I used to bag on the whole “content is king” movement, until I started to experience the benefits of creating quality content on a regular basis. In fact, I contribute a lot of my agency’s success to content marketing.
Blogging is something that not only produces great results for me, but it’s part of my job that I truly love. Creating a great blog post is one thing, but leveraging it to attract readers, engagement, and conversions is another thing. Everyone has a blog these days. There are countless articles and “how to” guides that say regular blogging is the way to go.
I have news for you…
You can sit glued to your computer and blog 24/7, but that isn’t going to magically attract readers and sales. You need to put some effort into attracting eyeballs right after you click that “publish” button.
I decided to put together a list of all the strategies I use to promote my blog content. They have proven to help me get more traffic and land new clients along the way.
1. Proofread Your Post
This is the first thing I do BEFORE I hit the “publish” button. You might have a great post concept, but failing to proofread it can bite you in the rear sometimes. Simple spelling mistakes or grammatical errors can turn off potential customers vey easily.
Think about it for a minute. Would you feel comfortable handing over your payment information to a business that can’t take the time to ensure their content doesn’t have any spelling errors? If they don’t put any effort into that, how much effort do you think they have put into their website’s security? Do you think they have a secure payment gateway? If your personal information going to be in good hands?
Sure, mistakes happen, but you can potentially lose a lot by being lazy. Even if you are too busy to proofread, hire somebody. Virtual assistants are very affordable and if you are publishing a lot of content it is worth considering hiring an editor on a part time basis. If you are on a tight budget, consider finding a friend or family member to help with the proofreading duties.
2. Share Your Posts on Alltop
Alltop is a popular aggregator that can help spread your content. There is a category for virtually every niche out there. All you have to do is sign up here and then suggest your website for the proper category. I have never seen a website turned down unless it was in the porn or illegal niche, such as pharmaceuticals.
A lot of news websites will pull content from here. All you have to give Alltop is your RSS feed URL. There is a lot of talk about duplicate content, and as long as the post is indexed on your website first there will be no issues. I would highly suggest you use a RSS plugin on your website that allows you to set a delay. For example, you can set it so a new post won’t be available until 2 or 3 days after it’s first published. This way Google has time to index it. If your site is older and your content is indexed almost instantly, a 2 to 3 day delay is perfect. If your site is newer, start with a 5 to 7 day delay.
3. Share on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is hit or miss. It really depends on what business you are in. For example, if you are an e-commerce website that sells electronics, you might not get a lot of traffic from LinkedIn, unless you are writing very creative posts that have click bait type titles.
For a B2B company, like mine, it makes more sense. An SEO company can potentially connect with marketing directors and business owners that are looking for an SEO company.
Still, it takes literally 5 seconds to post your blog on LinkedIn, so it’s well worth exploring that avenue. You never know, you might attract some traffic that converts, or at least shares the post with his or her social media audience.
4. Share on Facebook
This is common sense. Everyone and their brother is on Facebook. If you own a business you probably have a personal Facebook profile as well as a business page. The mistake I see many people make is that they only share their blog post with their business page. Take the extra 3 seconds and share it with your personal connections as well. These are the people that are more likely to re-share it for you, helping you gain even more exposure.
Think about it for a minute: if you have 1,000 Facebook friends, and just 50 of them like, comment, or share the post, all of their connections are going to see that. It’s such as easy way to get more eyeballs on your content. You never know if your friends have connections that are in the market for whatever it is that you are selling. Since there is that “friendly” connection, it eliminates that barrier of trust. They already trust you since you are connected to one of their friends.
5. Share on Twitter
Twitter is gaining in popularity. They were flat lining for a while and people were posting content on Twitter just because. Twitter has really taken some steps to get people excited again. They recently live streamed a NFL football game and it was a huge success.
It’s things like this that get the media talking about Twitter again, and not for its poor stock performance. This positive buzz will get more users back on the network, so expect a more responsive Twitter audience if they continue to make advances in improving engagement.
Anytime someone retweets or likes your share, make sure to reply to them and thank them. Twitter users are a very loyal bunch. If you interact with them on a personal level instead of just sharing content and ignoring the engagement, they will start to interact with all of your tweets.
6. Share on Reddit
Reddit is a referral traffic goldmine, but only if you do it in a non promotional way. I see so many people share their content with brand new accounts and the account name matches their business name. This is a fast way to get down voted and flagged as a spammer. Reddit users are some of the savviest internet users around.
