John was psyched! He got great feedback on his new blog post. Elizabeth had called him about it from the West Coast. He got emails and text messages about it from other folks. And Kevin even stopped by to chat about it. But why weren’t folks commenting on the blog itself?
Why you need to market your blog
John is hardly alone on this — many marketers are experiencing the same thing. They put a lot of work into writing a great blog post and then consider their job done. Then they wonder why no one engages with their content.
The reality is, there’s more work to be done. While content is very important, it can’t make your blog a success on its own. You need to market your blog! Doing so will help you create awareness for the blog, expand its reach, and generate leads for your business.
Why it matters from an SEO perspective
Setting up your business blog with a marketing strategy will also enhance your SEO efforts. In fact, if your blog has a lot of activity on it — people are sharing it, commenting on it, and engaging in a discussion — Google is more likely to pick it up in the search results. And the more activity taking place on your blog, the better your chances of having readers add backlinks to your site on their own personal blogs.
On top of that, marketing your blog within your professional and social networks will help you expand its reach and boost the visibility of your site. That will translate into better search results. In addition, the more readers you have looking at your blog – and coming back on a regular basis — the better your traffic will be.
3 Tips to expand your blog’s reach
Below are three tips to help you market your blog:
1. Promote it – and start internally. If you want your blog to succeed, you need to promote it. And one of the best places to start is with your company’s network. It’s probably a lot bigger than you think — especially when you consider everyone working within your organization, plus all of their friends and business connections in their own social networks, plus all of their friends and connections — get my drift? By tapping into your company’s network you can create greater awareness of your blog, and encouraging people to read and share its content in their own networks. This will expand its reach and drive more traffic to your site. And while the people that work in your organization might not be your target customers, someone in their social network may be, and they could benefit from reading your content.
2. Encourage conversations. One of the best ways to give your blog a boost and to enhance your social SEO efforts is to connect with your readers. But this can be a tad difficult if they don’t engage with the content first. Sure, promoting your efforts will help — and you can even call or text folks and ask them to comment on your blog – but you can’t force people to engage. Readers have to want to engage. So what to do? You can influence their desire to connect. The topics you write about can have a big impact on reader engagement, so try to select topics that are more likely to spark conversation. Also target topics of interest to your audience — a dive into your search analytics will help you see what people are searching for and engaging with on your site. This will help you create article ideas that will align with their interests. In addition, consider writing about top trending topics that have a lot of buzz around them, or “stir the pot” a bit by selecting a controversial topic that is relevant to your audience.
3. Create reasons to come back. Building-up a fan base is a key element in a successful blog marketing campaign. Fortunately, giving readers good reasons to come back will help you do just that. Besides engaging with readers — responding to their comments, asking about their interests, and finding out what they want more or less of – you’ve also got to create content that is compelling enough to drive repeat visits. Article series are also a great way to get readers to return. For instance, take a long article and divide it up into a series and post a new portion each day. You can also bring your readers back by creating surveys that draw people in so they will want to come back and see the results. And interesting and funny videos can also be effective as people will want to share them in their own social networks.
Clearly, content is king today, and blogging is a great tool to get your message out. But content alone won’t get the job done. To make your blog a success, you’ve got to market it.
What have you done to market your blog? Are you encouraging your readers to share, comment, and come back for more? Share your tips here! And be sure to share this article with your own network.
Nice post Michelle!
Funny you should mention tapping into your internal network, I was just wondering the same question.
It occurred to me that one of the ways any company can encourage internal blog-post sharing and commenting is by throwing a *mini-party* in celebration of each new post that goes live!
It could be as simple as bagels and soda, or small snacks to make this a special event, and more importantly, an event that most employees look forward to!
How is that for a simple magic behind social shares, and comments internally?
Good one Alex! I would not be opposed to post-blog celebrations
Anyone else have any ideas on this topic?
Not exactly a party idea, but I think another good way to make your internal team participate in writing and marketing the company blog posts is to educate your team about the benefits of building their own professional persona on social media.
Having an author page for every blog contributor with links to their social media accounts will reward people for contributing by giving them a nice addition to their professional portfolio and an easy link to share with others to show off their work.
By sharing the blog posts created by your fellow employees, you are increasing the chances that they will return the favor when your next blog post gets published, too!
That’s a really good point you bring up Angela!
Blog contributions play an important role in social media these days (Linked In has a Publications section on it), so creating an active blog is sure to help in any future career endeavors.
Internal promotion is such an obvious and easy win. I’m always surprised when people neglect this, but they often do.
“To make your blog a success, you’ve got to market it.” Great point Michelle. You still have to push to create that pull!
Do you have any advice on ways one might go about tapping into your internal network?
I know a lot of companies have trouble getting their internal resources to interact with their content.
What kind of things would you do to encourage people to share and engage with your posts beyond blatantly asking them to turn their social networks into company billboards?
Great question Matt!
One of the keys to tapping into your company’s internal resources and getting them to engage is to create awareness of the benefits of engaging. I think a lot of folks don’t realize the value in sharing their company’s content and just need that knowledge to do so.
Companies can also have some fun with it. For instance, why not create incentives within your organization, like whoever has the most shares from their blog post wins a prize…
Great post Michelle!
I have a feeling that this post will get a lot of comments and shares. Great post and great job on marketing it!
Great blog on blogging, Michelle! I think that the whole “blogging persona” aspect is really important when it comes to getting a regular audience. I also believe that adding related visuals can have a positive impact. For instance, I loved that your blog opened with the image of an IM conversation. It quickly demonstrates the dilemma your blog aims to solve. Point immediately taken, and tone set to fun (versus a tedious, text-heavy lecture).
Absolutely Amy! You bring up a good point regarding images. That’s why I try to use images that are intriguing and will bring attention to the blog. Additionally, using videos is another way to set a fun tone, as you mentioned.