Last week we talked about how to find your ideal audience. This week, we’re going to talk about promoting your blog to that audience. If you want your blog to become popular, you need to do the leg work and promote it. Here are some tried and true ideas to promote your blog.

Write awesome content. First things first. No one is going to share content that isn’t valuable or interesting. Awesome content doesn’t have to come in one form. There are many different ways to write content, each one of them equally great as the next. The key here is to ensure that your writing is always of quality and your topics are something people will want to read and share.

Comment on other blog posts. Start driving traffic back to your blog by visiting other blogs. Follow industry leaders to keep up with their newest posts. Leave comments on these posts, with a link back to your own site to promote your blog. Make sure that your comments are useful and thought out. Not only will the blogger see your expert, but they’re audience will too.

Write guest posts. Since we’re talking about following industry leaders, check out their blogs and see if any of them except guest posts from other bloggers. If they do, come up with a killer topic and pitched the idea to them. If your post is accepted, write the post with that awesome content and include a bio to help promote your blog. Guesting on other blogs will give you exposure from the host blogger’s large audience. But, don’t just stop at one guest post. Look for other blogs that you can post on to continue growing your reach.

Share your posts on social media. But not just any social network. No, you want to focus on the networks that decided your ideal audience is most likely to be on. Whether that is Facebook, Pinterest or even YouTube, focus on the networks with the most users that will truly be interested in your blog.

Pin your posts. Even if your targeted audience isn’t on Pinterest, pin your post there anyway. Pinterest is quickly becoming a great way to drive traffic back to blogs, so it’s a social network that shouldn’t be ignored.

Bookmark your posts. Lastly, you can manually bookmark your posts according to the topic so that readers are more apt to see it. Focus on site like StumbleUpon, Reddit, scoop.it, Delicious and Digg.

Now that your blog is live, it’s time to start promoting. Start by writing great content on your own blog and on others, comment on other posts and share your links and you will be on your way to new blog traffic.