There are over 3,000,000 blog posts published every single day. Think about that.
If you’re a blogger then you know how time-consuming it is to promote your blog posts to your social networks. Yet, you also know that it’s the best way to get more eyeballs on your message, build your audience, and make sales.
Most bloggers fall short on their promotion, sharing a blog post a few times and then moving on to the next thing.
I get it. It takes time. And, if you don’t make the time, you’re wasting your time and missing out on one of the best ways to build your business.
One of the most frequent questions I get is how to save time and automate social media tasks. Specifically, how to promote blog posts to get more traffic from social networks back to your blog.
There are over 3,000,000 blog posts published every single day.In 2004 when I started blogging, you wrote an article, published it, and that was it. Maybe you sent a link to your email list. People interested in your content readily signed up for blog post updates. Easy peasy.
Not so anymore. You have to promote your content like you promote an ebook, a service or a product. You have to be proactive about getting your content in front of the people who can benefit from your message.
You have to take action.
How do you get your content to stand out in the noise of nearly 3,000,000 posts published just today? There is a solution.
When I started using the CoSchedule Marketing Calendar, an editorial calendar, scheduling, and promotion tool, about a year ago, I fell in love with it. Using its most basic features, I can schedule two to three months (or more) of social messages promoting my blog posts in about 10 minutes. I set it and forget it.
CoSchedule from Garrett Moon on Vimeo.
CoSchedule has lots of awesome features like the Headline Analyzer. For the purposes of a recent tutorial I shared, the focus is on two of my favorite time-saving features for automating blog post promotion: social helpers and templates.
After you write your blog post and it’s ready to publish, there are a few more steps you need to take. When you share your blog post on your social networks, you need to have content. And that content is culled from your blog post. You need tweets, status updates for Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. Ideally, you need variety in how your craft your updates so you can capture your readers’ attention.
You also need to promote your content more than once on every social network. You’ve probably discovered that very few of your friends, followers, and contacts see your social posts at any given time. That’s why it’s critical for you to share your blog posts multiple times in a variety of ways on each of your social networks. That is if you want more people to actually see and check out your blog. And, that’s the point of blogging, right?
Want more traffic? You must promote your content more than once on every social network.That brings me back to social helpers and templates which I talk about in the video tutorial below (starts at min 0:11:33).
As you learn in the tutorial, when you create a checklist of content to pull out from your post, you’ll be able to quickly copy and paste that content straight into your social helpers, which then get applied to the template you create.
Once you create your content snippets for your social helpers, then you’re ready to create your blog post promotion template. The demo for setting up social helpers and templates begins at minute 26:41.
Templates are where the rubber meets the road. They are the tool you use to create a set it and forget publishing schedule for every blog post. Templates combine social helpers with your post sharing schedule. The CoSchedule demo starts at minute 30:00.
Download the Webinar Slidedeck
Take Action!
After you watch the video replay and download the slide deck, then it’s time to take action and begin creating your blog post social sharing templates. Whether you do it manually or use the CoSchedule app, just do it. The more consistently you share your blog posts, the more traffic you’ll get, the more visibility your business will get, the more your audience will grow and your profits will follow.
Here’s what to do now:
- Choose either the web app or the WordPress plugin.
- For solo entrepreneurs, I recommend starting with the 14-day free trial of the Solo Marketing plan
- Create a document with your social helpers (see content checklist above)
- Start by creating a simple 30-day template sharing schedule focusing on your primary 2-3 social networks
- Apply your new template to new blog posts (and old ones, too!)
Invest the time to create a blog posting schedule template. For all future blog posts, simply fill in your social helpers, apply the template and you’re all set.
If you need personal assistance strategizing a blog post sharing schedule, the best social templates for your content, and creating your templates, I’m offering a 45-minute Done With You consultation for $97 (68% off consulting rate). Click here to book your private consult.
Recommended Reading from CoSchedule
How to Crush Social Media Campaign Planning
How To Easily Schedule Social Media Posts With One Tool
This Is The Social Media Posting Schedule That Will Boost Your Traffic By 192%
How To Update All Social Networks At Once (+ Organize *Every* Account)
Hey Denise, great article.
It’s amazing how much blogging has changed. I’d say even in 2010 you could probably get away with just publishing something, but now — you NEED to promote the crap out of it because there’s just so much competition out there.
I never used Coschedule other than having it as a headline analyzer, but I’ll be willing to try out the other features it has.
– Andrew
Thanks for stopping by, Andrew.
I LOVE CoSchedule’s headline analyzer! It’s also great for creating social media headlines (tweets) that you can queue up to go out over time. My goal is to create 10-12 variations on the headline to use on Twitter.