You might have created the best blog post ever, with some suitably savvy wordsmithing and a topic that’s destined to tickle everyone’s fancy, but creating and posting that blog to your site is just the start of the process.
To garner some serious attention, it’s all about sharing the love, letting everyone know on every available outlet that you have some carefully crafted content to view.
So where and how do you promote it? Well, the short answer is everywhere you can and there are a host of tips and tricks available to shortcut what would otherwise be a time-consuming, tedious process.
Remember to always serve your audience
Before you begin creating your content or even begin the process of promoting it, remember this: always serve your audience.
A big part of effective social selling is putting your authority on display. No matter what you are selling, your customers want to know that they are working with experts in their craft. They want to know that you can not only sell them a solution to their problems but be a trusted confidant that they can turn to when they encounter problems that fall within your expertise.
First and foremost — make sure that you are creating the content that your audience actually wants to read.
- What are they talking about on social networks?
- What kind of questions are they asking?
- What do your customers typically ask you when they begin a new engagement?
If you aren’t creating the right content that your audience actually wants to read, you’ll never be able to gain the traction that you’re hoping for. One key thought here is that you shouldn’t try to sell your services, products, or even your thought leadership. The point is that you really should think about what your audience needs.
- Are your insights helpful?
- Do they address issues?
- Do you give your readers tips that will make them more efficient, productive, and ultimately successful?
In essence, don’t make it about yourself. If you’re selling hot dogs, don’t try to sell hot dogs to someone who’s asking you for hamburgers. Write to address the problems that people have - not to sell the solutions you offer
.
Social media
Naturally, social media is the first port of call for any new updates to your content stash. And depending on your audience, that social media will likely include Facebook and LinkedIn for the full post and Twitter and Instagram for a media-friendly styled snippet. Just make sure the social media platform you are choosing to promote your content has the target audience you are trying to attract.
You could spend an hour scheduling your blog to these media outlets, but chances are you’d rather actually be running your business and this time is probably not at your disposal.
The truth is there are a wealth of ways to automate this process, some more effective than others and now Facebook has introduced some new rules about auto-posting, the rules have changed a lot.
In House Blog Promotion
Using tools at your disposal, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and any other social platforms you have access to, create a promotional schedule to use in ensuring you send out your blog URL multiple times a day.
Facebook's organic reach is much lower than it used to be, meaning getting your post seen by those who like your business page or follow your personal page is much harder. This is not the case when it comes to Facebook groups, especially ones that have a high engagement level. Posting a relevant link to one of your posts in response to a question is one way to get more eyes on your post.
Believe it or not, people still use Twitter and I am one of those people. I’ve found it to be a good place to tweet about your blog and new blog posts. Also, by liking other people’s tweets and retweeting them, you stand a good chance of them reciprocating.
Promote your blog as part of your daily or weekly routine. This can be done by either posting about your latest blog post, showing behind the scenes footage on processes you use, or asking questions to your followers.
Asking a question to my followers on Instagram ended with me writing a blog post around their responses. I then messaged all those who responded to my question with a link to the post for them to read and share. In other words, it became part of my content marketing plan and a way to further promote my blog.
Still not being used to its full potential, this social platform is great to use to promote blog posts as well as your site as a whole.
This is done by creating eye-catching images with a link back to specific pages or posts on your site. Just make sure you use an SEO friendly description for each pin to help get it found by other pinners.
Via newsletter
When it comes to sharing content, automation is a great tool but not the only one that should be utilized, and that’s where a little active sharing through newsletters comes in.
Each month our businesses send out a newsletter updating consumers on what’s been happening in our world, and as part of this, we also profile the best or most recent posts of the month.
Our preferred tool for this remains Mailchimp because it’s just so darned simple.
Importantly, Mailchimp also allows you to set up RSS feeds, so your blog can be delivered directly to your subscribers’ inbox.
External blog promotion
Mastering how to promote a website is a skill that is developed over time.
A way to develop this skill is to take every opportunity that comes your way to talk about your site to everyone you come into contact with, whether you know them or not.
Pitch to everyone
This is where coming up with a concise summary of what your blog is about comes in very handy.
This summary can be used in all scenarios when telling people about your blog. If people are interested in what you say, they’ll ask for more information and if they are not, they won’t and you move on.
