The See Jane Write blogging challenge #bloglikecrazy kicks off in two days. (If you’re new around here, you can learn all about #bloglikecrazy here.)
I’ve discussed before how I believe blogging every day for 30 days can help you be more creative and more consistent. This challenge can also drastically increase your blog traffic but simply publishing new content every day isn’t enough to do so. Yes, you need to develop an editorial calendar of 30 blog post ideas for November, and you need to find time to write your blog posts, but you must make time to promote your blog posts, too. And this is where so many bloggers drop the ball.
When it comes to blogging there are five important steps: PLAN, PRODUCE, POLISH, POST, and PROMOTE. So many writers neglect that final step, eager to just get back to the creative process. This is fine if you’re just writing for yourself. But if you’re trying to build an audience for your work, you must promote!
The numbers don’t lie. One month I compared the pageviews of my posts that I did promote to the posts I didn’t promote and the difference was exactly what I expected: the posts I didn’t promote only got a third of the pageviews received by the posts I did promote.
Here are a few ways you can promote your blog posts:
Share each blog post to your blog or business Facebook page and share it on your personal Facebook profile and in any relevant Facebook groups, including groups for bloggers and groups related to the topic of your post. Just be sure the group admin allows self-promotion in the group. (Feel free to share your posts in the See Jane Write Network Facebook group as long as you are commenting on other posts in the group and interacting with group members.)
Tweet out a link to your post using intriguing copy and schedule tweets promoting that same post for the next several days. The day you publish the post, try to tweet about the post once in the morning and once in the late afternoon or evening. Then tweet about the post at least once a day for the next 14 days. That seems excessive but considering a tweet is typically in your feed only for mere seconds, it’s not. Just be sure you’re also tweeting about other things, too. You don’t want your feed to be saturated with self-promotion.
Create a Pinterest-friendly graphic for your post and be sure to share it on Pinterest. Depending on your niche, this can be one of the best ways to make a post go viral.
Post an aesthetically pleasing photo or graphic to Instagram and give your followers a teaser to your blog post. For example, if you’re sharing 5 tips in a post, share two or three on Instagram and tell your followers to head to your blog for the other tips. Be sure to include a link to your post in your bio.
LinkedIn and Google+
Don’t forget about LinkedIn! Share links to your posts on this platform as well if it seems appropriate. Also, share posts on Google+.
Email List
Be sure to promote your blog posts in the content you send to your email list. You could email a post roundup or send an email focusing on the most value-packed or most intriguing post and include mentions and links to the other posts as well.
Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Snapchat, IG Stories
These days in the blogging world video and live streaming are all the rage. So hop on Facebook Live or Instagram Live and discuss the topic of your latest blog post. Think of your live stream as a trailer for your post that encourages viewers to go read the entire piece. You can also do this using Snapchat and IG Stories.
Side note: Don’t try to do ALL of these. You’ll easily get overwhelmed if you do. In addition to promoting to your email list, pick one or two social media platforms and focus on those. Trying to be everywhere at once will surely lead to blogger burnout.
If you really want to try to promote your posts everywhere be sure to use a scheduling tool like CoSchedule or HootSuite so you can automate the process.
So don’t forget, while you’re blogging like crazy be sure to promote like crazy, too, and use the hashtag #bloglikecrazy.