You’ve just completed writing a great new blog post. You’re excited that you’ve shared your ideas and expertise with the world. But what should you do next?
As we work with companies to develop a routine content marketing and social engagement routine, blogging is constantly key. A strong corporate blog can pay huge dividends in the form of increased customer engagement and search engine rankings. But what many companies forget is the “marketing” part of content marketing.
Even Great Content Can Go Unnoticed
We wish to believe after hitting “publish” on a new post that the seas will part, angels will sing and Moses will lead customers directly into our shopping carts. But that’s certainly not going to occur.
In reality, the only people who know your post is there are you and your RSS subscribers. After a while, a search engine spider will come along and your post will begin jockeying for search-engine position among the countless other web pages connected to that very same subject. Sure, your post is probably groundbreaking, but Google might not figure that out for months.
Instead of rely exclusively on search engines and a handful of subscribers to pump up your organic volume, content publishers require to develop syndication connections and plan for some targeted promotion to make sure that each piece of content gets discovered by essential influencers and your perfect consumers.
Post Promotional Tools: Your 12-Step Checklist
This post will tell you 12 things you need to do after releasing your post.
1. SEO/ Keyword Integration
Your content might be great as is, but a little keyword research study and integration can have a big influence on search engine rankings and traffic. Scan through your content and pick out the main topics covered in your post. Plug those terms/phrases into Google Adwords’ free keyword suggestion tool. Keep in mind of the most popular search terms and variations in phrasing and phrasing. Return to your content and attempt to boost your post title, content, meta description and tags with those popular terms/phrases.
2. Syndication
One of the most effective and misunderstood systems of a blog is its RSS feed. This actually basic syndication approach permits you to automatically feed your blog’s content to various locations, including lots of social networking sites.
Let me say that another way. When your RSS feed URL is plugged into your social networking sites or profiles, hitting “publish” on your new blog post initiates an automated “push” of that content to those websites. This can substantially broaden your reach and save you hours of time versus publishing content by hand.
Also note that this step is more of a one-time setup. When you have developed RSS connections on your social websites, you shouldn’t need to do it once again. To get going, locate your blog’s RSS URL and plug that into the following:
Facebook Business Page
In your applications area, look for the “Social RSS” application and get it establish to publish your content to your Facebook page wall automatically.
LinkedIn Personal Profiles
Search for “Blog Link” or “WordPress” in the applications section on your profile page and set it up to auto-post your content to your LinkedIn profile. Do not forget to tell all of your workers to do this too. If you have a lot of staff members, the increase in your potential reach could be enormous.
Plaxo
Although not as popular, Plaxo is another great business networking site that makes it actually easy to “add a feed” and plug in your blog content immediately.
Ning Community Sites
If any of your fishing holes are built on the Ning platform, you can plug in your feed utilizing the “Add RSS” widget consisted of on your profile page.
Other Social Networking Sites
There are many other social sites that enable you to plug in your blog’s RSS feed. Scour your websites for this option.
3. Shorten Your Post’s URL
This step utilized to just apply to publishing links on Twitter, however with the addition of analytics (click-through tracking) on much of the URL shortening services, posting a reduced URL on any of your social sites is a wise method.
Here’s how it works:
Copy your new article’s URL, paste it in a URL shortener that uses analytics (Bit.ly, Ow.ly, Cli.gs).
Use the shortened URL in any status upgrade, link publishing or teaser you plan on performing.
Check your URL shortener represent click statistics, geographical and referring website data after your link has been up a while
4. Status Updates
While this one may seem pretty obvious, it’s not that basic. Sure, you might just type your article’s heading into all of your social site’s status boxes, include your shortened link and call it excellent. But this may not get you the most clicks.
Recognize that each social website is a bit various (environment, social rules, audience demographics/ psychographics). Customizing your status/headline for each community might make a big difference.
You likewise need to keep in mind that when you post your brand-new content via a status update, only a little percentage of your friends/followers will actually be online at that moment to see it. To make the most of the possibility of your followers seeing and reading your brand-new post, you may require to send out several updates on various days and at various times. You’ll likewise want to use various headings each time considering that you might get prohibited from Twitter for sending the very same post numerous times.
If your content covers multiple topics, develop a various status update for each topic and then spread those out over the course of a couple of days. Do not forget to ask your followers to share or retweet the link.
