7 Hacks to Promote Your Blog Content

You’ve written your first blog post. Now you are ready to share that useful blog content with your buyers. Here are some easy steps for beginners to follow to make sure your content gets read and shared!

Step 1: Post your content on your blog site

If you’ve got a blog site, makes sure it’s got Share Buttons on each post to help readers quickly share it with others.  Optimize your headline and content for keywords (see more on keywords and hashtags below). To build your audience, I recommend setting a goal for yourself to blog at least once a week, then set up your campaign around it so that will get it read throughout the week. If you can blog more frequently than that, that’s even better.

Step 2: Find your keywords

You need keywords to help search engines find your post (you are using Yoast for WordPress, right?) to drive organic traffic there. You need hashtags to get your content out to interested readers on Twitter. Several other social media platforms are using hashtags as well. Identify 1 to 5 hashtags to use when you tweet about your post.  I pick more than I need for a single post so I can change up my terms at different points during the week, with the goal of reaching more readers. To find these terms quickly, I use RiteTag to search for either a phrase or a hashtag.  Topsy tells me how popular the term is, how recently it’s been used, and who’s using it.

Step 3: Include some images

Research shows that including an image with post and with your tweets helps attract views.  Find an image or two and size it according to the social media guidelines. You can get fancy with Canva, a free online design tool and add branded wording or titles. Canva also has some templates for appropriate sizing. Be sure that you use legally sourced or attributed images.  Don’t just pull images off the internet or you might be violating copyrights and that is stealing.

Step 4: Shorten your URL

Use a URL shortener. That way your link doesn’t use up a lot of characters in your post or tweet. Dan Zarrella researched which shorteners get the most retweets. Spoiler alert – use bit.ly – it’s free and you can even customize your URL if it’s one you need to use a lot, particularly for promoting events.

Step 5: Post on your company LinkedIn page

Your well-branded personal profile should link to your company page. It’s useful to put a message about your blog article on the company page.  That will give it some permanent visibility and it makes it easy for other people in your company to like or comment which then puts it in their feeds.

Post 6: Schedule your tweets

You can tweet simply by going into Twitter at various times and tweeting, but it’s going to be easier and get more visibility if you use Buffer or Hootsuite and load up tweets at intervals throughout the day and week. Change up your hashtags and the wording of your tweets to see what gets the best engagement. You don’t want to just be saying the same thing over and over. Some studies say that for business, the best times to tweet are are from 7 am to 3 pm EST Monday through Thursday.  You need to experiment for your target groups.  I just read another study that said the best time to tweet is between noon and 2 pm on Friday!  Go figure! I do know I have a small group of followers who are online and quite active on Friday so I do things that target them and their interests that day.  Goes to show you that you need to learn your audience, which can take some time. Once you have a following, there are reports and tools that can help you see when they are engaged.

Post 7: Post in Communities and Groups

You should belong to a number of LinkedIn Groups. When the group rules allow sharing articles, and when the topic is relevant, post your article on those groups and explain why it’s important and invite comments and discussions. Be sure that if you share in more than one group, you don’t post all at the same time. Space out your posts during the day so it’s not obvious in your feed that you did multiple postings. I recommend checking out Google+ and posting in your circles and groups there as well.  I find that my shares and posts via Google+ drives a lot of traffic to my website.

Space these activities out and repeat them during business hours throughout the week and by the end of the week you should have new readers and followers on LinkedIn and Twitter plus visitors going to your website.  Good work and keep that up each week!

Kathleen Glass is CEO and founder of Oinkodomeo, a Sales and Marketing Agency. We are passionate about bringing together the best of sales and marketing for a new focus on the buyer.