You followed my formula to start churning out blogs more consistently. But so what? If your blogs are simply sitting on your website, waiting to be noticed, they’re not doing anything for you.
You need to actually do something with your blogs so they get noticed by your audience and your potential customers. Otherwise, what’s the point?
[bctt tweet=”What’s the point of your blog if you just let it sit there? Do something with the content!” username=””]
Share on Social
Your audience won’t know by osmosis that you published a new blog and naturally gravitate to it. You need to let people know that it’s there. That means sharing it on social media. I use CoSchedule* to make sure that my blogs are published on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. I also publish some of my posts to LinkedIn manually.
Sharing blog posts on social media lets my audience know that I have something valuable to tell them, and it also allows them to reshare with their own audience.
You can also share your blogs in your email marketing campaigns. I don’t recommend sending out every blog to your list via an RSS feed. But I do recommend highlighting a few key points and including them in your next email (with a link to the blog, of course!).
[bctt tweet=”You need to let your audience know that your blog is there—share widely on social!” username=””]
Add an Image
Images spruce up the blog post and make it look more interesting when sharing on social media. It also makes the post more visually pleasing on your website. Use your own images, stock images you purchased or create your own branded titles (like I do) to spruce up your blog posts. (It goes without saying that you should only use public domain or purchased images—no “borrowing” from someone else’s website.)
Share Again
It’s so easy to share online content that it just makes sense to share more than once. Plus, your audience may have missed it the first time around (especially on Twitter) because of high traffic or not being online at the time of your post. But be aware that no one wants to only see your first blog on Facebook—and nothing else. So curate some content from other industry experts to post on your social pages, and create some of your own great content. As your blog grows, you’ll be able to reshare other pieces and offer a variety of content without much effort. And there are systems you can use to automatically repost for you—like Edgar, which I personally don’t currently use but have colleagues who do with great success!
[bctt tweet=”It’s so easy to share online content that it just makes sense to share your blog more than once.” username=””]
Respond to the Comments
It takes a while for a new blog to get noticed, which means that it usually takes a while before you need to worry about comments. But when a blog strikes a chord with your audience, they’ll want to comment on it. Be sure to check in from time to time so you can respond in a timely manner. Those who comment want to know that they’ve been heard, so this is a vital step in the process.
Your content management system should queue up your comments for you to approve and it’s easy to respond on the back-end of your website. Be sure you have an image loaded that will appear next to your comment so readers know it’s you.
Cross-link
As you grow your blog, find opportunities to cross-link your own content. Link back to old blogs to remind your audience that you have more information available elsewhere on your website. For example, I referenced my blog-writing formula at the top of this post and linked to my post about that topic. Within that post, I linked to two other blogs. This allows me to offer more value in one blog, without having to rewrite or repurpose the content from other blogs.
[bctt tweet=”As you grow your blog, find opportunities to cross-link your own content, linking back to old posts.” username=””]
Maintaining a blog is a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be a full-time job. If you’re like most businesses, you have an income stream that your blog helps market (and your blog isn’t the income stream itself). Developing systems to help your blog get noticed is essential, and finding the tools to help you do that is critical. It’s all about planning ahead and finding ways to automate the system for the benefit of your business.
* This is an affiliate link and I do earn a small commission if you click on the link and purchase this service. I only recommend products that I personally use and find beneficial to my business.
