Many Internet Marketers could take a few lessons from bloggers. Many bloggers begin cross promoting before they even know what cross promotion is. It’s simply a natural result of the expansive networking bloggers use everyday.
Blogger Networking
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Here are some of the cross promotion tactics bloggers use on a daily basis:
- Linking to one another’s posts
- Guest blogging
- Exchanging links or banners
- Blog and product reviews
- Various WordPress plugins
- Social Networking and bookmarking sites
- Blogrolls
- Comment sharing
By joining forces bloggers are finding it almost second nature to help promote each other, even within the same competitive niche. Many times this is an automatic exchange that isn’t planned or discussed. Getting other blogs to promote your site is a fantastic way to enhance each other’s credibility, increase advertising exposure and boost both blog’s traffic.
Cross Promotion Incentives
WordPress plug-ins like Top Commentators, Comment Luv, Who is, and Recent Comments sponsor cross promotion initiated by the other blog. Many bloggers use the Do-Follow plug-in to encourage others to join the process.
Self Cross Promotion
Another form of cross-promotion bloggers are great at is self cross promotion. The goal of any blog is to keep visitors on our site as long as possible. We want them to comment and then go to other content available from our site. This leads to new relationships and increased exposure to ads. It’s a simple matter to insert a link to a previous post when we’re writing a new one. Plugins that allow us to insert things like related posts and most feedback are very effective ways of increasing site visit times.
Self Cross Promotion Tools
Bloggers are exposed to self cross promotion tools immediately with archives, categories, tag clouds and sitemaps. All are also designed to direct traffic to other areas of our blogs. Successful blogging creates expert cross promoters and networkers. I’m sure I’ve missed examples of cross promotion, can you think of any? Which work best for you?
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About Brian D. Hawkins
Hi Brian, this is such great information for people to pay attention to. I’m a strong believers in the success of blog collaborations and cross-platform is exactly how we need to do it. Thanks for the encouragement.
Thanks Ileane, One thing I’ve noticed is that the blogging & internet marketing niches are better overall at cross promotion than other niches. I have other blogs and the same “blogger etiquette” doesn’t seem to apply the same way.I think it’s just a lack of marketing knowledge.
I am one of those bloggers that start cross promotion without even knowing what it was. I enjoy sharing content that others have created, mainly because I find that if I enjoyed the content, others may too. Not only that, but many times I can learn from others, and I also wish to share what I have learned as well.
Cross promotion is definitely a win-win situation for everyone.
Well said Paul, it seems the best of cross promoting comes from good intentions.
I would agree to some degree that bloggers are the best cross promoters of others in SOME niches. Like you said, some niches the other blogs and sites hardly ever interact, retweet, or link to each other.
On our 1 blog I have offered to have guest post or even send me a link to an info article and people have no urge to do it. Yet, they complain that they get no traffic….well DUH!
And I have to add this since I have gotten into videos….posting comments, Liking, or embedding someones YouTube video is also a way to help your favorite sites.
I think all promotion starts with you promoting others by being active in some way. Of course you will always have people that above, lazy or afraid to promote others but we can just cut them out of our list fast. LOL!
Great point on embedding other people’s videos Sheryl, I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve been watching your YouTube FuzzyWuzzyAnipals progress BTW, you are doing a great job.
You are so right Brian but there are some niche bloggers who are a little jealous and won’t accept comments from competing bloggers. Luckily these are a minority. Usually when I comment on a niche related blog I try to leave an even better comment that I normally would in the hope they won’t delete it. Usually it works but on occasion it does’t Their loss really as they lose the interaction as well as a possible increase in SERPs due to loss of content.
I’ve actually ran into that a few times myself Sire, especially on my money tips blog. It’s a shame but I think you are going about it right. If they’re going to delete it, let them feel the loss.
You know how I try to follow my commentators to their blog and leave a comment? Well on some rare occasions they’re from a related niche blog and my comment goes into moderation. I check back to see if the comment has been approved or not and if it isn’t I go back and delete their comment. :evil grin:
Hi Sire, I reckon that’s ‘fair dos’ to be honest and a great way of weeding out the selfish buggers 😉
Yep, that’s the way I look at it Roz. Heck, it wasn’t like I linked back to my sex site or anything 😀
Are Cross Promotion Experts Then Some some of blog don’t accept comment but they have top position how? Would you explain this?
Hi cstylzdance, I’m not sure if you are referring to your comments not being approved or if you are talking about blogs that keep the comments closed.
If it’s that you are having a hard time getting comments approved I can offer a bit of advice. First off, your comment went straight into my spam box and I had to go in and approve it manually. To be honest, I almost didn’t. Take a look at it:
1) You have no avatar (picture). You can upload one free at: Gravatar.com
2) You didn’t use your name. Most blogs require a name, including mine.
3) Your sentence structure and lack of punctuation screams spam. I understand that English may be a second language so I try to overlook that kind of thing.
I’m not trying to insult you, I just want to give you those tips. That’s what we do here.