It's best explained using an example.
Using my blog, SloppySuccess, here is a short sentence I use when explaining what my blog is about:
‘SloppySuccess is a site with interesting light-hearted, easy to read posts for people who want to #makeastart in business or already own a business.’
I adapt the wording for each situation so I could also say:
‘SloppySuccess is about starting from where you are. The start doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to happen.’
For those who want to know more, I then inform them I also teach online classes that explain retail concepts in an easy-to-understand way specifically to those who are new to buying and selling products.
Answer questions and leave comments
Another way to promote a blog is by answering questions on a site like Quora.
You can add a footer to each response you give along with linking any relevant blog posts from your site in your response.
Also leaving comments on other people's sites is another way to promote your blog.
It is important when using this method not to be spammy. So, only answer and leave comments that are relevant to your blog’s subject matter.
Promote via media mentions
Using sites like HARO or Sourcebottle are great ways to get your blog out there. These sites work by providing journalists for larger publications and bloggers a place to get sources for stories they are writing.
The process is as follows: multiple emails are sent out each weekday, sources then scroll through, select appropriate topics they can answer adequately, and send the response to the journalist. The journalists then go through the responses, select the ones they want to use and then mention their source in their story.
Guest posts
This post you are reading is a guest post and with each tweet and Facebook post sent out, using Missinglettr’s app, @sloppysuccess would be mentioned. This helps promote my blog.
I will also use my social network to promote this blog post when it gets published, which in turn helps promote Missinglettr to my audience.
**Interview relevant individuals **If you’re encountering a bout of writer’s block, interviewing relevant individuals in your space is a great way to create content without much additional effort. Spotlighting someone allows you to share alternative perspectives about a wide range of topics.
Additionally, it’s likely that your interviewee will share your article amongst their own social media profiles and connection once it goes live — this will give you an extra boost in new visitors to your website.
You don’t need to have a slew of advanced audio equipment and editing software to conduct an interview. In fact, you should be fine using your smartphone and the built-in voice recording app. If you’re able to afford spending a few extra bucks, purchasing an external lav mic will significantly help increase the audio quality.
If your guest lives across the globe or you’re unable to meet in-person, using the recording functionality on Zoom is also a great alternative option.
Additional tips for blogging success
There is a fine line between bombing potential readers with “Read my blog! Read my blog! READ MY BLOG!” and not promoting your blog entries at all. I haven’t yet come up with that magic formula as to how many posts are enough. But here are some additional strategies you can use to figure out how many times you could rebroadcast your blog entries and collect some more traffic on your site.
Create a Google Analytics account
This is how you can track, for free, how many visitors are coming to your blog. You can also see which individual entries are the most popular, so that you know to deliver more content in that genre to ride that wave of popularity.
Comb through your existing blog entries and make a list of the ones that are seasonal in nature, and ones that you can re-broadcast any time during the year.
For example, I have a few blog entries that are holiday stories—I don’t want to broadcast Christmas stories in June, right? Let’s call the ones that you could post any time during the year and call those “evergreen.”
**Review your weekly postings **It’s always a good idea to review any postings before they go live to ensure their relevance. keep an eye on current events so you can avoid any embarrassing posts that might clash with a story in the news.
Once you get a few weeks of rebroadcasting your blog entries under your belt, check your Google Analytics account. You will see a spike in your traffic, as you’re putting your site out there on a more frequent basis. But then you can see other things. You’ll see where your traffic is coming from. For me, Facebook and StumbleUpon are my bigger sources of traffic, Twitter is smaller. That doesn’t mean I should stop tweeting my blog entries, however. I am still getting some traffic from there, so I have to keep that up.
Another thing you’ll see is, on the individual entry-level, which blog entries are getting read the most. This is vital information, as this is your readers telling you that they prefer one topic over another. With this information, you know how to give them more of what they want. If my readers like my scuba diving posts more than my knitting posts, you better believe I am going to write more about scuba, right?
If you’re struggling to keep up with the promotional efforts for your blog, Missinglettr can help. It’s as easy as linking your blog through the app. In a matter of minutes, you can develop a year’s worth of content to automatically be posted to your social accounts. Sign up today for free!
