10 Blog Promotions Best Practices Content Writers Should Be Aware
Do you spend most of your time writing your blog or promoting it?
If the answer is writing the blog, then you are doing it wrong. Let me tell you why: According to Joseph Jaffee — an author, speaker, and thought leader on marketing, you should ideally spend 54 minutes promoting your blog for every hour you spend writing.
To break it down for you, 90% of your time should be dedicated to promoting your blog and just 10% writing it.
Let that sink in.
Come to think of it, what’s the point of writing brilliant content if no one sees and reads it? Right?
I’m going to share with you my ten best blog promotion practices that have helped my blogs garner a lot of traffic.
Let’s dive in.
(If you want to skip reading and watch the video instead, this is where you need to go 👇🏻)
Step 1: Share the blog from the company’s social handle
This tip is a no-brainer and most of us will already be using it as part of our promotional activities, but let me explain it again. Let’s say your company’s social page has X number of followers. Then why not make use of them? You can boost viewership for the blogs by sharing it on every one of your business's social accounts — such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. And you will be amazed by the number of retweets, likes, and shares you will get.
Also, there’s another perk to this — chances are thought leaders might be following your company account
Step 2: Share the blog from the author’s social handle
I always share my content on all my social media accounts — in fact, it’s almost second nature to me. I find it an excellent way to get more visibility and ultimately increase traffic and shares from my audience.
Also, I always make sure to tweak each message for every social medium to suit each network.
Another tip I’d like to give you is to build a personal brand and post consistently. Don’t turn up when you have a new blog post to share. On days you’re not posting, engage with other people’s content by sharing and liking it. Also, there is a general rule of thumb: For every promotional post, make sure you write at least 2 non-promotional posts.
Also, I include my blog link in all my social media profiles — Again, a no-brainer — but easy to be overlooked.
Step 3: Take out 5 snippets from the blog
Thought you could just share your blog post once on all social media networks and call it good? Well, guess what? The tip I’m now going to give you will allow you to extract snippets from different sections of your original content and share it on social media.
It could be subheadings, stats, or even tweetable quotations from within the blog. Schedule it to go live over the next few months with at least a week or two gaps. Use free social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Tweetdeck, etc.
This is also a great way to test which messaging will work with your audience.
Step 4: Teaser video
When I promote my blog post, I think of every way to drive an engaged audience. I create a content teaser video and embed it as part of the blog intro section. I also make sure to share it separately on social media to promote the blog.
Also, I include captions, along with a post description and a link to my blog on social.
My tip is to promote your video on social media as a sponsored post so you can fine-tune your targeting
Step 5: Share it inside any communities you are a part of
Communities within social media are a place where people of the same interests connect, right? What I would do is identify ten such groups or communities where I can share my blog or even for that matter my teaser video. Make sure the group is active and see how the traffic boosts. Also, endorse your blog so that people will come to know of its goods. For this, I suggest you directly approach your connections and ask them to share your post on their network.
Step 6: Find relevant Quora questions
For me, Quora is an awesome way to connect directly with my target audience, solve people’s problems, and include a link back to my blog. How cool is that? You can do it too! Go on to Quora, type in questions related to your blog post and you will be surprised by the number of questions specific to your industry.
Don’t be salesy. Do this only if you think it will give value to the readers.
Step 7: Publish images from the blog on Pinterest
Pinterest is undeniably powerful, which is why I’ve included it on this list. What I would suggest you do is pick the images you’ve featured in the blog and post it on Pinterest. Include 2–3 custom hashtags in your pins, so people will only see your related content.
Also, images that are red and orange, have no face, and have an aspect ratio between 2:3 and 4:5 have been known to get the most repins when compared to blue or those with multiple dominant colors.
Adding to that, keep your descriptions slightly more than 300 characters as it is found to get the most Repins.
Step 8: Boost your blog posts with paid ads
Paying for sponsored ads to boost your blog posts on social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is a choice you should decide upon — as it is based on your budget. For me, it is a great way to micro-target my audience and boost the posts I’ve already shared on these channels.
Test out a few different posts to see which ones perform best organically, and then sponsor the ones with the highest clickthrough rate or engagement.
Step 9: Syndicate on LinkedIn and Medium
When I see a blog of mine that doesn’t really get any traffic, I would syndicate that post on sites such as LinkedIn and Medium as they are known for accepting high-quality content to republish.
Step 10: Turn your blog into a detailed YouTube video or a SlideShare deck
So has your blog performed well in terms of traffic or signups? What I do is to take it to the next level by turning the blog into a detailed YouTube video or even a SlideShare deck. After all, people prefer watching videos, so why not reach out to them in a format they love to see?
Also, while I’m at it, I would also embed the channel link right into my existing blog posts.
And finally, rinse and repeat — which means if your content is doing well, you should promote it again!
So these are my top ten best practices that every content writer should be aware of to promote their blogs.
What else do you do?
Let me know in the comments.
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