10 Steps To Turn Your Blog Into The Life & Soul of the Online Party

Writing a good blog post isn't enough. It might be the best blog post in the world, but if no-one ever sees it, only you’ll know that right?

The point of blogging is to provide valuable information to your audience in the hope that this leads to visits, shares, likes, comments, leads and eventually sales.

One of the best blogging stories I've ever heard was that of Marcus Sheridan from the Sales Lion. Have a read of how he turned his business around with his blog by clicking on his video on this page – Very inspirational stuff.

So what do we do, how do we get people to read our excellent material. It’s a jungle out there right?

Well firstly we need to ensure we understand that blogging is actually only 20% creating the content and 80% promoting it.

So I sat down this week to outline a promotional strategy for my blog. I want to make my blog the main focus in my business moving forward and so I need a rock solid system to begin to build exposure and get those all important visits.

After I had finished I thought this would be a great share for others looking to build their own blog!

A while ago I wrote a blog post for SocialMouths called How to Create a Weeks Worth of Epic Content From One Blog Post and my strategy kind of started there and but expanded somewhat!

So here’s how it goes

#1. Write a rock solid valuable blog post.

Looking for ideas? Check out Ryan Deiss’s post about blog posts here.

After writing, make sure you publish and distribute everywhere within your immediate vicinity!

Social Media

Email Lists

Forums

Groups you belong to or Admin

Anywhere that you have immediate access to and you can do it quickly and easily

#2. Using a free program such as Audacity, record the blog post as an audio version.

You have a few options here. You can start a full on podcast using iTunes. For a guide on how to do so check out Pat Flynns Guide to Starting a Podcast here.

The other faster and easier strategy is to open a Soundcloud and / or Spreaker account.

Create profiles and shows as per the platforms – see my post The Ultimate in Podcasting Software here for Spreaker.

These are little social networks in their own right.

You can record straight onto these platforms, no need for any extra programs, publish your recordings and share instantly across all the social networking platforms. Nice!

Here’s an example of this blog post on Spreaker (did I mention you can embed it right into your blog just like that!) 

The key here is distribution however. Don’t just record and go. Make sure you grab the links and post them across the social networks, add them into your groups & communities, email them out to your list etc. Help them gather a little bit of momentum and the platform reach will do the rest.

3. Turn your blog into slides.

Using powerpoint, keynote or a fancy new program we just discovered – Haikudeck. Take 20 mins to take the main points from your blog, create a simple slideshow and upload to slidesharing sites.

Here’s a list of sites you might want to try;

Slideshare
SlideServe
AuthorStream
SlideBoom
PowerShow

Here’s an example of this post here. Did I mention that you can also easily embed your slides into your blog post!

Once again your slides will start to get views naturally on the slide networks themselves but you need to give them a helping hand. Distribute, distribute, distribute!

4. Turn Your Slides Into a Video.

Now if you’re feeling ambitious, you can take the slides you just created, add a bit of music and turn your slides into a video! Using screen recording software such as Camtasia orScreenflow or for free, Jing, Snagit or Screenr, you can record your slides as a slideshow on your screen and then add in the audio.

Here’s a quick video I made of this blog post using Snagit;

Make sure you upload your video to YouTube and optimise it for your blog keyword in the title, description & tags. Also make sure you link back to the original blog post at the very top of the description.

5. Create Images From Your Blog Post.

What’s the old saying an Image says a 1000 Words?

Images are inherently shareable on social media and have the propensity to go viral quite fast (as with video actually), so why not take your blog post apart and create some images to share with your audience.

Here’s an example of images created from this blog post.

I created this on Canva.com, which is a super easy to use little image app. But you could also try;

Picmonkey
Fotor
BeFunky

If you want to turn any of your blog nuggets into images specifically for Facebook, particularly ads, timeline covers, tab images etc then you could use our easyfbgraphics software. See more details here.

Just remember if you do want to use any of these images for ads on FB, the text needs to be 20% or less of the overall image. A total pain in the backside and I really wish FB would change the rules for this one. But that’s how it is.

You can measure your image percentage here – FB Grid Tool Link

6. Create Status Updates & Tweetables

Now let’s re-use the segments of text you extracted for images as status updates & tweetables. Some people will skip over images that look like memes, not have the time to watch videos or flick through slides and not want to click through to read a blog post.

So let’s take the mountain Muhammad and give them our valuable content chunk by chunk!

Here’s some example tweets from this post.

