New blog post? Now do these 3 things to get more readers
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You slave over your blog posts. They sparkle with your expertise and unique insights.
3 Ways to Get More Readers for Your Blog Post
Each one is a little like a child – like a proud parent, you want the very best future for that post.
But instead, you leave your post languishing Home Alone-style on your website. Only your subscribers ever see it.
But you can change that.
Rather than hope for an Act of Google to magically draw a flood of new readers to your post, you really need to push it into the world through marketing. Some marketing experts say that you should actually spend significantly more time promoting your blog posts than you do writing them.
Derek Halpern, the founder of SocialTriggers.com, a site that shows you how to use human psychology principles to increase traffic and sales online, recommends that you apply the 80/20 rule to your posts: spend 80% of your time promoting and only 20% of your time creating them.
Blog post promotion: 3 ways to get more exposure
1. Syndicate it.
This fancy-pants word simply means that you make your post available to multiple other sites. Instead of relying on visitors to stumble onto your post on your own website, you help more people find it by putting in places where they already spend time.
Many blogging tools have settings that allow you to automatically “push” new posts to your social networking profiles. As soon as you hit “publish” the new post appears on the sites you’ve connected. Voila! More exposure in less time. Here are a few places to syndicate your post:
- Facebook Business Page – In your applications area, search for the “Social RSS” application and set it up to publish your post to your Facebook page wall automatically.
- LinkedIn– Go to your profile page, look for the “WordPress” or “Blog Link” in the applications section and set it up to auto-post your blog to your LinkedIn profile.
- Other Social Networking Sites – On Google+, Plaxo, or other social sites? Most allow you to set up your blog’s RSS feed to automatically publish to the network.
2. Put it in your email signature.
Not everyone that you communicate with via email subscribes to your blog posts, right? Give your vendors, partners and colleagues a peek at the goodness you publish by adding your latest blog post headline to your email signature. Many email platforms offer apps – Wisestamp for Gmail, for one – to pull your latest blog post title into your email signature block automatically.
3. Publish it on content sharing sites.
One more way to get your posts in front of more eyeballs is to submit it to content sharing sites. While there are dozens and dozens of these, I’m going to mention three:
Alltop.com – Billing itself as an online newsstand, Alltop collects “all the top stories” from thousands of the most popular sites on the web and organizes them into topic categories. Users can view Hot Topics or create their own topic dashboards.
NetworkedBlogs.com – Like Alltop, NetworkedBlogs is a central place to read content. But it’s also a central place to post content. On the site, you can share the posts you read on Facebook, Twitter or directly with friends.
Outbrain.com – If you’re willing to spend a little cash ($10 per day minimum), your posts could end up recommended on high traffic websites like Wall Street Journal, Reuters & People.com. Good exposure for your blog post, and a credibility booster, too.
Your fame boosting assignment:
This week, pick one of these 3 things and add it to your blog publishing routine. The best part is, once you’ve set up the process, it’ll post automatically every time you publish. How genius is that?
Lori…great information! I never thought of tip #2! That is a FAB-u-lous idea! I plan on implementing that immediately! This comes at just the right time as I had been thinking my email signature needed a new boost! Thanks again!
You bet, Kelly! Fabulous is one of my favorite exclamations – it’s just so big and juicy.
I never thought to put it in my e-mail signature!!!!! Will certainly look at wisestamps ~~ Thanks Lori for MORE great information!
So happy that you find it helpful, lovely Laura!
You are a genius, Lori! I am off to implement your strategies…LOVE THEM!
So delighted to help, Ms. Sandi.
What great pointers! Love the idea of putting your blog post link in the signature line. Looking forward to implementing these right away.
Can’t wait to see it, Catherine!
Thanks so much for this Lori! Another keeper!
I’ve just signed up with Ezine articles, so can’t wait to get promoting my content!
Please do, Sarada. We need your event marketing wisdom to grow our businesses!
Fabulous! This is one value-packed post. And that quote from Derek blew me away. I spend so much time writing my posts (with the exception of my video posts) that I can’t imagine spending more than twice that amount of time promoting them.
But with these great tips, it will definitely be easier. Thank you!
Thanks, Nancy! Write less, promote more is definitely something Derek preaches. He publishes only a few times each month, saying that it’s more valuable to write something really great then several that are mediocre. I’m going to focus on promoting my own posts more this year, too.
Hi Lori! Such an awesome idea. Thank you for sharing! I really want to automate this and you’ve given me some great tips on how to do so. My blog articles are also published on EzineArticles. Some people say that it’s wrong to have it published in so many places. Is that true? Thanks Lori! Janet
Hi Janet,
Thanks for commenting! I don’t think it’s exactly ‘wrong’ to have your blog articles published in so many places, but Google does penalize a bit for duplicate content. If you were able to modify some portion of the article, then it wouldn’t be considered duplicate. ~LNB
Thank you, Lori! The signature line with the blog post link – that’s such a good idea!
Lore,
What great advice. I am someone who doesn’t always get the response I would like and I do slave over my blog posts so it is nice to think I can actually do something more proactive than just sitting by and waiting for others to respond.. As a matter of fact I just joined networked blogs!
Woo hoo, Michele! You are on your way to more readers.
New blog post? Now do these 3 things to get more readers…
You’ve just published a new blog post. Then, you’ve left your post languishing Home Alone-style on your website. Rather than hope for an Act of Google to magically draw a flood of readers, you need to push it into the world through marketing. Here ar…
Hi there! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell
you I genuinely enjoy reading through your blog posts. Can you
recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that cover
the same subjects? Many thanks!