So, you write up that blog post. And you publish it. But, then what?

Do you just publish it, cross your fingers, and hope the world and the Google gods take notice?

Well, first off, what I hope you have done is didn’t just whip up some run-of-the-mill post. If you’re running a blog for true business purposes and not a news site, then I recommend The Redwood Strategy as your content strategy. Less blogging, but when you do do it, it really counts. And you spend time maintaining and updating flagship posts rather than constantly churning out new stuff.

If you do that, it affords you the time to really make it sound as well as to do promotion.

See, you might have heard about the 80/20 rule. It says that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts.

Well, what most bloggers are doing is spending 80% (or more) of their time on creating new content…. and not nearly enough time on the things it takes to actually grow traffic and revenue. It’s backwards… and you need to flip it upside down. You should be spending 20% of your time on content… 80% of your time on everything else.

Anyway…

So, what do you do after you write and publish that post?

Let’s go over it. First, let’s start off with the immediate actions. In upcoming issues, we can talk about some other strategies you can do to promote your content.

Email Your List

If we’re talking about immediate actions, then yes… emailing your own list with the new post is chief among them.

It’s simple. Just write up a little teaser email and link to your post. Don’t include the post in the email. Don’t send some generic “new post” email. Actually tease them and spike their curiosity so they’ll actually WANT to read your post.

Send that as a broadcast email to your “general list” or anybody not currently in the midst of a marketing campaign. (See the Email Marketing Engine training for more on how to structure your email marketing.)

Post To Social Media

Yep, more obvious low-hanging fruit. Obviously, you should tweet out your new post, post to your FB page, or any other social media you use. If you’re big on Pinterest, then by all means, craft up a nice Pinterest-friendly image for your post and post to Pinterest with the backlink.

Consider Boosting The Post

In my last Daily issue, I just go through saying that you could directly influence your own SEO with the use of paid traffic. Paid traffic has major uses – obviously. And one of them is to distribute your blog post content in front of the exact right people you’re looking to attract to that post.

We’ll continue on this more tomorrow, but first the low hanging fruit…

Consider a simply boosted post right to your own people. Keep in mind that when you post something to your social media accounts, a minority of them will actually see it. On Facebook pages, the actual organic reach of a post can be annoyingly small. The way to expose the post to more of your “fans” is to boost it right to your own fans.

So, consider dropping a set amount of money into a boost. Perhaps just $10 or so. See how it works out.

Obviously, follow that Redwood Strategy. Also, be sure that post is optimized to get readers to DO something that can help expand the business. This way, that little $10 boost can actually turn into something useful to reimburse your $10. But, still, it’s only $10.

View that post as a test. If you get decent results from the tiny boost, that tells you that if MORE people saw it, it’d be even better. So,  you can use a boosted post as a test to see if you want to use it as an actual ad with a bigger budget.

The Facebook Ads Blueprint covers not only the use of boosted posts, but how to move into actual ads.

Same goes for Twitter (with promoted tweets) and most any other social network has an option. Obviously, don’t use them all in a paid manner unless the money is flowing. But, be willing to try something paid to get that post out in front of eyeballs.

Your blog content should be designed to be a real marketing asset. And, to make an asset pay off, you need to be willing to invest a bit into it.

OK, see ya on the next issue. 🙂

– David