Why You Should Promote Your Own Blog Posts

Is self-promotional good for your blog and personal branding? Many would disagree with me, but I would say yes. Here’s why.

For years, I used to bookmark the majority of newly published blog posts. I Digg ’em; I StumbleUpon ’em; I submit ’em to many other social bookmarking/networking sites.

While many try to rank high in search engine result pages to get organic traffic, I bookmark each and every blog post published on my blogs to 3 to 5 social bookmarking and networking sites. The result is stunning – I get traffic sent from the social bookmarking sites.

So, yes – even though my blog posts don’t rank well on search engines, targeted traffic is coming in from relevant social bookmarking sites. Not only traffic, personal branding and revenue opportunities are coming in along with the traffic.

So, why am I doing self-promotional activities on my blogs?

The answer is simple: If you didn’t love your own blog posts, why did you expect somebody else to love them?

Unless your blogs are splogs, promoting your blog posts will help your idea to spread out. I assume you want to share your thoughts and help your readers with your blog posts, right? Well, bookmarking and sharing your own blog posts will give your blog posts feet to travel far, spreading your ideas so others can benefit.

What’s more, buzzing your own blog posts will allow them for a chance to be picked up by large, authority blogs; when your blog posts are mentioned by the big guys, you should expect huge traffic coming in your way – again, even without the help of search engines. How’s that for personal branding and revenue potential?

Here’s what I do

Every time I, guest bloggers and my writing team publish new blog posts, I will bookmark and share them to 3-5 of the dozens social bookmarking account I have. Beware, don’t submit too many blog posts to the same social bookmarking sites – it’s spamming and can get your account banned.

Please note, this is different from spamming the social bookmarking sites. Spamming means bookmarking unrelated, useless pages on the same social bookmarking sites.

What I do is to bookmark and share my blog posts on “niche” social sites. For example, I will bookmark my design-related blog posts to DesignFloat; I will share my green business blog post to a “Green” group in LinkedIn; I will share my business blog post on BizSugar. Then I will bookmark/share my blog posts on “general” social sites – Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Diigo, Google Buzz, etc.

Not only social sites, I also refer a couple of my blog posts on the forums I joined. When a forum member asks something that I feel I can direct them to the right resource, I post a link on the thread post. Blog commenting? I only do it when I have something useful or important to say, though.

One last tip: Try not to copy-and-paste title and description of your blog posts to the social sites you suggest your blog posts to – always try to add value to what you share to the social sites.

Is it also good for SEO?

Yes. Not only traffic, bookmarking/sharing your own blog posts is good for your blogs’ SEO. Sure, the majority of social sites nofollow links, but the idea is not to get your links on those social sites pass link juices; the idea is to get the words out and encourage linking back to your blog posts (link baiting.)

When a social site member think that your blog post useful, she will likely to refer to your blog post in her next article or blog post. Just consider this: What if she is one of the authority writers of NYTimes.com? Your blog posts can get valuable traffic and authority that not only useful to boost your blogs’ traffic, but also their ranks in search engines – not mentioning your very own personal branding!

What’s your opinion on this self-promotional effort? Please share yours by commenting on this blog post.

Image: renjith krishnan