As far as top position, that has nothing to do with accepting blog comments. In fact, in my opinion, closing comments can actually help a blog with SERPS. Giving away links is debatable but certainly all of the unrelated keywords and hyperlinks many commentors leave can hurt your search positions. I don’t recommend closing comments because that’s what a blog is all about and then you loose the interaction but doing so wouldn’t hurt your site in the eyes of Google.
That’s the truth! We have no choice but be cross promotion experts. We have to gain exposure for our blogs and for the services that we offer.
It’s part of the whole process, to promote, promote and then promote some more.
It’s true Barry, we are doing it for self survival for sure. I try to tweet, like, 1+, digg or stumble each post I comment on. That’s part of building that much needed relationship with other blogs and websites.
And yet, even with all our cross promotion expertise, bloggers are probably the worst internet marketers out there; what a dichotomy when you think about it. It seems that the overwhelming majority that talk about making money online aren’t doing that at all, and the rest of us make a buck here and there but if we’re the type that likes to educate and communicate rather than sell-sell-sell we don’t seem to be able to really break through.
Of course if my only intention was to make money I wouldn’t have 5 blogs. I think I’m a sadist at heart 🙂
I agree Mitch, I considered myself an internet marketer well before blogging but I wasn’t very good at it. Finding a product worth putting your name on, setting up a JV and finding partners, selling to your list – hopefully, creating sales pages, OTOs, constant testing… I’m tired just thinking about. And blogging is, well, fun!
Internet marketers don’t go out of their way to help each other either. Sure, there are small groups of marketers that work with each other but they keep that click small and don’t let many in other than low level JV partners.
How do you take it then when someone sees your tweets / posts as being “self serving”? How do you respond to those types of criticisms?
Hi Barry, I guess I would have to take a look at what they’re talking about. They could be right, after all. I do tweet my blog posts, once, but I also interact with other tweeps. I do try to tweet other blog’s posts, especially those that I found interesting enough to comment on.
Everyone has their own idea on how Twitter and the other social networks are meant to be used. I try not to be too spammy and I’m the first to unfollow when I start getting spam tweets and I’d expect my followers to do the same.
I found that after blogging for a while the “cross promotion” side would be on auto-pilot and I wouldn’t think about it. I always stop by blogs and comment on them, no matter what niche they are, if I find a post interesting I will comment on it, isn’t that why we have comment system 😉
As for self cross promotion, the plugins that are available are great to help a humble blogger speed up the process of getting that next awe inspiring blog post out 😉
Hi Karen, I’m with you, being a blogger is much more than just running a blog, and visiting other blogs is a big part of that. Like you, I try to comment on posts I find interesting or think I have something to contribute.
I think the best cross promotion will be guest blogging, I had done all the rest, but still prefer guest blogging as one of the best cross promotional strategies, and putting links back to older post is also a great way to make readers stay longer, though I never did that when I started out, but now every post on my blog I does put links back to my old post.
Great point Wong, I do the same thing. In fact, you can see my own trackback below from a blog post I just wrote that is closely related to this one. Inter-blog linking is very important.
As far as guest posting, it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. With re-opening Hot Blog Tips, the time for making excuses is over and I will start guest posting. I will also start accepting guest posts here as well.
Hey Brian,
Fantastic article! I have been doing all these things but never really thought about it like you laid it out here.
Love the Self Promotion paragraph and “The goal of any blog is to keep visitors on our site as long as possible. ” You can do this from creating interesting content that keeps the reader reading and excited for more!
Great article!!
To Your Success!
Thanks Forrest, I appreciate that. The cross promotion probably comes so natural to you that it doesn’t feel like promoting. I love this stuff 😉
I don’t understand why any blog would want to disable the comment field. It is so very important because the comment field is the place where the user can voice their opinion on the article whether they like it or not. If you don’t let your user speak their mind they’ll end up going somewhere else.
Hi Loc, there are some very popular blogs that never allow comments. Like you, It doesn’t make sense to me. I’m also not a big fan of blogs that require you to register in order to comment or use third party commenting platforms. It’s just too many hoops to jump through.
Hi Brian, nice to ‘meet’ you. You’ve just articulated a thought that’s been kicking around in my head too. I don’t have a commercial blog but I like getting comments and I find I get more when I leave quality comments on others’ blogs who’s readers and authors sometimes post on mine. It just seems such a co-operative environment – and I see the same commenters exchanging comments on each others blogs regularly. It’s just nice to have a little group of people supporting each other like that. And I like striking up conversations in the comments too – sometimes the comments are as good as the article.
Great post Brian. Like you I believe that collaborating with other bloggers is the key to success in blogging. Being active in commenting on others blog is also great way of getting other bloggers and visitors’ attention.
Cheers for this. I’m off to do some more research on cross promotion as I’ve just changed to a new domain and need as much hits as possible. I’m taking one step at a time! Here goes…
Visit Rhonda on Twitter @silly_mummy.