10 Steps to Turn Your Blog Into the Life & Soul of the Online Party - Get them here...

Blog Tip #2 - Turn your blog into an audio version & share on Soundcloud

Blog Tip #7 - Email your subscribers as soon as you publish your blog post to increase visitors

Here’s where you can get this cool little app that adds tweetable links to your blog posts 

7. Email Your Subscribers

I mentioned this in point 2 above, but one of the first things you should do is email your blog post out to your list of subscribers. The chances are they signed up to receive valuable updates from you so update them!

If you don’t have a list of subscribers yet, check out this post from Derek Halpern of Social Triggers – List Building 101: How to Build an Email List

8. Take advantage of Content Syndication Sites.

There are a multitude of sites that you can post your blog links to. Many are mini social networks of their own accord however so make sure you get involved in the conversation and build some affinity with the community before you start posting your links.

Here’s a list of the ones we’re testing at the moment;

Inbound.org
Digg
Icerocket
Bizsugar
BloKube
Business2Community

We’re also having a look at a couple of paid options. Here you can upload your blog posts and pay per click, a bit like FB or Google PPC.

Outbrain
Tribepro (monthly fee)
Zemanta

There are so many sites out there, I could list hundreds more, but it’s best to test just a few at a time so you can analyse the results and see what works!

9. Blog Email Outreach.

In other words sending an email to people you’ve mentioned in your post to let them know. If they like your post they may comment or even share with their community.

I know this one is a bit nerve racking, as you don’t want to look like you’re spamming anyone. But the key here is not to ask for anything.

If you’ve included a resource because it’s something that’s genuinely helped you and you want to tell others about it in your blogs. What harm can it do to just email the person you’ve included to let them know.

That’s all you’re doing.

Here’s an example of how you could word your email;

Hi XXXX,

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy reading your blog posts and have got so many great tips that I now use daily in my business.

Thanks so much!

I enjoy them so much I wanted to share them with my community and therefore recommended you in my most recent post, which you can see here – (Link to Post)

I just wanted to let you know. Thanks again for the inspiration, I look forward to more great advice!

Me 

Try it and see what happens!

A more proactive way to do this would be to try and make friends with the people you want to connect with first. This will require a little extra effort and time, but here’s my strategy on how to this well;

1. Create an interest list on FB / Twitter of all the experts you’ll probably find yourself mentioning in your blog posts. What blogs do you read the most, where do you tend to get your information?
2. Take just 20 mins a day to comment, share or retweet their posts. Don’t be self promotional, just go and make friends with them. That’s it.
3. Next time you write a blog post, send it over to them and just let them know you’ve mentioned them. Don’t ask for anything, just give them a heads up.
4. Let the force of nature do it’s work

An addendum to this strategy is of course to guest blog. What better way to create a relationship with someone than to start guest writing for their blog. To find blogs that accept guest posts, simply go to google and type in these search phrases with your niche;

“submit your guest post” “YOUR NICHE”
“guest posting guidelines” “YOUR NICHE”
“write for us” “YOUR NICHE”

10. Last but not least is to buy your blog traffic.

I have found the most effective way to do this so far is using FB Ads. Here’s how;

1. Post about your blog on your Facebook page timeline (remembering the 20% text to image rule)
2. Go to power editor or Ads Manager and choose ‘Website Clicks’ or ‘Page Post Engagement’ as your objective. Website clicks will be optimised for clicks to your site so that’s always my preference but it’s worth testing these things!
3. Create an adset that targets preferably your fans or custom audiences of email lists etc that you’ve setup, but if you’re not at that stage yet, pick a Facebook page in your niche that's fans would be closest to your market and target them.
4. When you create your ad simply select the post on your timeline and go for it!
If you’d like more in depth explanations and examples of how to use FB Ads to market your blog or business see our Facebook series starting here;
How to Create a Lead Generating Page Post Ad
Of course Facebook isn’t the only advertising platform in the world so you may want to to try;
Twitter Ads
StumbleUpon Ads
Just Retweet
Google Adwords
YouTube Ads
Banner Ads
Pinterest Promoted Pins

Summary

So, there you have it! I think that’s enough to keep you (and me) busy for a while!
If you’re looking at this list with a huge sigh of overwhelmingness (is that a word?), then simply start at No 1. Write, publish and distribute your blog post. Then gradually start to add in some of the other strategies one by one.
After all…

Precisely!
I’ll report back from time to time how this is working for my blog and I’d love for you to do the same!
Let me know your thoughts, which of these strategies really hits home with you?
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