You’ve written your blog article. It’s full of great advice for your target audience, you’ve come up with a great title, checked you’ve got all your keywords in there without being spammy and it’s free of typos and spelling mistakes.
So you can just hit the publish button and go and have a well-earned coffee break – yes?
No – sorry to disappoint, but publishing your blog article is just half the job.
For a blog to be successful in growing your business, you need to actively promote every article. You’ll only get the shares and links you want if lots of people know about your blog.
Here are some of the techniques professional bloggers use to promote their posts which you can also use for your business blog.
Social Media
Social media is the obvious place to start with promoting your blog.
It helps to have a plan so that it becomes routine to set up your promotion as soon as your blog post is published. Create a checklist so that you know exactly where and when you are going to post your article.
Here are the main social media platforms you can use. You won’t necessarily want to do all of these, but you need more than a single tweet.
Twitter: you can tweet your blog post multiple times. 3-4 times after publication and occasionally after that.
Facebook Page: share once on your business page. You can re-post old articles from time to time, especially if it’s relevant to something topical.
Facebook Groups: Groups are a great place for finding a new audience for your blog articles. Some groups have regular slots where members can post their latest articles. Also look for suitable opportunities to post your articles in reply to questions. Do beware of spamming – most groups have rules about how you can promote your business so do stick to these.
Google+ : share once when published. One advantage of Google+ is that your article will be indexed immediately by Google.
Pinterest: Create a great looking image for your blog post. Include the blog title and a short description so people know they need to click to read the article. Remember: you will need to edit the image once you have pinned it to add the link to your blog post.
Instagram: You can’t link directly to a web page from an Instagram post – you can only have a link to your site in your bio. And you need to get a bit creative if you want to promote a particular blog post on Instagram. If you’re writing about a particular product then you can take a quick photo of it – and some bloggers simply take a snap of their computer screen with the blog post. The key is to make the description engaging and to make sure that these types of posts are mixed up with lots of others.
How much should you automate?
Ideally you want to space out your social media posts to give your article the maximum chance of being read. It may be quick and easy to link your accounts so that you simply post on one and it gets sent to all the others – but you’re missing a big opportunity.
Every platform is different and you will get the best results if you tailor your post to suit each platform. For example hashtags are essential for Instagram and you can use loads – use more than 2 on Twitter and your tweets become unreadable.
Use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to set up your promotional posts so once you get into the habit, it doesn’t need to take too much time.
Cross Posting
This means copying your blog onto popular publishing platforms – it’s commonly used for LinkedIn and Medium – rather than simply sharing the link. Once frowned upon due to Google rules on duplicate content, it’s now becoming accepted. Worth looking at if you aim to become a serious blogger, particularly in business to business topics.
Your email newsletter
The people who definitely won’t want to miss your blog post are your email subscribers.
Whether you are emailing once a month or more often, make sure you include a short extract from your blog post and a link to the full article in your newsletter.
Influencers
All the above are good, but to really grow your blog readership you should be reaching out to “influencers”.
These are people in your niche who are seen as experts in their field and who have built a strong and loyal fanbase.
Social shares and links from these people can rapidly increase your readership.
- Email them to let them know about a post that is particularly relevant and which their readers would find useful – and ask them to share it.
- Link to one of their articles in your blog – and let them know
- When writing an article contact them and ask them for a quote you can use (then let them know when it’s published).
You’ll need to be selective with this technique. Save it for your very best articles and be sure that you are adding some value for them as well as yourself.
Make it easy for others to share
Finally, make sure it’s easy for people who read your blog to share the articles. A good social sharing plugin is a must – I currently use Digg Digg, but I’m thinking of switching to SumoMe.
This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s essential if your blog is going to get the attention it deserves.
