Strategic Marketing and Charleston PR » blogging

7 Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

Connection Maven — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:53:53 +0000

Is your blog like a field of dreams? If you write it they will come? Readers can be developed with promotion.

So you write posts for your corporate blog or your personal blog. And you’ve learned how to make your posts interesting and have been writing regularly. Hopefully you are doing this to provide a body of information to your clients and attract new clients as well. You may be doing this to enhance your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and bring traffic for your targeted keywords.

Blogging, is not an “If you build it, they will come,” sport. You must do as the newsboys of the last century did and stand on the digital corner and promote your blog. If you don’t you’re wasting your valuable writing effort and time. You can dramatically increase traffic to your blog by using a few tools.

It only takes a small bit of effort to get your posts promoted.

The most effective promotions tools that I’ve used are grouped in three categories:

-Social Media
-Blog Feeds or Syndication
-E-mail marketing

Let’s look at each way to promote your blog content:

Social Media:

Facebook Pages

You can easily link your blog content to your Facebook Business Page with the application Networked Blogs or at a minimum you can manually post links to your blog’s latest articles.

Twitter

Using either Twitter or preferably HootSuite you can write interesting leads and connect them with shortened URLs that provide trackable stats to measure your results. You can schedule your tweets to show up in your stream so you know they go out when your readers are most often reading.

Su.pr

Su.pr is a syndication service that allows for link shortening and tweeting. You can immediately tweet or schedule the tweet about your blog content. Write a very compelling headline and watch the stats. You can download them and you can also see what suggested posting times will get the more response.

Blog Feeds and Syndication:

RSS

Almost every blog has a built in RSS feed. If yours doesn’t, you need to be sure to make that happen. This allows readers who find your content of value to subscribe in their choice of reader, pulling your content to them. One of the most popular readers is GoogleReader. Personally, I use Bloglines, but to each her own.

Feedburner

Feedburner is the most often thought of feed distribution service. Now owned by Google, it provides great stats and shows how your feed has been used and how many clicks back to your site have been taken to interact with your post.

BlogBurst

This syndication service promotes qualified blogs to high traffic websites. BlogBurst says, “We promote your blog…Our top-tier publishers display your blog content on their sites. Clicks on your byline drive referral traffic to your blog. It is a distribution and matching service designed to widen your blog’s reach and drive traffic to your blog regardless of other affiliations you may have.”

E-mail:

Signature
How many e-mails to you send a day? While the usage of e-mail has dropped off, it is still a primary business communication tool. Provide a link to your blog in your e-mail signature. Feedburner provides code to allow you to have an animated badge with recent headlines, so e-mail recipients will actually see your blog’s headlines and be enticed into reading. But if you choose not to use the Feedburner animated headline rotator, you can at a minimum provide a hyperlink to your blog.

By using these tools I can guarantee you will dramatically increase your blog’s readership. And isn’t this exactly what you want to do?

Bloggers influence grows, tops social media

Connection Maven — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:59:00 +0000

Bloggers are influential. A study reports that 50% of those who report reading blogs, trust them for their evaluations of products. And of those using blogs to evaluate products, 52% of respondents said that blogs tipped their decision on which product to purchase at the time of their purchase.

Given their growth as influencers, the FTC has outlined new rules to help consumers understand the relationships between bloggers and the products that they review. Bloggers who review products that have been provided to them gratis or who have been compensated must inform consumers of their relationship to the product manufacturers or providers.f

While the number of adults who read blogs has grown by 300% in the past four years, blogs are not quite mainstream yet in terms total audience. There are generational differences in who reads and writes. Younger readers are disproportionately those who visit and write blog posts. Older internet surfers constitute almost half the 35-44 year old group.

So, if your company has a mix of media to deliver information about your services and products, you need to be sure to include blogging in the mix, especially if your audience is 45 and under.

Why have a business blog?

Connection Maven — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Over the last few years, I’ve had clients respond with strong a “no” when we’ve suggested that they have a blog. Most have concerns that they won’t be able to keep up the posts and most don’t want the exposure to negative comments that they believe the company will receive. Others worry about the expense of delegating someone to respond. With good management, authenticity and transparency in posts and responses to comments, many of these objections can be overcome.

The positive points of having a blog for your business are capably enumerated in this post from Conversation Agent. Especially insightful are these points:

Blogs allow you to:

provide topical and relevant information and resources regularly, to become an appointment
receive feedback from your readers and engage them in discussions that are relevant to them
distribute your content more widely thanks to Google and the larger business community online

Valeria Maltoni’s helpful suggestions of how to organize one’s thoughts and ideas work.

As she notes, printed and mailed newsletters have their place as do e-newsletters, but a blog allows for two way conversation. As we’ve noted in previous posts (Ask your users what they think), we want to listen and engage more than talk to.

Blogging is a rewarding way to engage your customers and provides immediate and updated news to them.

Are bloggers important?

Connection Maven — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Recently I was working on a publicity campaign for the launch of a new business. The plans for publicity called for the new business to share information with conventional media and bloggers.

Someone asked me, “Are bloggers important?” My reply, “Yes.” Sharing your news directly with those who start conversation is the best way to reach targeted persuaders.

Many old school types can’t see the power of blogging, they don’t read blogs or use them as a forum and there is not a really good way, yet, to measure the power of a blog. (If you know of one, do tell me!) Oldies know blogs exist, but it’s like the feelings that advertisers had ten years ago about the Hispanic and Latino market, “why bother?” And now that the other shoe has dropped on that market, we clearly understand the importance of the Hispanic and Latino markets.

Here’s why bother, about blogs that is. Bloggers and their readers are conversationalists who are sharing, posting, inquiring and recommending on a daily basis. Not only that, they are Twittering, FaceBooking, and, yes, even MySpacing to their contacts. Not only are bloggers opinions real, they are searchable.

Google is caching pages with your company’s name, your products and your press releases.

This isn’t just my opinion, but is the reality of the merged world of marketing and PR.

I’ve been reading, How the Web Has Changed the Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott and I am especially impressed with his statement about the change.

“With blogs, we communicate directly with our audience, bypassing the media filter completely. We have the power to create our own media branding the niche of our own choosing. It’s about being found on Google and Yahoo! and vertical sites and RSS feeds.”

So, if you have not started a blog, not read a blog, or don’t have one on your company site, today’s the day.