31 Weeks of Better Genealogy Blogging: 3 - Promoting a Post

Tonia Kendrick, over at Tonia’s Roots has started a blogging series entitled ‘31 Weeks of Better Genealogy Blogging’. It’s Week 3 and the challenge is Promote a Blog Post

My thoughts on the tips are below in blue with my action posting at the end.

1. Pitch to other bloggers:  - I would feel embarrassed to do this.
2. Social Messaging: use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks to promote your post.    I don't twitter.  I joined Facebook last year, and early on posted about my blog, but am not aware of any feedback resulting from it.   I am not an enthusiastic Facebook user.  Geneabloggers is my prime site and indispensable.
3. Social Bookmarking:  promote selective links on sites like Digg or StumbleUpon. These are new to me - will need to find out more.
4. Internal Links:  what posts within your own site can you link to a given post?    I have tried this with a series of postings on "Discovering Danson" where I referred to earlier entries on the family highlighted in the Labels listings.   It never occured to me to  provide a  link to the actual blog page - will now do this. I also like the idea of Popular Posts and will set this up as a Label.
5. Newsletters: shoot an email out to your newsletter list.  I like newsletters, but do not feel it is an appropriate vehicle for me - my Blog is my newsletter, and I would include a link to that in any e-mail reply where it might be relevant.
6. Other Blog’s Comments Sections and Forums: leaving good-quality comments can help drive traffic to your site and leaving a link can be appropriate if it is germane to the discussion.  (Just a note here, I use a plug-in called CommentLuv that automatically inserts a link to each commenter’s last post. Absolutely right,  and I have gained Followers from doing this. Sometimes I must admit I find it difficult to know what to say without being rather trite and repititive. I must try to be more specific about what I like in a blog and must also investigate CommentLuv.
    
7. Email signatures: Darren suggests including links to recent posts, instead of just your blog’s front page URL.  Good advice.
8. Follow-up posts:  write a new post that picks up where another left off, like a series, or adds new information to a previous post, then inter-link them.  A bit similar to Point 4.
9. Advertise Your post:  You might consider a small ad campaign for a post you are particularly proud of, Can't see this is for me.
10. Pitch Mainstream Media:  You might want to do this for a really interesting post.  Again, I think this would be more suitable for the pros.  Again not for me.
11. Article Marketing:  Rewrite some key articles and submit them to article marketing sites.  Don’t do all of the above for every single post you write.  Not sure what this means. What are "article marketing sites"?

Action Items

• See my posting  A Rant Against Women Suffragettes

• This  posting now provides direct links to other postings in my "Stop Press!" series.  I enjoy writing  this series and I like my heading as a bit different from something bland such as "Newspaper Report".  Howver I cannot say it is evoking much interest, so something needs to change. It will be good to monitor page views to see if giving these links makes a difference.
  
  I have also added  "Popular Postings" to my Labels listing.