Marketing your Blog Post

Blogging has become a popular marketing tool for businesses. The hope of all blog posts is to attract an audience to your site, have your content shared with others, and attracts search traffic from the major search engines. In some cases this does happen, but in a lot of cases, nothing happens to your blog. Sure, it’s indexed and may attract some attention, but it could also just be another post in your blog. In order to make sure that your blog posts are gaining the attention they deserve, it will take organization, planning, and effort. There are some key strategies that you can use to help you maximize your reach with every blog post.

Build a Community

In order to have a successful blog, you need a community of engaged listeners. We’re talking about the people who have given you permission to market directly to them. These are the people that subscribe, follow, and actually want the information you are providing. When building your community, think about the demographics that you are writing to. Who is your audience? What kind of information are they interested in? Make sure to tailor your postings to your targeted audience. Also, use social media to market your content on. Social media is a great way to create networks and gather followers. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn are all worth looking into. While social media is a great outlet to reach out to your audience, an email list is also effective to reach people. Encourage them to sign up to your mailing list to read about the latest news and happenings of your business.

Create Sharable Content

When you write your content, think about creating content that is easy to market. This is easier said than done, but by doing so, you will create posts that are more likely to get shared. There are several types of posts that engage well with audiences such as featured articles, interviews, co-author posts, and lists.

Optimize your Blog

The internet provides a wealth of information and people are constantly searching for information online. By optimizing your blog and creating targeted content, you will likely attract new visitors. It’s great to gain new people to your blog post, but make sure you put in some consideration for SEO to help with search engines. By putting in a little extra effort, you will give yourself a chance at being more discoverable.

Title: the title could be one of the most important aspects of your blog post. Titles should be engaging, but they should also be optimized for search. 

Keywords: Take the time to find out who your audience is and what they are searching for. Once you have that information, you can create content that includes their search keywords and potentially reach out to more people that would be interested in your blog. 

URL: the URL of your post should contain the full title of the post, or a shortened version of it.

Description: Searchers will usually see the title of your post first, but don’t skimp on the description. Entice your readers to read the entire article by providing an interesting summary of your article. Always leave them wanting more.

Headings: When writing a blog post, it’s a good idea to use headings to break up key points. This makes the text easier to read and not quite so daunting. 

Share Your Content on Social Media

This may sound like a no brainer, but not everyone thinks to share their blog post on Facebook or other media outlets. Once you’ve build your community, you will have an audience ready to go to check out your latest postings. You can also repost old content, use social sharing buttons on your blog, and repurpose quotes from your posts to grow your follower numbers and promote your blog.

Collaborate

There are a variety of ways to reach out to others and collaborate to market your blog. If others will benefit from helping you promote a piece, they will be more willing to help you out and make your blog a success. For example:

• You can seek out other bloggers that share content besides their own and develop a relationship with them.
• You can include source links on your blog and reach out to people who created those articles.

Repurpose Content

Any blog post that you create can always be repurposed and made into something fresh. Here are a couple of ideas:

• Create a slideshow: upload to SlideShare.
• Turn your slideshow into an infographic: Infographics are great because they are easy to read and simple to follow. They can be effective in helping you create engaging content for your blog.
• Create a video: turn your blog post into a video. Discuss the key points of your blog and make it quick, fun, and entertaining. 
• Create a podcast: there are quite a few people who would rather listen than read. You can read your blog post aloud and record it.

There are many different ways to effectively market your blog post, a few of which we mentioned. Use the strategies that work for you and get to writing.