You have written a great article for your blog and you are super excited after hitting the ‘Publish’ button. But have you gone through the checklist after publishing the new post?
This checklist that I am talking about contains a 12 point plan that you ought to follow religiously after publishing a new blog post every single time.
Great content can also go unnoticed
Even though you have written an epic content, only a few of your RSS and email subscribers will be aware of it. We often think that hitting the ‘publish’ button will bring in a lot of readers immediately. But let’s face it, it’s not that easy. That’s the reason blog post marketing has so much importance.
Search engines will definitely find your content and then it will fight with thousands of other pages on the same topic for search-engine position. You can solely rely on search engines and wait for the traffic to flow, or you can go 12 steps further by following the below checklist each time you publish a new blog post.
Call this a content marketing strategy, or blog promotion. But I can assure you that it will give you great results. Let’s start with the checklist.
1) Read the post all over again
You might be thinking that why should I read the post AFTER I have published it? I am sure you guys check the grammar, formatting and the other important stuff before you hit the ‘publish’ button.
Let’s take an example.
You just cleaned up your room. Don’t you give one final look at it and give yourself a pat on the back after you are done? If you don’t give your room one final look, you will keep on thinking that you could have done better.
Read your blog post again after you publish it. If you enjoy reading it again, so will your readers.
2) Internal linking from older posts
I know that we always make it a point to link to our old posts before publishing a new post. You can do the opposite as well.
If your content is doing good, you are certain to get good traffic for your older posts. Once you publish a new post, you can go ahead and check your archives and find out relevant content to drop in a link to your new post. This not only improves your SEO score, it also improves the reader engagement.
Also, another great way to interlink is using your readers comments. I figured this out when reading some great articles at Nopassiveincome. Erik uses this amazing technique to interlink posts. You can find tons of relevant keywords in comments that your readers drop on your blog. Try using the same method as above and interlink new posts from your old ones.
3) Schedule new posts
Scheduling a blog post instead of publishing it has a few benefits. You can schedule the post based on your target reader’s geography so that the post gets maximum exposure during the day.
Also, scheduling a new post gives you the opportunity to garner a few social shares and likes before sending out newsletters, if you are using an email service or Feedburner.
4) Use a URL shortener
This comes in very handy especially for sharing content on Twitter. Three reasons for shortening the URL:
- You can write a real catchy title followed by the shortened URL which creates a bit of suspense.
- Great for sharing on Twitter which has a limit of 140 characters.
- Clicks on your shortened URL can be tracked for analytics.
I prefer using Google URL shortener for this purpose.
5) Share your blog post on social media and social bookmarking sites
This goes without saying. You should definitely leverage social media to promote you blog posts. You should however be mindful if you are using a lot of different platforms as the blog promotion strategy varies across different social media platforms. Because of this reason you should try to avoid using generic auto-sharing tools. Follow the below strategies to promote your blog posts on different social media platforms.
On your blog’s Facebook page, try to describe what the post is about and explain how is it going to help your readers. Since these people have ‘liked’ you Facebook page, they will look forward to something that will benefit them.
Add a little personal touch to the blog posts that you share on your wall. Since this will be mostly viewed by your friends and family.
Try to attach a relevant image for the blog post that you are tweeting. This makes the tweet more appealing and draws more attention.
Google+
This is a great platform to promote your blog post. You should join relevant communities on Google+ according to your niche. Be active, share your knowledge with members and you can post a link once in a while which will be received well by the community.
Try to make the headline more professional when sharing content on LinkedIn and let people know the benefits of reading the post.
StumbleUpon
This is another great source for blog promotion after you have hit the publish button. Submit your link in relevant categories with relevant tags.
Create relevant boards to pin the images on to. Also, include a catchy headline and don’t forget to add a link in the pin.
Reddit has the potential to drive thousands of visitors to your blog and it is one of the best places to promote your blog. However, you need a good strategy for blog promotion on Reddit. Do not try to submit links only from your blog. Promote good content from other blogs as well. Also, participate in discussions and reply to comments.
Try to share something helpful and pick a relevant subreddit to drop your links once in a while.
6) Set up automatic pinging on WordPress
There are a number of websites that allow you to notify or ‘ping’ them as soon as you publish a new blog post. To set up automatic pinging on WordPress, go to Settings > Writing and scroll down to Update Services. Here you can enter the URL’s of the popular pinging services mentioned below.
http://ping.feedburner.com/
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.octora.com/add_rss.php
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.bloglines.com/ping
http://rpc.twingly.com/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://www.wasalive.com/ping/
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
7) Comment on blogs and forums with similar topics
This is the best way to promote your new blog post and share it with like-minded people. Be mindful though. There are some unsaid rules for blog commenting and forum discussions.
- Always provide helpful and valuable comments.
- Develop relationships and build a following.
- Be genuine and express your viewpoint in a non-promotional way.
Trust me, you will enjoy interacting with awesome people on such forums. Once such an amazing forum is Aha!NOW where you can meet like-minded people, build relationships and help each other.
Here is a nice guide on blog commenting
8) Replying to blog comments
Reader’s comments on your blog post don’t come easily unless you have a very popular blog. When a reader drops in a comment on your blog post, it shows that they enjoyed reading the article. It is your responsibility to reply to comments as soon as you can.
Replying to your reader’s comments shows that you like interacting with them and take the feedback positively. This will encourage other readers to leave comments as well.
9) Thank people who share your content
A lot of people forget to thank people who are sharing your content on social media. These people play a huge part in promoting your content and the least that you can do is to thank them.
Try it, it feels good 🙂
10) Email broadcast/Newsletter
If you are into email marketing, you can send an email to your list informing them about your recent blog post. People who have signed up for your blog updates are genuinely interested in what you write and they will certainly appreciate being the first ones to read your latest post.
You can draft an email from scratch with a brief introduction to the post along with a link. Or, you can automate this if you are using an email marketing service that facilitates this.
11) Email/Forum signature
Another handy technique for content marketing is by adding your latest blog post in your email signature. Also, most of the forums allow you to put at least one signature with your replies within the forum. You can leverage these opportunities which work great for blog promotion.
Anyone who reads your emails or a thread that you have started in a forum will notice the signature, which creates an opportunity to attract more visitors to your blog.
12) Review the results
When you have worked so hard in promoting your content online, it becomes very important to take a look at the results. By checking the number of social shares, retweets, stumbles, or votes on Reddit, you get a pretty decent idea about how your blog post is being received and what are the visitors saying.
This way you can figure out how to proceed. You can also tweak the post and make it even more interesting based on the feedback.
If you follow the above checklist after publishing a new blog post, I am certain that it will do you a lot of good. The important thing is to help people with your content and your audience is bound to grow. Your site will get visitors, the social following will increase and this will help you in marketing your content in the future.
I will be waiting to hear your feedback on this post. If this post was helpful to you or taught you something new, do share it with your friends.