Productivity Tip: There are numerous tools out there that enable you to set up and schedule your updates to head out anytime in the future (Hootsuite, Twuffer, Later Bro). I’ll frequently arrange four to five updates with different headline variations simultaneously to publish throughout the week.
5. Content Teasers On Other Sites
Most social networking websites and online forums permit content promotion as long as it’s important, pertinent to the neighborhood, and not blatant self promotion. A couple of examples:
- LinkedIn group forums
- LinkedIn Answers
- Facebook groups
- Ning community group forums
- Niche industry forums.
A great strategy is to write a compelling headline or concern as your forum post title, then include some thoughtful commentary followed by your reduced URL. Last but not least, ask for readers to supply feedback on the forum to continue the conversation.
6. Social Bookmarking
While this strategy does not have the horse power it used to, posting your content to popular social bookmarking sites (Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc) can still be a great source of traffic, backlinks and general direct exposure. Consider social bookmarking as peer-reviewed content. If others bookmark/digg your content, the more direct exposure you get and the more chance you have for others to connect to you or reference your content on their sites.
7. Seek Out And Comment On Other Blogs With Similar Topics
Offering handy, valuable comments on other blogs can be a great method to generate traffic, establish relationships, build a following and add backlinks. If you’ve simply finished a post on a topic, now is the perfect time to do a quick search to discover other blog posts on the same subject. Are the other posts doing not have something that you covered in your post? Add your viewpoint in an authentic, non-self-promotional way. If the comment form requests your site URL, paste in your blog URL.
8. Look for And Assist On Twitter
Authentic help is one of the best methods to build a neighborhood of faithful Twitter followers. Let me utilize this post as an example. When it’s posted and I’ve developed a reduced URL, I might jump on Twitter and do a look for an expression like, “require aid promoting my blog.” Scanning the resulting tweets will most likely provide me a number of chances to help individuals who are connecting for assistance. I reply to them with some authentic guidance and the reduced URL. The outcome is typically a brand-new Twitter fan, a brand-new customer to my blog and a blog comment. Then I get all warm and fuzzy inside … in an opportunistic kind of way.
9. Email Signature
Another effective little method is to add your most current blog post headline to your e-mail signature. Lots of e-mail platforms now have awesome little apps (Wisestamp for Gmail) that will pull your latest post heading into your email signature immediately. Do it manually if you have to. You never know when a possibility, vendor or client might read a post that sparks a discussion or creates an opportunity.
10. Share Your Blog Post With Target Customers
You’ve just created a blog post that you understand would be useful for certain clients. What are you awaiting? Send them an email with the reduced URL and a note, “believed this could actually help your business.” Then check the analytics to see if they clicked on it.
11. Include Your Blog Post To Your Next E-Newsletter
If you have an e-newsletter, you must be integrating at least some of your blog content. Consist of a few post headlines/teasers and see which posts get the most clicks. You may just find that you require to do some follow-up article on a topic that received a lot of clicks.
12. Ask Other Bloggers To Mention Your Post
Structure relationships with other blog writers in your space and inquiring to blog about or link to your post can be a great way to expand your reach. Reciprocating promotional efforts can have a huge benefit in the form of premium backlinks and huge jumps in search engine rankings, blog traffic and subscribers.
The First Time Is The Hardest
Just like most jobs in life, the very first time through this list might be hard and lengthy. Setting up accounts and getting to know the user interface and functions of the numerous social websites may make your brain hurt. But it will get easier. I generally commit an hour to blog post promotion after each launch. Also note that most of these tasks can easily be contracted out.
The key is to make this promotional effort part of your procedure. It’s unfortunate when I see companies put a lot time and effort into creating a strong content strategy, developing their editorial process and consistently releasing great stuff, however then it simply sits there. Said another way, they have remarkable bait however they’ve forgotten to go fishing.
Immediate, Trackable Results
If you’re utilizing the reduced URL and have actually analytics set up on your website/blog, you should see your effort pay off practically immediately. I normally see large spikes in traffic and conversions on the days I’m promoting a brand-new post. Multiply this by an article daily and that activity spike is no longer a spike. It’s now a continuous. Additionally, the results need to be significant increases in activity, traffic, rankings, reach, chances, and general sales.