Five Steps to Promoting
Your Blog Posts
Writing a blog is an achievement, in and of itself, but that is just the beginning. In this article, Dr. Frederiksen shares five steps you can take to effectively promote your blog posts.
[su_pullquote align=”right”]Resources:
Marketing Techniques: Content Marketing and Thought Leadership
How to Become a High Visibility Expert
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If you have written a blog post for your firm, well done! But before you start celebrating, you need to promote it. Why? The more targeted your promotion, the greater its reach, and the more likely that it will connect with qualified prospects. That, in turn, could mean new business, partnerships, and connections.
Digital marketing tips like these can be found in Hinge’s How-To Guides from Hinge University, our online learning platform.
Here are the five steps you can take to effectively promote your blog posts.
1. Optimize Your Post for Search Engines
This step addresses one of your largest potential audiences: users of search engines. As we discussed in previous e-mails to you, you need to ensure each blog post includes relevant keywords which are being searched for on search engines, like Google. You can discover which keyword phrases are most effective by finding the relevant phrases that have a lower keyword difficulty and a higher search volume. Tools like Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool will help you find this information.
2. Help Readers Subscribe Easily
Include a mechanism in your blog to allow people to subscribe for e-mail updates—a great way to keep your expertise visible to your audience over time.
You can also give readers other options, such as receiving an e-mail whenever a new post is published. Or you can offer weekly or monthly digests, or options for RSS subscriptions. Most blogging platforms can accommodate all these options.
3. Use Social Media to Share Your Post
Social media is by far the best and easiest way to share your posts. For most professional services firms, LinkedIn and Twitter are the best choices in social media.
- Share posts as updates on your own LinkedIn page, and in any relevant LinkedIn groups you belong to. Consider other groups that could benefit from your post as well, including groups (whether open or closed) in which your friends or colleagues may be active. One effective way to share on LinkedIn is to ask a provocative question followed by a link to your blog post that addresses the issue.
- Twitter shares often depend on hashtags—so brainstorm some relevant hashtags and check Twitter to see how frequently they are used. Select several hashtags that are not only relevant and popular, but also used to address topics or issues relevant to your post. This way, you can promote your post several times without seeming excessive, because people follow a wide variety of hashtags. If your post includes some “evergreen” qualities, you can keep tweeting it over the course of several weeks or even months.
In addition to a link your post, try to include some type of intriguing hook. Examples include enticing excerpts from your post or thought-provoking questions.
For instance, a tweet regarding the Affordable Care Act might read: Small businesses are getting hit with big fines from these five mistakes in #ACAcompliance. Such hooks are much more effective in capturing readers’ attention than merely including a link.
4. Urge Colleagues to Share Your Post on Their Networks
Work with your coworkers or staff to extend your reach to additional untapped readers on their networks. Make sharing your post as easy as possible for your colleagues: e-mail them the link, select appropriate language to accompany it, and guidance for how or where to share it. You can also encourage them to tag your company’s social media pages in their own posts.
5. Share Others’ Content
Monitor any content that similar firms or individuals are sharing. This content is not so much competition as it is an opportunity to gain more reach and exposure.
For even more impact, engage with these posts and their authors. Doing so keeps your name out there, lets you start new conversations, shows off your expertise, and shares your blog with new, interested readers. Even more importantly, sharing creates goodwill—which may be reciprocated in the future.
That is the process in a nutshell, and one that is proven to work. Now, go forth and promote! And for more digital marketing tips like these, check out Hinge’s How-To Guides from Hinge University, our online learning platform.
Lee W. Frederiksen, PhD, is Managing Partner at Hinge, the leading branding and marketing firm for the professional services. Hinge conducts groundbreaking research into high-growth firms and offers a complete suite of services for firms that want to become more visible and grow.
Dr. Frederiksen can be contacted at (703) 391-8870 or by e-mail to LFrederiksen@hingemarketing.com.
