promoting the whole blog - or individual articles?

[smittenbite]

after you write each article do you go out and promote it a little? since my blog is a little random right now i mostly promote the individual articles for now more than i promote the whole blog in general.

i am #10 (last one on the front page) of google search result for one of my posts :) this is awesome because actually all the ones ahead of me are pretty useless in terms of their content on that topic so hopefully people will scroll down and find mine :) which i know they have been because i'm starting to see some search engine traffic to that post.

how do you guys promote your posts or blogs? do you submit them to social sites, post about them on forums? spam your friends so they can spread the word for you :p ?

[ses5909]

I do submit them to places like SU and if I think the individual articles are worthy I will submit them too. If I have an article I am proud of, I will put that specific article in my sigs, etc. I do write a lot of crap so its not all worth promoting :D

[deronsizemore]

I do submit them to places like SU and if I think the individual articles are worthy I will submit them too. If I have an article I am proud of, I will put that specific article in my sigs, etc. I do write a lot of crap so its not all worth promoting :D

I always wondered if this was something a lot of people did. I know when you submit your own stuff to digg it usually gets tore down as spam, so I didn't know if stumbling your own site/articles had the same effect with people, so I've never done it.

[edwarddowd]

I stumbled my site, then the next day I got 100+ visitors for one day, then nothing. I don't know what happened :-/

[Jeremy]

As long as things are done in moderation, there isn't a big problem with submitting your own stuff on SU. If you only submit your own articles, never vote on anything else or submit anything else, it will be less effective. It just isn't as drastic as on sites such as digg.

But to answer the original poster's question, I generally promote via message board signature links, submitting individual articles to blog carnivals and social media sites, and by commenting on other blogs in my niche.

[4clubbs]

Well, I've just been on a bit of a SU rollercoaster. I had 350+ hits on Tuesday, 200+ hits on Wednesday, and 25 hits today. I guess the SU effect only lasts so long... I did get a couple of feed subscribers out of it, though.

[Jeremy]

SU really depends on who votes on your stuff. Someone with very few submissions and participation in the community will carry very little weight with their vote, whereas someone who has stumbled thousands of pages may vote on your page and instantly drive 500 visits.

I don't think anyone has figured out their algorithm yet, because it is a combination of the number of votes as well as the weighting of the user who votes that will determine how much traffic is sent.

I've had a post that was stumbled about 5 months ago, and initially it sent maybe 100 visitors. But out of the blue, one of the top stumblers voted for it a while back and it sent thousands of hits immediately after.

I think the SU effect lasts a long time, provided the content is worthy of other people taking the time to vote for it. I still have SU traffic on posts 3+ months old. Even though it may not be a flood of traffic, everytime someone happens to give it a thumbs up, it will generate a little added traffic well after the initial surge.

[pbradish]

I've been on a SU roller coaster lately as well. Over 20,000 visitors in 5 days for one particular blog entry, though it is starting to slow down now. I will never again question the power of social bookmarking :).

In answer to the OP, I do promote my blog entries if I feel that they're up to par. Signature links and search engines do most of the work however.

[Jeremy]

20k in 5 days, that is some serious stumbling!

[pbradish]

All good things come to an end I'm afraid :(.

[aquariancore]

All my articles a social network. It just powers up the traffic to the site.