Over the past two months that John and I have had our blog, we have poured a lot of time into researching the best methods for promoting our content. It’s not useful to have a blog if no one reads it, right? So how do you get traffic to your site?  In this article, I’m going to share with you the process that we do EVERY time we post a blog. This process has evolved over time, and will continue to evolve as we continue to research, learn and experience new ways to promote our work on the World Wide Web. Right now we have a process that takes us 10 minutes, and we’ve found the results to be substantial. There is a very definite increase in web traffic on days we implement our process, and on days we forget (or are posting on the fly via our iPhones) we see a dip in our traffic. I keep this list by my mac and walk through it step by step in the 10 minutes after we post a new blog. Why do I do it immediately? Because once you’ve posted new content to your blog, you begin to show up around the internet. It’s like the Net has hit it’s ‘refresh’ button and new content is being displayed in front of the eyes of readers everywhere. So it is in your best interest to get everything pinged as quickly as possible for maximum exposure.

It should be noted that of the steps listed below, they all have to happen AFTER you’ve posted, except #1. John and I use the ‘All in One SEO Pack‘ plugin on WordPress. I highly recommend this plugin, as it does about 80% of your SEO needs with about 20% effort on your part.  It’s well, well worth looking into.

Here are our steps;

1. Post your blog, making sure first to fill in the info for the All In One SEO, including keywords (no more than 10), description and title.
2. Submit your new post’s URL to Digg.

3. Stumble! your new post.

4. Bookmark your new post in Delicious.

5. Ping Technorati (read how to automate the process here).

6. Update your Twitter.

7. Post a link to your article on Facebook.

8. Submit your new link on your LinkedIn status.

9. (And Finally) Submit your article to a Blog Carnival, and any other submission site you use, such as Zimbio, etc.

Refer to my previous articles for how-to set up Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.

Of the list, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Technorati will get you instant exposure. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn rely on your friends and associates wanting to read your content, and this may take a while to catch on, but once people know they like your information, they’ll be back each time you post a new link.

The Blog Carnival we don’t have any information on yet, because our first ‘carnival’ isn’t scheduled until the 16th of February (2009), but we will update you in the future on how well it works for us. We’re trying it based on the recommendation of Steve Pavlina in his article on How to Build a Hgh Traffic Website.

So there you have it! My 10-minute process. Try it for a few weeks and you’ll begin to notice an increase in traffic, as we have.

-Amy Stevens Adams of Cape Cod Branding

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