In the digital marketing world, publishing a blog post on your website is just step one of a process. If you want to reach a larger audience and get your content out there, you need to take promotional actions or it will simply be live on your website.
Blogging is a vital part of a digital marketing strategy, but it needs to be promoted. Here are ten effective tactics to market your blog:
1: Visibility
You need to ensure that your blog is part of your website’s main navigation. Blogs, as compared to a website, are much easier to keep up to date with fresh, high-quality content. Without this fresh content, there is no reason for your potential buyers to come back to your website.
Blogs are designed to generate repeat traffic to your website, but if your blog is not visible at first glance, its purpose is rendered useless.
2: Keywords
Use your researched keywords in your blog posts. Search engines love new content and will index (using your keywords) your website more frequently.
3: Quality
Quality does matter. Your blog has the potential to create more web traffic than a regular, static website ever could. A blog can attract a high volume of quality traffic from the pool of prospective buyers you are trying to reach. The key to achieving that level of success is to publish and promote quality content.
Writing blog posts to fill a word count is not going to be enough as there are large amounts of quality blogs you are competing with.
4: Pictures
Use graphics and images to tell your story. Visuals make your post more interesting—plus 40 times more shareable on social media. Each platform tends to have different image requirements but the effort will increase your visibility and engagement. Ensure that the image size and orientation are tailored to each network—using the landscape format for Facebook and Twitter, and portrait for Pinterest.
Creating images that look consistently great across platforms will not only boost your article’s visual marketing but also encourage readers to spend more time on your post, making it worth the extra time and effort.
5: Twitter
Get tweeting! Twitter is one of the simplest platforms for sharing your post. It’s fast as well, especially with all the auto-tweeting tools that get the job done by automatically adding the article’s link to your Twitter stream.
If you prefer a more personal touch, you can always tweet the old-fashioned way. Inform your followers that you have a new post up on your blog, clue them in on what the article’s about, and of course share the link.
One tweet might not suffice though, as it may easily get overlooked in a follower’s busy Twitter stream. So plan your future tweets for the article. Share it multiple times on the day it’s posted. Then in the next few days, tweet about it once or twice daily. Just don’t forget to change things up; don’t use the same Tweet copy all over again.
6: Facebook
Publish your blog post on Facebook. With the monster number of Facebook users, you can’t miss out on sharing new posts on your personal profile and, if you have one, your Facebook page (business page).
On your personal profile, besides the link to your post, you can add a related comment that you might only be comfortable sharing with family and friends. On your Facebook page, you can write briefly about how people who have “liked” your page will benefit from reading your article in order to encourage them to click through. You can also buy ads which will boost the visibility and reach.
7: Active Social Media
Share on all your other active social media sites. Whether it’s your LinkedIn connections or your Pinterest and Instagram followers, the key is to keep on sharing and engaging. The emphasis is on customized copy to your target audience. With Pinterest and Instagram, for instance, you’ll need a stunning image to catch your followers’ attention.
On LinkedIn, use a professional tone and describe how the article addresses business or career concerns to avoid sounding like you’re only interested in self-promotion. You can also post blogs in applicable groups.
8: Curation
Use automation to post your blogs to social media. Buffer and Hootsuite are inexpensive services that all you to post to multiple social accounts at one time as well as future scheduling your posts, as opposed to posting them all at the same time. This is especially useful for Twitter as you and should post your tweet (summary of your blog post with link to it) multiple times e.g. now, 1 week out, two weeks out, etc.
9: E-mail
Use the blog content in an e-mail. E-mail is still huge—that e-mail opt-in form on your website that lets you collect visitors’ email addresses goes a long way in helping you market your blog’s content.
The idea is to send an e-mail to all on your e-mail list whenever you update your blog or an e-mailed newsletter that summarizes several blog posts. In your e-mail, don’t just share the link to your post. Take this as an opportunity to briefly tell your subscribers what the post is about and why you think it would be valuable to them. Include a snippet of the post to entice them further.
There are e-mail marketing services such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc. that can help you distribute your e-mails. You can even automate it. All you need to do is to set the time when you want your subscribers to receive the notification, and the system will automatically send this out to all those on your e-mail list every time you publish new content.
10: Interlinking
Add links from old posts or product (services) pages. Interlinking works wonders but make sure it services a purpose to your reader not just for SEO (search engine optimization). Dig into your archives and look for older posts containing phrases or keywords that relate to your new post and provides added value to the reader. Then, add in a hyperlink for each match you find. Linking to a services or product page also is a good practice, just don’t go overboard, as your blog might look spammy.
Blogs are a key part of a successful Internet marketing strategy. Being proactive pays off—you want to get your blog content noticed and engaged with.
Hopefully this checklist will be of some use. If you have any other tips, please leave a comment.
Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to KIAI Agency Inc. and a clickable link back to this page.
