.
Some bloggers found success on Instagram, however, I do not recommend to focus all your efforts on it, especially if you are just starting now.
11. Medium
Medium is a platform for syndicated content, meaning that it relies solely on the content provided by other people. If you have a blog, you can just import your articles there.
They won’t be counted as duplicate as medium directly includes a link telling Google that this is a copy of the original article, showing readers where and when the original article was published.
The beauty of Medium is that anybody can become a contributor and on top of that, you can actually make money on Medium, depending on your following and readership.
12. Thrive Global
Thrive Global is very similar to Medium. It was created by Ariana Huffington, the former owner, and CEO of the Huffington Post.
Once you create a contributor profile on Thrive Global, you will get access to a backend WordPress dashboard, where you’ll be able to write your articles and submit them for approval.
If your content is good quality and valuable to readers it will get published.
Related:
- The best Facebook groups for bloggers
- How to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your blog
- SEO guide for beginners
- Successful bloggers you need to follow
- Things you need to know before starting a blog
- Why you should consider blogging as a career
After many trials, these channels have proven the best to promote my blog for free and increase traffic in my niche (Blogging and Career Tips).
Let me know in the comments if you have tried them or ifthere are any other channels that you are using and have proved to bringtraffic to your blog.
