You have written an amazing blog post… awesome! So how do you get maximum exposure for your WordPress blog? Here’s a list of everything you can do to reach more people with your epic blog post.
Before you read on, please try to takeaway two rules before pushing your blog out there. If you will not be adding value and your article is not relevant, do not post to other online resources. You do not want to be seen as a spammer.
SEO
Essential! Blogs can be an amazing way to get additional traffic to your site. Writing a fairly niche article on a subject with optimisation on a keyword that has a high(ish) search against low competition can see visitors constantly finding your blog and website. For help here, see our guides on How to Keyword research using Google’s Keyword Planner and How to SEO WordPress blogs.
Punchy Titles
There’s every chance that people will see your blog article listed in search results and also in their social network feeds, but having an emotive, catchy title will help to persuade people to click and read.
Great Images
As with above, try to pull people in with an image. Having an image appearing next to your content in social network feeds will enhance your chances of a click.
Correct Grammar and Spelling
Spell and grammar check everything before posting. If a positive user experience results in a social share, it’s essential that your content is polished and shows no flaws.
Easy To Read Layouts
If your content is one huge trunk of words, people will just not read it. Break the copy down into bite size chunks, making it easier for the reader to digest.
Ask For A Share!
Why not? As you will read below, when people are asked to retweet they are more inclined to do so. Check the very last sentence of this article and use as a template for your own social sharing request.
Publicize!
WordPress has its own plugin called Jetpack. Install this and activate Publicize, one of the many features within. You can connect up all your Social Networks, so that when you hit publish in WordPress, the article will automatically post on your connected networks.
Another great feature with Publicize is setting up Social sharing buttons for your individual posts. If the reader likes what they have seen and you make it easier for them to share with their friends, this one time set-up is a must!
Related Posts
Also within the Jetpack plugin is a ‘Related Posts’ feature. Set this up so that similar content will appear below your blog post. Another essential one-time set up – do it! This will keep users on your blog for longer and will reduce your bounce rate – a good thing!
Get Social
It’s important to connect up with other like-minded users (or potential clients) within each social network and also to take the time to interact with them. Becoming a prominent member within a niche social community will draw more interest to any blog links you post. Now see below….
Get Tweeting
Aside from the above, where you post your blog to Twitter and have a Twitter share button below the blog article, using Twitter can be a great way to reach new audiences. Head to Twitter search and see if anyone has been Tweeting anything relevant to your blog article. Would your article help a particular user? You can tweet to them directly, prompting them to head over to your blog for more information. If this generates a conversation, make sure you ask them to Tweet about it!
Ask for Retweets
If you don’t ask, you don’t get and this applies socially too. A report by Social Bakers discovered that those that asked for an “RT” on Twitter received 73.48 average retweets per tweet compared to just 2.09 retweets for those that didn’t ask.
Facebook Boosted Posts
Facebook’s organic reach is at about 6{71129efee9605c221ccef8d00880dcd297bad6bb4085abacbeaa3522093a17f8} for pages with less than 100,000 fans. It could be worth creating a post on Facebook with a link to your blog article and then boosting. Facebook ads are easy to use and the audience targeting can be really effective in taking your article to a whole new readership. With boosted posts starting from $10, it’s a great option.
Facebook Groups
Run a search on Facebook looking for relevant groups who might appreciate your blog post. Request to join any groups of relevance and try to engage with group prior to posting your link – The groups collective perception of you will be better enhanced by a little bit of prior interaction – then hit them with your killer blog article.
Linkedin Groups
As above, but on Linkedin, within selected groups. Again, keep it relevant and make sure you are adding value.
Google Plus
You can create select Circles within Google Plus and add users to each circle. These specific circles can be really good for segmenting audiences and delivering content that is totally right for a specific audience group.
Email Marketing
Have a look at your email contacts. Are there people here who would appreciate the chance to read the latest blog? Using a service like Mailchimp (free, up to a point), you can segment your contacts into different lists and send a newsletter detailing the blog article (and any other relevant news you have) to each relevant list.
Email Signature
Adding a link to your blog – or the killer article – to your email signature takes no time at all and could lead to clicks you would not normally receive. Adding in a strong call to action (Check out my latest blog post on ….. ) can really get your contacts clicking, surely worth a try?
Shared Once? Share Again!
Kissmetrics raised a valuable point about sharing on Social Networks. Sharing the same content more than once is well worth your time. What if a number of your intended audience were not being social on the day you published your blog? Post to networks again, but in a timely manner (Too many times = Spam!). This image from Kissmetrics is a good guide on how often to re-share your blog article. It might be worth adding in an extra Facebook share one week after original publish date, with an ICYMI (In case you missed it) prefix to the post. It would also be better to alternate the text that accompanies your blog link.
Social Bookmarking
If you have a relevant blog article that will appeal to users within Digg, Delicious, Reddit StumbleUpon and the lesser known Newsana and Paper.li, post the url and where applicable a short description of what your blog post is all about. Keep the description emotive, you are trying to draw in human users here (not search engines). That said, there is a school of thought that suggests Social Bookmarking still has a slightly positive SEO effect. Others to consider here are Empire Avenue and Viral Content Buzz.
You can also look at Quora, a Q&A site. Run a search on questions relative to your article and if you find any of relevance, you can post an answer with a link to your blog article.
Wikipedia have a fairly comprehensive list of Social networks and bookmarking sites, which you can view HERE. Do not get too carried away with all of them, look for any relevant sites that you might be able to add value to.
Forums
Base a Google search around your business / blog interest and suffix search with ‘forum’. The chances are there are forums out there with a relevance to your blog and your new article. Join the forums, read the rules and participate in conversations. Once you have established yourself within a forum, you can start a new thread, adding a link to the article.
Is Anyone Else Involved Here?
Did you quote someone in the blog article? Did you reference other external sources within the blog? Let them know, they may just want to share with their own audiences. Contact via email or social networks just to make them aware, it’s good manners to do so! And, whilst you are at it, ask them to share for you – they probably will!
Contact High Profile Users
Who is the recognised leader in the topic relating to your blog? Contact them directly, either by email or directly on their own social networks. Tell them about your article and its contents and any reasons why it might be of value to them and their followers… and ask them to share.
Don’t give up
Be consistent with your blogging. Not only is regular fresh original content good for users, it is so valuable as far as Search Engines go – they thrive off new content to crawl and will reward you for it. Content is king, supposedly. It’s massively important, but consistency is the real king.
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