This is what you need to do if you want to get crazy amounts of referral traffic…
- Buy aged Reddit accounts that have a lot of karma and posts/replies. This makes your shares on Reddit look like they are coming from a long term user.
- Create post titles that sound like they aren’t coming directly from your company.
- Up vote and comment on other posts in the same sub Reddit so your activity looks normal and not just promoting your share
7. Send to Your Email List
You should aim to attract new email subscribers to your list every day. Just because someone submits his or her email to your list it doesn’t mean they are going to visit your site daily and see all of your content.
You don’t want to annoy your list and email them about every post, especially if you are publishing daily, but when you create a very special post or it the topic is highly relevant to something in the news, for example, send your list a short note. Something like this works very well:
“Hey, just wanted to let you know that we published a new post about [topic] that I think you will find a lot of value in. You can check it out here [link].”
8. Ask Niche Influencers to Share Your Post
You should always be networking and building relationships with key influencers in your niche. This can be other bloggers or journalists. Anyone with access to a large social media following that is closely related to whatever industry your business is in.
I’ve written many posts in the past about building relationships and performing outreach. If you need some ideas to help you make connections with influencers and media contacts, check them out.
Once you have a solid relationship established you can shoot them a quick email and ask them to share a particular post. This is a long term strategy, because it takes time to build a relationship to the level needed in order to get them to agree. Again, don’t abuse the relationship; only ask once in a while and make sure the post is epic. They won’t want to share a sub-part piece of content with their followers.
9. Interlink to Relevant Older Blog Posts
There is a lot of SEO value that comes from interlinking your content. It helps to keep your visitors on your website longer and reduces your bounce rate, but more importantly it continues to educate the visitor and build the trust. Once you start to blog for a long period of time you will start to have content that compliments your new posts, so take the opportunity to link back to it.
In addition, use a “related posts” plugin that makes content suggestions at the end of the post based on the post’s subject. This works the same way interlinking does. The longer a visitor stays on your website, the greater the chance of converting them.
10. Comment on Relevant Content & Link Back
Think “blog commenting” but not in a spammy way. I’m sure you can name 5 to 10 blogs in your niche that have a lot of visitors. Go to their blogs and see what kind of social shares and comment numbers they have. It’s good to have a list of about a dozen blogs that are niche relevant and have high engagement.
Every time you publish a new piece of content find a blog post on their website with a similar topic and a recent publication date. Make an intelligent comment and naturally mention your recent post, including a link to it.
If it appears to be spammy it will be deleted. Take the extra 2 minutes and write a comment that directly provides feedback on the post and casually mentions your post. If you just write a sentence or two, the blog owner will know what you are up to. If you provide an intelligent paragraph or two they will be more likely to let the comment (and link) slide.
11. End Your Post with a Question to Trigger Comments
Blog posts with high social shares and comments draw more eyeballs to them. Why? Because visitors automatically associate high engagement with popular content. So, you need to take every step necessary to help spark more engagement.
Ending your post with a question is a great way to attract comments. The last thing a visitor reads is an invite to ask a question via a comment. The last step below will help this as well.
12. Reply to All Comments
Simply inviting your blog readers to comment isn’t enough. You need to be very active and reply to every single comment that is left on your blog. Why? Because it shows that you care and it shows your visitors that there is a likely chance that their question or comment receives a reply.
Think about it for a minute…
You would be more willing to take the time to leave a comment if you were almost certain the blog author will reply to you, right?
Even if your reply is something as simple as, “Thanks for the feed back!,” it shows your audience that you take the time to not only read every comment, but reply as well. Little steps like this take some time, but you have to be willing to go the extra mile if you really want content marketing to work for you.
Conclusion
We all know that content is important. This is why it’s hard to find a company that DOESN’T actively blog. But, just because they are posting new content on a regular basis it doesn’t necessarily mean they are experiencing success.
In order for your blog to become a marketing asset, you must get people to see it, interact with it, and return on a regular basis. It’s very rare to convert a first time visitor to your website. A blog helps you educate the visitor and build a level of trust. When you provide enough education and value, it’s much easier to convert sales.
Blogging has been very effective for me and my SerpLogic brand, but it’s taken consistency and going the extra mile to get to where I am now. If you are willing to put in the extra work, follow these 12 steps on a consistent basis every time you publish new content. Results won’t happen overnight, but if you keep at it you will eventually experience what content marketing can do for your business.
Do you have any questions or any additional tips that you do after you publish a new blog post? If so, leave a comment below and I will do by best to reply as quickly as possible.
